Congo Prevents Rally against Presidential Bid to Keep Power

Authorities in the Republic of Congo on Tuesday banned demonstrations in the country after the opposition called a protest over the president's bid to extend his three-decade stay in power.

Mobile communications were cut in the capital Brazzaville just ahead of a rally against a referendum Sunday that calls for constitutional change to allow President Denis Sassou Nguesso to run for a fresh term in office.

The amendment would allow Sassou Nguesso to extend a mandate that began with an election in 1997 after a brief but bloody civil war. The former Marxist soldier had already ruled Congo from 1979 to 1992.

Hours before Tuesday's ban, police fired in the air to disperse youths burning tires that sent plumes of black smoke over the city's southern Bacongo and Makelekele districts, witnesses said.

An unusual number of police and members of the paramilitary gendarmerie patrolled the volatile southern districts seen as opposition strongholds, an AFP correspondent said, while disturbances also took place in the west of town.

Mobile Internet services, SMS text messaging and broadcasts by France's world service RFI were all cut, the correspondent said.

Many shops, schools and public services also remained closed and the Boulevard des Armees -- where opposition leaders had called for supporters to take part in a rally in the afternoon -- was deserted.

There were no buses and taxis despite the ban on protests issued by Sassou Nguesso's office.

The situation was much the same in Pointe-Noire, the deeply poor central African country's economic capital and oil terminal on the Atlantic, according to witnesses contacted there.

On Sunday, police in Pointe-Noire temporarily detained five leaders of two opposition parties after a demonstration in which at least four people were seriously wounded by a policeman.

Senior officials of the Initiative for Democracy in the Congo (IDC) and the Republican Front for the Respect of Constitutional Order and Democratic Change (FROCAD) were able to fly to Brazzaville in the evening, but without taking part in a separate protest in Dolisie, the country's third town.

Tuesday's nationwide ban was imposed on the grounds that the day was not a public holiday and citizens were expected to work "normally", so gatherings were forbidden.

The referendum on Sunday has been branded by the opposition as a "constitutional coup d'etat". The international community too has voiced its concern.

The constitution currently bars the 72-year-old from running again as there is an age limit of 70 as well as a maximum of two seven-year terms. Both points are to go the popular vote next weekend.

In the last presidential poll in 2009, Sassou-Nguesso officially took nearly 79 percent of the votes, but half of his 12 rivals boycotted the election.

Tens of thousands of the president's supporters staged a rally on Saturday in favour of the constitutional changes.

The turnout dwarfed the size of an anti-government demonstration late last month, when several thousand people poured onto the capital's streets to protest against the president's plan to cling to power.

They had rallied under the cry "Sassoufit", a pun on the French expression for "that's enough".