Congolese Rebels Suspend Participation in Cease-fire Agreement

By Franz Wild

Sept. 24 (Bloomberg) -- Twenty rebel militias in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo suspended their participation in a cease-fire deal, accusing the government of reneging on pledges including the award of senior army positions to their members.

The government has also arrested members of the so-called Mai Mai groups in violation of a January 2008 peace deal, the militias said yesterday in a statement released in Goma, the capital of the eastern province of North Kivu.

The government’s failure to meet its commitments “risks pushing us to the reconstitution of our respective groups,” the militias said. Communications Minister Lambert Mende dismissed the statement, saying it was the third threat the groups have made.

“They think they’re in charge of the peace process, but they’re not,” he said in a phone interview from the capital, Kinshasa. “We know what we are doing and we are following our timing.”

The Mai-Mai groups are community-based militias formed to defend their local territory against larger guerilla movements. Their name stems from the belief that water can protect their fighters from bullets.

They have criticized the government for giving preferential treatment to National Congress for the Defense of the People, a ethnic Tutsi-led rebel movement that threatened to invade Goma last October.

Congo’s eastern Kivu provinces have been gripped by a cycle of violence for more than a decade that has led to the deaths of more than 5 million people since 1998.

To contact the reporter on this story: Franz Wild in Kinshasa via Johannesburg at pmrichardson@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: September 24, 2009 06:00 EDT