A rapper critical of President Joseph Kabila was abducted in the eastern DR Congo overnight, his father said Sunday amid rising tensions two weeks ahead of landmark elections.

Akim Bufole Corneille, 26, was taken by unidentified kidnappers as he left a party in Bukavu, the capital of troubled South Kivu province, his father Amuli Bufole told AFP.

The kidnapping of the rapper, whose stage name is Cor Akim, happened “not far from our home,” his father added. “We arrived too late at the scene, where we found one of his shoes and his wallet.”

Elsewhere in the vast central African country, eight people were seriously injured in election-related violence in Kindu, a stronghold of outgoing President Kabila, a human rights group said.

In the central Kasai region, six supporters of Kabila’s hand-picked candidate to succeed him, Emmanuel Ramazani Shadary said they were injured in a clash with members of the main opposition Union for Democracy and Social Progress.

The December 23 presidential, legislative and municipal elections, twice delayed, are crucial in a nation that has not known a peaceful transition of power since gaining independence from Belgium in 1960.

The new reports of violence come as Congolese gynaecologist Denis Mukwege, a harsh Kabila critic, prepares to accept the Nobel Peace Price in Oslo on Monday.

In an interview with AFP on Sunday, he said he feared the elections would “simply create more troubles since there is neither transparency, nor credibility in their organisation So surely the results will tend to provoke disputes which are not good for democracy.”