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President Felix Tshisekedi declared landslide winner of Democratic Republic of Congo’s election

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President Félix Tshisekedi will be sworn in for a second term on 20 January (pic BBC)

President Félix Tshisekedi has been declared the winner of Democratic Republic of Congo’s election, which has been condemned as a “sham” by several opposition candidates demanding a rerun.

The president won about 73% of the vote, with his nearest challenger, Moise Katumbi, on 18%, officials said.

The 20 December election was marred by widespread logistical problems. It had to be extended to a second day in some parts of the vast country. About two-thirds of polling stations opened late, while 30% of voting machines did not work on the first day of the vote, according to an observer group.

Millions of people waited for hours before they were able to vote, while some gave up and went home.

The opposition said the problems were part of a deliberate plan to allow the results to be rigged in favour of Mr Tshisekedi, 60.

Several of the main challengers have called for protests after Sunday’s announcement. “We call on our people to take to the streets en masse after the proclamation of the electoral fraud,” they said in a joint statement.

The army has been deployed in various parts of the capital, Kinshasa, to prevent any unrest, while Mr Tshisekedi’s supporters have taken to the streets to celebrate.

The head of the election commission has previously said the opposition candidates wanted a new election because “they know they lost! they are bad losers”. Election chief Denis Kadima acknowledged some irregularities but insisted that the results reflected the will of the Congolese people.

President Tshisekedi will be sworn in for a second term on 20 January.

The son of veteran opposition leader Étienne Tshisekedi, the president was first elected in 2019. That followed a poll which some observers, including the influential Catholic Church, said was won by former oil executive Martin Fayulu. He came third in this election with 5% of the vote. None of the other 16 candidates gained more than 1% of the vote.

Mr Kadima said turnout was about 43% of the 41 million registered voters. It is not clear if any of the 18 opposition candidates will challenge the results in court. Mr Katumbi has already said it is not worth it, because the courts are not independent.

The Constitutional Court has 10 days to hear any legal challenges before it is due to announce the final results on 10 January 2024.

DR Congo is roughly four times the size of France, but lacks basic infrastructure. Even some of its main cities are not linked by road. About two-thirds of the country’s 100 million population live below the poverty line, earning $2.15 (£1.70) a day or less.

Voters also chose parliamentary, provincial and municipal representatives, with about 100,000 candidates in total.

During the campaign, Mr Tshisekedi repeatedly lashed out at Rwanda’s President Paul Kagame, who he accuses of backing the M23 rebel group which has seized territory in the east of the country. Rwanda has repeatedly denied the charges.

In his last election rally, Mr Tshisekedi vowed to declare war on Rwanda, although observers dismissed this as rhetoric aimed at whipping up nationalist sentiment.

The elections were not held in parts of the east because of the fighting which has raged in the area for the past three decades. Some seven million people have been forced from their homes – more than in any other country except Sudan.

Dozens of armed groups are battling to control parts of the region, home to much of the country’s vast mineral wealth. This includes vast reserves of cobalt, a vital part of many lithium batteries, seen as essential to a future free of fossil fuels.

(BBC)



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Foreign News

Argentina canal turns bright red, alarming residents

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An aerial view shows an unusual reddish colour of the Sarandí on the outskirts of Buenos Aires [BBC]

A canal in a suburb of Argentina’s capital Buenos Aires turned bright red on Thursday, alarming local residents.

Pictures and videos show the intensely coloured water flowing into an estuary, the Rio de la Plata, which borders an ecological reserve.

Local media reports suggest the colour may have been caused by the dumping of textile dye, or by chemical waste from a nearby depot.

The Environment Ministry said in a statement that water samples had been taken from the Sarandí canal to determine the cause of the colour change.

By late afternoon the colour of the water had lost some of its intensity, the AFP news agency reported.

Residents have claimed that many local companies dispose of toxic waste in the waterway, which runs through an area of leather processing and textile factories some 10km (6 miles) from the centre of the capital.

A resident, a woman called Silvia, told local news channel C5N that although it is has turned red now, “other times it was yellow, with an acidic smell that makes us sick even in the throat”. “I live a block from the stream. Today, it has no smell. There are not many factories in the area, although there are warehouses.”

Another resident, Maria Ducomls, told AFP industries in the region dump waste in the water, and said she had seen it coloured differently in the past – “bluish, a little green, pink, a little lilac, with grease on top”.

[BBC]

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Trump sanctions International Criminal Court, calls it ‘illegitimate’

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Trump previously sanctioned ICC officials during his first term in office in 2020. [BBC]

President Donald Trump has signed an executive order sanctioning the International Criminal Court, accusing it of “illegitimate and baseless actions targeting America and our close ally Israel”.

The measure places financial and visa restrictions on individuals and their families who assist in ICC investigations of American citizens or allies.

Trump signed the measure as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was visiting Washington.

Last November, the ICC issued an arrest warrant for Netanyahu over alleged war crimes in Gaza, which Israel denies. The ICC also issued a warrant for a Hamas commander.

A White House fact sheet circulated earlier on Thursday accused the Hague-based ICC of creating a “shameful moral equivalency” between Hamas and Israel by issuing the warrants at the same time.

Trump’s executive order said the ICC’s recent actions “set a dangerous precedent” that endangered Americans by exposing them to “harassment, abuse and possible arrest”.

“This malign conduct in turn threatens to infringe upon the sovereignty of the United States and undermines the critical national security and foreign policy work of the United States government and our allies, including Israel,” the order said.

It adds that “both nations [the US and Israel] are thriving democracies with militaries that strictly adhere to the laws of war”.

The US is not a member of the ICC and has repeatedly rejected any jurisdiction by the body over American officials or citizens.

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India ‘engaging with US’ after shackled deportees spark anger

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The US military plane carrying Indian deportees landed in Amritsar on Wednesday [BBC]

India’s Foreign Minister S Jaishankar has told parliament the government is working with the US to ensure Indian citizens are not mistreated while being deported.

His statement came a day after a US military flight brought back 104 Indians accused of entering the US illegally.

One of the deportees told the BBC they had been handcuffed throughout the 40-hour flight, sparking criticism.

But Jaishankar said he had been told by the US that women and children were not restrained. Deportation flights to India had been taking place for several years and US procedures allowed for the use of restraints, he added.

Deportation in the US is organised and executed by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

“We have been informed by ICE that women and children are not restrained,” Jaishankar said.

He added that according to ICE, the needs of deportees during transit, including for food and medical attention, were attended to and deportees could be unrestrained during bathroom breaks.

“There has been no change from past procedure,” he added.

However Jaspal Singh, one of the deportees on the flight that landed in Amritsar city in the state of Punjab on Wednesday, told BBC Punjabi that he was shackled throughout the flight.

“We were tortured in many ways. My hands and feet were tied after we were put on the plane. The plane stopped at several places,” he said, adding that he was unshackled only after the plane landed in Amritsar.

BBC/Gurpreet Chawla A photo of Jaspal Singh
Jaspal Singh spent 11 days in the US before he was deported [BBC]

The US has not given further details of how deportees were treated on the flight. Officials have said that enforcing immigration laws is “critically important to the national security and public safety of the United States” and it was US policy to “faithfully execute the immigration laws against all inadmissible and removable aliens”.

The US border patrol chief posted video showing deportees in shackles, saying the deportation flight to India was the “farthest deportation flight yet using military transport”.

President Donald Trump has made the mass deportation of undocumented foreign nationals a key policy. The US is said to have identified about 18,000 Indian nationals it believes entered illegally.

Trump has said India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi had assured him that the country would “do what’s right” in accepting US deportations.

In his statement on Thursday, Jaishankar said all countries had an obligation to take back their nationals who had entered other countries illegally. They often faced dangerous journeys and inhumane working conditions once they had reached their destinations, he said.

Fraudulent Indian travel agencies are known to take huge sums of money from people desperate to travel abroad for work, and then make them undertake dangerous journeys to avoid being caught by immigration officials.

Jaspal said he had taken a loan of 4m rupees ($46,000; £37,000] to travel to the US, a dangerous journey that took months and during which he saw bodies in the jungle of other migrants who had died on the route.

[BBC]

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