Security forces have harassed and detained several journalists covering opposition protests in the Congolese capital, Kinshasa, according to local sources. A presidential spokesperson told the Committee to Protect Journalists that any journalists detained while doing their work would be released.

A Canadian federal official said Friday the government will look into accusations that a Canadian-incorporated mining firm allowed soldiers in Democratic Republic of Congo to use its equipment in an operation that killed unarmed civilians last year. "The Canadian government is concerned by the serious allegations concerning Anvil Mining regarding the events in Kilwa in October 2004 and will be questioning the company about the events,” Foreign Affairs spokesman Andre Lemay said late Friday.

In a reverse of the usual flow of refugees, the UN refugee agency last week organised the first convoy for 42 Congolese living in Angola to return to their home in western Katanga province in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). The Congolese returnees will be living in areas which previously provided asylum to Angolan refugees. Just weeks earlier, a final convoy of Angolan refugees returned home in late May from the same Kisenge region, ending a refugee programme that ran for more than 20 years.

Despite prevailing insecurity in the east and northeast of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and the postponement of presidential elections, the Independent Electoral Commission launched its registration campaign of 3.5 million voters in Kinshasa on Monday. The three-week voter-registration process in the capital city is the first step of the nationwide registration programme, which will extend to other provinces in the next 45 days, starting with the Bas-Congo and Orientale provinces, said Apolinnaire Muholongu Malumalu, the chairman of the Independent Electoral Commission.

In the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), a Rwandan militia group, the FDLR (Forces Démocratiques de Libération du Rwanda), may finally be ready to lay down their arms and return in peace to Rwanda. But as the return process begins to be negotiated and organized, MONUC, the UN peacekeeping mission in the DRC, the government of Rwanda and other implementing agencies are not paying adequate attention to the needs of FDLR dependents, leaving at least 40,000 women and children potentially vulnerable.

At least 1,700 people have fled villages in the Democratic Republic of Congo's (DRC) Katanga Province following attacks by Mayi-Mayi militiamen, a UN official told IRIN on Tuesday. "The Mayi-Mayi raped seven women, eight under 18-year-olds and burnt eleven houses," Rachel Scott, the spokeswoman for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), said.

It's common courtesy to clean up after yourself, but some refugees in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) have gone one step further by greening their camps before repatriation. More than 17,000 out of a planned 60,000 seedlings have so far been planted in the villages of Nkondo and Kilueka in the Bas Congo province of south-western DRC. The area hosted more than 23,000 Angolan refugees for six years, but fewer than 3,000 of them are left now after the majority headed home to Angola.

The lure of gold has fuelled massive human rights atrocities in the northeastern region of the Democratic Republic of Congo, Human Rights Watch said in a new report published this week.  Local warlords and international companies are among those benefiting from access to gold rich areas while local people suffer from ethnic slaughter, torture and rape. The 159-page report, "The Curse of Gold," documents how local armed groups fighting for the control of gold mines and trading routes have committed war crimes and crimes against humanity using the profits from gold to fund their activities and buy weapons.  The report provides details of how a leading gold mining company, AngloGold Ashanti, part of the international mining conglomerate Anglo American, developed links with one murderous armed group, the Nationalist and Integrationist Front (FNI), helping them to access the gold-rich mining site around the town of Mongbwalu in the northeastern Ituri district.

A last convoy of Angolan refugees has returned home from the southern Congolese region of Kisenge, ending a refugee programme that ran for more than 20 years. As the heavy trucks rumbled across sandy tracks in Katanga's savannah landscape, they left clouds of dust in their wake. They also left mixed feelings among the people who had hosted the refugees and aid agencies for so long. Mainly farmers by profession, the Angolan refugees have contributed many products to Kisenge's economy.

Some 1,600 internally displaced people (IDPs) began their journey home along the mighty River Congo, from Kinshasa, capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo, to the provinces of Equateur and Orientale. In a statement, Jens Laerke, the information officer in the post-conflict unit of the UN Development Programme (UNDP), said the IDPs boarded a Congolese naval vessel at the Kinshasa harbour, marking the start of the operational phase of a joint UN pilot project aimed at providing protection and security for 67,554 IDPs.

At least 30 civilians and military personnel suspected of plotting the secession of Katanga Province from the Democratic Republic of Congo have been arrested, Deputy Provincial Governor Chikez Diemu said on Monday. He said judicial and security agents had made the arrests on Friday in the southeastern Katanga town of Lubumbashi. The detainees, he added, were being questioned over their participation in a network "whose aim was to destabilise the Congolese institutions".

Ongoing insecurity is the cause of deteriorating levels of nutrition among people in the south-central province of Kasai Oriental in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), the UN Mission there known as MONUC, reported on Monday. "The worst famine-hit areas in the Sankuru District [in Kasai Oriental Province] include Kole, Tchumbe and Lubefu, located within the 500-km range from [the provincial capital] Mbuji-Mayi," Patrice Bogna, the information focal point for MONUC's Humanitarian Affairs Section, said in a statement detailing the mission's weekly humanitarian highlights.

With the number of former combatants taking part in disarmament programmes almost doubling in the past few weeks, nearly 12,000 ex-fighters have disarmed and the Democratic Republic of the Congo's (DRC) first national brigade incorporating former militiamen has been deployed, an official from the United Nations peacekeeping department said. The more than 11,500 combatants who entered the disarmament and re-integration programme included 3,600 children, François Dureau, chief of the Situation Centre in the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations said.

On 24 April 2005, six Congolese journalists were abducted by a group of Mai Mai militiamen operating under the command of one "Chinja Chinja" ("Cut-Throat"). The journalists are being held in the port of Kilumbe, Upper Lomami district, some 400 km from Lubumbashi. They had gone to the area to cover the disarmament of armed militias in Katanga province, southeastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

At least 10 brigades of the new Congolese army are being prepared to help with the country's reunification process, especially during elections planned for later this year, the army's chief of general staff, Lt-Gen Kisempia Kisungilanga, told IRIN on Monday. "Those being trained will participate in peacekeeping operations during the electoral process," he said.

The first 100 of some 58,000 refugees who had been living in the Republic of Congo (ROC) in the past six years are due to begin returning to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC)'s Equateur Province on Wednesday, a spokeswoman for the UN refugees agency, UNHCR, announced. The spokeswoman, Jennifer Pagonis, said on Tuesday in Geneva that the operation would be "one of the most logistically challenging major refugee voluntary repatriation programmes" the agency had undertaken anywhere in the world.

The UN Security Council has widened an international arms embargo to include all rebel and militia groups in the Democratic Republic of Congo. It will punish violators with a travel ban and freezing of assets. The ban follows a recent push to disarm militias in the volatile east and comes after a pledge from the main Hutu rebel group to disband and go home to Rwanda.

As it approaches the end of its second year, the Congo's transition risks breaking apart on the unreconciled ambitions of the former civil war belligerents, says the International Crisis Group in a new report. "Inability to resolve political differences in Kinshasa have been mirrored by new military tensions that the parties, as well as Rwanda, have stirred up in the Kivus, the birthplace of both wars that ravaged the country in the past decade. June 2005 national elections are imperilled, and 1,000 are dying daily in the ongoing political and humanitarian crisis."

A great number of returnees from the Democratic Republic of Congo are reportedly stranded in Gangura Payam in Yambio county (southern Sudan) due to lack of basic needs. The administrator of Gangura Payam, Mr Clement Gini Mia Mangi, told Sudan Radio Service that returnees are desperately in need of shelter, clothing, food and clean drinking water. Mr Gini Mia Mangi said with the signing of peace agreement in Sudan, refugees are coming home in big numbers despite delays of the repatriation programme.

Pointing to upcoming elections and subsequent national stability as the key issues facing the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan has recommended extending the mandate of the UN peacekeeping mission there for another year and has called for troop deployment in two more provinces. The UN Organization Mission in the DRC (MONUC) is playing a central role in supporting the country's Transitional Government through the electoral process and in ensuring stable governance thereafter, he says in his 17th report to the UN Security Council on the DRC, covering major developments there since the end of December.