Renegade troops began withdrawing from the Democratic Republic of Congo’s flashpoint city of Bukavu on Friday but violent protests shook the capital, Kinshasa, for a second day.
United Nations peacekeepers moved to retake control of Bukavu, a strategic eastern city bordering Rwanda, as the dissident troops quit central districts scarred by looting and fighting.
However a renegade commander, General Laurent Nkunda, cast doubt on his promise to evacuate the city by on Friday night saying his men would take new positions around Bukavu, including at the airport about 30km to the north, to fend off a possible counter-attack by government troops.
The UN, humiliated earlier in the week when its 800-strong garrison was brushed aside by the renegades, strived to reassert its authority with patrols through the lakeside city. Shops reopened on Friday and Bukavu was calm, despite the occasional gunshot.
However, the serious damage done to Congo’s fragile peace process was underlined by continued riots in Kinshasa where mobs burned tyres, stoned police cars and erected roadblocks to vent their fury at the UN and government’s failure to protect Bukavu.
As international flights to Kinshasa were suspended, President Joseph Kabila appeared twice on television to appeal for calm on the streets but at the same time raised the stakes by accusing Congo’s old foe, Rwanda, of fomenting unrest.
”I understand your anger and indignation that you expressed when Bukavu fell,” said the president. ”This shows your attachment to national unity. Nevertheless, the solidarity you’re expressing cannot at all justify the excesses that took place.”
He repeated an allegation — which Rwanda has denied — that Rwandan forces were in Bukavu, using the renegades as cover for Rwanda to meddle in the resource-rich province of South Kivu.
”I will not accept that the destiny of our people is taken hostage by another country. The insurgents must lay down their arms and the Rwandan troops must retreat,” said Kabila.
Police fired in the air to disperse crowds and by late afternoon Kinshasa was quiet.
A six-year civil war which claimed more than three-million lives, mostly through hunger and disease, officially ended last year with a power-sharing government between rival factions.
The estimated 3 000-strong force that seized Bukavu, former rebels once backed by Rwanda, is supposed to be under Kinshasa’s control. But evidently it still obeyed commanders who claimed to be motivated by a desire to protect the Banyamulenge, an ethnic group with linguistic links to Rwanda’s Tutsis. ”I’m not a mutineer because I’m not fighting the government. I just came to kick out troops who were killing a section of the Congolese community,” General Nkunda said.
However, witnesses said his troops left a trail of murder, rape and looting which left dozens dead. Local journalists were targeted and radio stations were forced off the air, said the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists.
A UN spokesperson confirmed the advocacy group’s report that said the younger brother of Joseph Nkinzo, the director of the Protestant Christian-run radio station Sauti ya Rehema (Voice of Mercy), had been executed.
Despite the renegades’ partial withdrawal government troops had yet to reappear on Friday, exposing the limits of President Kabila’s reach from Kinshasa, 1 600km to the west. – Guardian Unlimited Â