The Earth Times/THE DURBAN CONFERENCE: A Tutsi tribe alleges persecution in Congo. By Duane A. Gallop

DURBAN--A self-proclaimed "Congo exile in South Africa," Yves Birere, appealed to the international community, via press release, telling a horrid tale of a people in the Congo and calling for Congo president Joseph Kabila to be "confronted."

The release begins with the history of the Banyamulenge people, who were part of the Tutsi tribe in pre-colonial times. By the 1800s the Banyamulenge were part of a prosperous and vibrant community. That lasted, the letter says, until Mobutu Sese Seko took power in the 1960s and "In the prevailing atmosphere of uncertainty and political instability there emerged a cleavery and vicious campaign of intolerance and persecution of the Banyamulenge."

The campaign, the letter says, inflamed people so much that the Banyamulenge people were almost exterminated. That is until Laurent Kabila took over and led a resistance movement.

"Alas," the letter says, "Kabila proved to be no less a bigot than Mobutu. Tens of thousands of people have been either murdered, injured, or displaced simply because they tend to be a little taller and thinner than the majority, with slightly different features."

Birere's letter called for the World Conference against Racism to ask Joseph Kabila, the military man who took over in January after his father was assassinated, to be confronted with the Congo's violent past and asked what he would do to change it.

But according to the BBC, Kabila, scarcely 30 years of age, is a "reluctant leader" who was more concerned with the military than politics.

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