St. Thomas the Believer Project

(Content Warning: sexual assault, violence, death.)

In August of 2018, 843 people died from Ebola in the city of Butembo. The report of the riot at Kasapa Central Prison speaks to the conditions in DR Congo prisons.

Eleven prisoners died in the first week of the year in Kinshasa’s biggest prison, staff and NGO sources have said, blaming shortages of drugs and food. “Makala and almost all the prisons around the country are no longer being supplied with food and medicine,” said Emmanuel Cole, head of a Congolese non-governmental organisation active in jails across the vast central African nation.

News 24

On August 10, 2022, more than 750 people escaped from Butembo Prison and five people were killed during an attack by the Islamic State group known as the Allied Democratic Forces.  

“Congolese authorities should meaningfully investigate and act on the three days of rampage and mass rape at Kasapa prison to punish those responsible and prevent further breakdowns of the prison system,” said Thomas Fessy, senior Congo researcher at Human Rights Watch. “Almost a year on, rape survivors are still awaiting adequate medical care and help as they face trauma and stigma.”

A fire in the women’s section forced the female detainees into the main prison yard for three days without protection, shelter, food, water, or safe access to toilet facilities. Male inmates burned all the women’s belongings and imposed a climate of fear. “For fear of being raped, we wouldn’t even go wash ourselves,” said a female survivor, 38.

Of the 56 female detainees in the prison, 37 women and a teenage girl testified to Lubumbashi’s public prosecutor that male inmates had raped them. Human Rights Watch interviewed 13 of the detainees who said they had been sexually assaulted or raped. Prison staff, UN officials, and local human rights activists told Human Rights Watch that the majority of female inmates, and possibly all, were raped, but some of them did not report the rapes to the prosecutor for fear of the stigma associated with sexual assault. There were also credible reports of rape of six men and boys.

The report contains the graphic and horrifying details.