Set up in June 2001, the group attracted controversy and international condemnation due to its alleged involvement in extra-judicial killings and for organising demonstrations which often turned violent. The organisation is nationalist and opposed to the Islamification of the country, with Gbagbo's supporters tend to be Christians from the south, as opposed to the rebel forces from the largely Muslim north, which fought the First Ivorian Civil War against the Gbagbo government from 2002 to 2006. The organisation itself claims that it rejects violence, and that it has been misrepresented in the Western media, especially that of France.