The Democratic Republic of Congo has been urged to investigate 421 bodies found in an unmarked burial ground in the capital, Kinshasa.
A rights group and an opposition lawmaker made the call to the government saying they want the government to investigate the late night burial of at least 421 bodies last month.
The government said on Friday that local authorities had buried the corpses overnight on March 19 in the rural commune of Maluku, saying they were dead fetuses and still-born babies as well as unclaimed corpses.
But U.S.-based Human Rights Watch suspects the bodies might belong to people killed in anti-government protests in January or a crackdown on Kinshasa criminals.
At least 40 people died in the violent protests against a proposed law to require a national census before an election – a move that opponents said was an attempt to delay the vote and extend President Joseph Kabila’s mandate.
A parliamentarian with the opposition Engagement for Citizenship and Development (ECIDE) party asked for the bodies to be exhumed and for autopsies to be conducted.
“Why bury these people at night? There needs to be an inquiry. This is not a simple affair,” Martin Fayulu, told Reuters on Monday.
Human rights workers first became aware of the burial site after residents of Maluku reported a smell and tire tracks near the local cemetery more than two weeks ago.
The government says the bodies were buried individually and not in a mass grave.
Congo’s justice minister, Alexis Thambwe, said on Friday the government was prepared to exhume all the corpses should anyone raise the “slightest doubt” about the circumstances of their deaths.
But government spokesman Lambert Mende said on Monday there would be no exhumations, saying that human rights bodies or government officials had no right to make such a request.
