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Watchdog says human rights abuse on the rise in DRC
A new report published by the international-watchdog Amnesty International says human-rights abuses are escalating in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The group says it fears harassment will increase further before presidential and national elections set to take place in 2011.
Amnesty International's report documents the experiences of eight human-rights defenders who it says have been arbitrarily detained, harassed, and subject to death threats.
Amnesty International Congo researcher Andrew Philip says the investigation has found human-rights abuses increased between 2009 and 2010, and he says he fears they may get worse.
"This, we are concerned, may be linked to the 2011 national and presidential elections, where the government seems intent on stifling any kind of independent criticism or monitoring of the human rights situation in the country," said Andrew Philip.
He says activists have increasingly been subject to death threats via text messages. He says these are anonymous and cannot be attributed to the government, but he says other human-rights abuses appear to originate from the DRC central government in Kinshasa.