Monitoring Desk
ISLAMABAD: A rights group in Congo-Brazzaville on Wednesday accused the government of committing hundreds of human rights abuses last year.
In a report, the Development Actions Centre (CAD) group said it documented 572 rights violations, including torture and electoral fraud, in the Central African nation in 2022.
Cases of torture “remain routine,” it said, citing several instances where arrested suspects were beaten using hammers, sometimes to death, by security officers.
July’s polls most lamentable in country’s election history: Rights group
The group said that parliamentary polls held in July were also “the most lamentable in the country’s elective history” and were marked by “massive fraud.” President Denis Sassou Nguesso’s party comfortably won that election, with candidates from his Labor Party winning 100-percent of the votes in their districts, according to the NGO.
Nguesso has remained the president of the Republic of Congo, also known as Congo-Brazzaville, for nearly 40 years.
CAD also drew attention to a scandal this year in which an opposition figure from neighboring Gabon was found with his luggage stuffed with local currency to the equivalent of about $1.9 million.
The rights group said the affair pointed to the “complicity of the highest authorities in the country.”
Congo-Brazzaville ranks 164th out of 180 in the 2022 Corruption Perceptions Index by the NGO Transparency International.
