

Tragedy in the Congo
By: chris | September 15th, 2008
A terrible tragedy occurred today during a game in the Democratic Republic of Congo in which stadium riots killed 13, most of them children, and injured another 35.
The derby between Socozaki and Nyuki System was halted after Nyuki’s goalkeeper resorted to running up the pitch performing “witchcraft” against the opposition with his team losing. This resulted in an on-field brawl between the two clubs and when a local police commander attempted to intervene and break up the fights, the crowd began throwing things at him.
In an effort to cease the unrest, other police officers fired their weapons into the air which, instead of calming the crowd, only managed to escalate matters and soon the riots began. In the midst of these riots and stampedes, 13 people were killed, due mainly to suffocation, and according to local governor Julien Mpaluku, “most of the dead were children, only two or three were adults”.
Though this was a stadium riot, something we’ve sadly seen before, this particular situations spreads far beyond the pitch. For quite some time the area of North Kivu, where the match took place, has been in the midst of violent conflict between the government army and rebels, and last week there were heightened hostilities in North & South Kivu once again, forcing many from their homes and the region:
Many thousands of civilians in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo’s North Kivu province, many of them repeatedly displaced, have been forced to flee again amid heavy clashes between government forces and troops loyal to renegade Gen Laurent Nkunda.
Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), a medical charity, described the humanitarian situation in North Kivu as “very worrying” and has evacuated some of its teams in the area because of the fighting.
There is obviously more to this than a simple stadium riot when considering the unrest of the entire region, but sport should servAe as an escape from these matters, if only for a short time. Unfortunately, this tragedy was simply the opposite. Our prayers go out for all involved.
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