The UN’s rights chief is upset about the violence in DR Congo’s jails and says things are getting worse

The U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights said on Tuesday that prison conditions in the Democratic Republic of the Congo have gotten worse. Torture and sexual violence have been reported in holding centers run by the intelligence services.

More than 260 female prisoners were sexually assaulted last month during an attempt to escape from the Makala Central Prison in Kinshasa, the capital of Congo. These jails are known for being overcrowded, violent, and dirty.

Official numbers say the jail can hold 1,500 prisoners, but more than 15,000 people were living there. When prisoners tried to escape, guards opened fire, killing at least 129 of them.

At a meeting on human rights on Tuesday, High Commissioner Volker Turk said that prisoners in Congo were being held in “disastrous conditions” because they couldn’t see their lawyers or talk to their families.

“In detention centres run by the intelligence services, in particular, a number of detainees are subjected to torture and other ill-treatment, including sexual violence” , he said to the U.N. Human Rights Council.

The spokesperson for Congolese President Felix Tshisekedi did not answer right away when asked for a statement. The army in Congo is in charge of the intelligence services and their prisons. A spokesman for the army said he had not heard about Turk’s statements.

When Tshisekedi took office in 2019, he promised to close the intelligence services’ holding centers, which had a bad reputation for mistreating prisoners.

Following the prison break last month, Tshisekedi asked for a probe and a review of the main prisons in Congo to make them less crowded.

But four unnamed U.N. sources in Congo said they hadn’t been able to visit Makala since last month’s event because they hadn’t been able to get into the detention centers run by the intelligence services for more than a year.