About 1:30 p.m. on Friday, July 14, a dozen or so young men sporting red headbands and armed with guns, knives, machetes, and wooden sticks attacked Kinshasa’s bustling main market known as the “Grand Marché.” The assailants burned two police stations near the market before vanishing into the crowd of shoppers and sellers fleeing the commotion. The market’s administrator, 50-year-old Chantal Mboyo, and two police officers were killed.

People gather outside the office of the administrator of Kinshasa’s central market, Democratic Republic of Congo, on July 15, 2017, one day after she was killed. © 2017 Radio Okapi/Billy Ivan Lutumba

Gen. Célestin Kanyama, who until Monday was Kinshasa’s police commissioner, immediately blamed the attack on “a group of thieves and criminals.” But many observers in the Democratic Republic of Congo question whether assailants could have pulled off such a brazen attack in the middle of the day in the capital – and then manage to get away – without a degree of government complicity. Others speculated that the market attack would be used to justify a 'state of emergency' that could be used as another excuse to delay elections and crack down further on political protests and free speech.

So unsurprisingly, the day after the attack, Patrick Nkanga, youth league president of the People’s Party for Reconstruction and Democracy (PPRD), the main party of President Joseph Kabila’s ruling coalition, issued a communiqué calling for additional security measures – “even if” that means imposing a "state of emergency" – to respond to the “terrorist acts” perpetrated in Congo’s central Kasai region and now Kinshasa.

On Monday evening, presidential decrees were read out on state media, announcing new police and military nominations. Among the new appointments: National police commissioner Gen. Charles Bisengimana was replaced by Gen. Dieudonné Amuli Bahigwa, the former deputy chief of staff of the army in charge of operations. This changing of the guard raises questions over whether it signals a further militarization of the police, the security force primarily charged with protecting the population and maintaining public order.

Kinshasa’s central market, Democratic Republic of Congo, on July 15, 2017, the day after the market was attacked. © 2017 Radio Okapi/Billy Ivan Lutumba

The Kinshasa market attack came a week after the president of the national electoral commission, Corneille Nangaa, announced elections could not be organized before the end of the year, as called for by the Catholic Church-mediated power sharing deal signed late last year, after Kabila’s second and last term, according to the constitution, expired on December 19. Nangaa blamed the delay on violence in the Kasai region, which he said has made voter registration impossible in some areas. More than 3,300 people have been killed and 1.4 million displaced from their homes since violence broke out last August, and as security forces used excessive force to eliminate local militias.

Critics of the government expressed outrage at Nangaa’s announcement. Opposition leader Felix Tshisekedi said Nangaa had “declared war on the Congolese people.” The citizens’ movement LUCHA (Struggle for Change) called for nationwide protests on July 31, the date when the electoral commission was supposed to have finalized the voter roll for elections to be held by the end of 2017. Earlier, the Catholic Church’s bishops’ conference had called on Congolese to “stand up” and protest the government’s failure to organize elections in accordance with the constitution.

The Congolese people have a right under their constitution and international law to hold genuine periodic elections – and to freely express their views about them. These rights cannot be taken away by a state of emergency or other measures that would deprive them of a credible, democratic process.