Opposition Party Harassed, Killed In Zaire A Week After Attack By Soldiers, Location Of Bodies Is Still Unknown

Just hours before their anti-government rally, their leader’s home was ransacked by soldiers. At the march itself, 12 of them were killed.

Two days later, dozens were detained and beaten. And a week after that, supporters of the United Lumumbist Party still weren’t sure where the corpses of their colleagues lay.

Members of the extremist party named for the late Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba, who was assassinated in 1961 during a secessionist drive, were still trying to figure who was killed, detained and missing.

“It’s so complicated here with the military, with the dictatorship,” said Gerard Gifuza Ginday, spokesman for the party. “They are very clever at hiding the bodies.”

Gifuza said 32 people were killed and several young girls were raped during the rampage by soldiers at the compound of their leader, Antoine Gizenga, on July 29.

Kinshasa Gov. Bernardin Mungul-Diaka said only 12 Lumumbists were killed and only one woman, Gizenga’s sister-in-law, was raped by soldiers.

“I condemn this. But that’s what happens during all wars,” the governor said.

In another crumbling corner of Kinshasa, windows of the two-story stucco home that served as party headquarters were smashed. Hundreds of pink Lumumbist membership cards, party documents and scorched stacks of zaires were scattered amid the slashed furniture and bloody clothes.

A defiant sign in front of the home reads: “Mobutu To Boyi Transition Ya 2 Ans,” meaning, in a melange of French and Zaire’s Lingala language: “We refuse another two years of Mobutu.”

The country’s interim legislature recently announced that elections would be postponed for two years, giving 30-year ruler Mobutu Sese Seko at least another two years to terrorize his opponents.