TUTSI rebels staged a rally in a captured eastern Congolese town yesterday in a show of strength and defiance after an offensive against government forces over the past month.
"We've not come here to fight you. Do not be afraid of me," Laurent Nkunda told around 3,000 local people, mainly men, sheltering from the fierce tropical sun under a sea of umbrellas at a soccer ground in Rutshuru.
Nkunda's rebels seized the tow
n in a campaign launched last month that has displaced 250,000 people, thrown already chaotic government forces into disarray and prompted the UN Security Council to send 3,000 more troops to its biggest peace force.
This week Nkunda's fighters left frontline positions but held on to Rutshuru and other towns in North Kivu province.
After arriving in a luxury white Lexus SUV with tinted windows, Nkunda danced with local children to music blaring from loudspeakers. Around the crumbling stadium walls, more than 100 rebel soldiers stood guard with automatic rifles and rocket launchers.
Nkunda presented his new local administrator, Julius Impeze Panga, who wore a black bow-tie, a crumpled blue suit and a lapel pin bearing the logo "Rebels for Christ".
Rebel soldiers from Nkunda's National Congress for the Defence of the People (CNDP) prevented journalists from interviewing members of the crowd during the rally.
Nkunda first launched his rebellion in 2004, saying he wanted to protect his Tutsi community from attacks by Hutu armed groups, including former Rwandan rebels who fled over the border to Congo after taking part in their own country's 1994 genocide.
He said this year he wants to liberate all Congolese from the rule of President Joseph Kabila, who won Congo's first free polls in 2006 after a devastating war and governs the vast nation from the capital, Kinshasa, more than 900 miles away.
"If you want to be ruled by strangers, refuse us. If you want to be ruled by your children, accept us," he told the crowd from behind a table decorated with pink plastic flowers.
Meanwhile, in Britain, charities, religious groups and other organisations joined forces in a plea to Gordon Brown to take action to "protect civilians" as the violence escalates. It is estimated that 5.4 million people have died as result of conflict in the African country since 1998.
In a letter to the Prime Minister, representatives of 20 organisations said: "Waiting for this crisis to escalate further would be disastrous.
"We call on you to show the necessary international leadership to ensure a rapid, short-term EU deployment, and for the UK to play whatever part is necessary to deliver that force, to fulfil the UK Government's promise to protect civilians."
According to the letter's authors, the UN reinforcements are likely to take months to deploy and, in the meantime, Europe should implement a short-term deployment of troops to protect civilians.
"Such a force could immediately contribute to improving overall security in the area, and thereby improve access for humanitarian organisations and free MONUC (the United Nations Mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo) to fulfil its mandate in other areas.
"Most importantly it could save the lives of thousands."
The letter is signed by leading figures from organisations such as the Muslim Council of Britain, Christian Aid, Human Rights Watch and Oxfam GB.
