Democratic Republic of Congo

Refugees: A Sore Point for Dos Santos and Kabila

11 de July de 2017 Nelson Sul D'Angola

More than 30,000 refugees from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) are housed in two temporary reception camps, Kakanda and Mussunga, in Lunda-Norte province. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) estimates that about 500 refugees are arriving in these camps each day. Congolese citizens are continuing to cross the border to escape the current conflict in the Kasai region, which erupted in April last year. Last April, in addition to the refugees, around 180 armed men from the Congolese armed forces and police also escaped from the clashes between government forces and the Kamwina Nsapu militia, according to the data this website received from the local authorities. The same sources say that more than 100 members of the Congolese forces managed to escape the control of the defence and security forces, and ‘disappeared’ in the Angolan town of Dundo, while the rest were repatriated. In the same month, […]

Politics

Tales from the Crypt: Angola’s Hidden Hospital Horrors

5 de May de 2016 Rafael Marques de Morais

Morgue Tax “Sick people don’t have to pay. Only the dead.” At face value, this remark from one of the administrators of the Regional Hospital in Cafunfo, in the province of Lunda Norte seems to make no sense. Then clarity emerges: the town does not have electricity. The living have to put up with no electricity. But the families of the recently deceased are forced to pay “for a day or two’s refrigeration in the morgue” or deal with the gruesome consequences of a decomposing corpse. Cecilia Matias was only sixteen when she died from yellow fever. Her Aunt, Madalena Matias revealed that that the grieving family had to find the equivalent of nearly four hundred dollars for Cecilia’s body to be preserved while they arranged her funeral. “We bought two {200 litre) barrels of diesel at the pump, at a cost of 64.000 kwanzas, to keep Cecilia’s body preserved […]