BUNIA, 27 February 2008 (IRIN) - More than 500 hungry prisoners in the northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo town of Bunia have threatened to rebel, complaining they have not eaten for four days.

"If it [the food shortage] continues, we will stage a revolt worse than any other," an inmate in Bunia Central Prison, who asked not to be named, told IRIN on 27 February.

In January 2007, prisoners angered by the death of three inmates from malnutrition-related illnesses and inhuman conditions in the jail, staged a mutiny that left two dead and 25 injured. Eighteen policemen were also injured in clashes with the rioting prisoners.

"The situation is very worrying. The Ituri district is not a decentralised entity, and therefore does not have a budget and income to feed prisoners," said Dieudonné Rwabona, district commissioner in charge of economics and finance. Bunia is the main town in Ituri.

The prison was designed to accommodate 102 inmates, but there are now 573 prisoners, including 211 convicts and 312 suspects on remand.

"This prison is the second largest in the DRC after Makala in Kinshasa. A lasting solution would be that the penitentiary establishments must be subsidised. Apart from Makala prison, no other prison receives a [state] subsidy as far as I know," said Rwabona.

The European Union is to fund a project to build a modern prison in Bunia this year under a programme to support the restoration of the justice system in DRC, according to the programme coordinator in Bunia, Jean-Paul Bwino. Two criminal rehabilitation centres will also be constructed in Ituri.

Alarm over lack of care leading to 16 prison deaths

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