Murder, rape, arson, immolating children and mutilating corpses are among some of the rights abuses allegedly being carried out against indigenous people by the military and forest rangers at Kahuzi Biega National Park, in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo.
This article was updated on 13 April, 2022 to indicate a response from France's international development agency, (AFD).
An in-depth report published by the NGO Minority Rights Group International found that state-sponsored attacks carried out over three years were part of efforts to clear out the native Batwa (pygmy) people, who live on roughly 30 square kilometres within the 6,000 square kilometre park – on their ancestral land.
“No one can deny how tired I am,” Batwa leader Manasse Seviré Krista, 26, tells RFI repeatedly throughout an interview.
He lives in Bugamanda, within the park. He says park rangers, as well as soldiers wearing Congolese armed forces (FARDC) uniforms, shot up his village and burned it to the ground, killing and maiming a number of community members.
The report alleges these efforts were part of three waves of violent attacks inside the park in July and August 2019, in July 2021, and then again in November and December 2021.
Minority Rights International lists various human rights abuses that it alleges were carried out, with the perpetrators benefitting from international donor funding, including money from the German government.
Terror tactics
In an effort to scare the native Batwa and push them from their land, the soldiers reportedly shot and killed the chief’s son.
They then dug up his buried body, "stripped the corpse naked, and mutilated it by shooting at the deceased man’s face until it was unrecognisable”, the report says.
“It was really frightening. His parents cried and everyone was crying there,” says Congolese researcher Colbert, who works with Minority Rights Group International and whose name has been changed for security reasons.
Civil society groups estimate that some two million people could be considered part of indigenous communities across the DRC and, although the Batwa are technically recognised under Congolese law, they often find themselves at odds over their ancestral lands.
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The report also recounts the testimony of a survivor of a separate attack – which allegedly took place on 3 December, 2021 – who saw people murdered and their bodies defiled.
“We aren’t rebels, we’re just civilians like any other community,” the survivor said.
“Just the other day they killed two more of us. They cut one open and stuffed the other inside. They did this to terrorise us.”
Batwa leader Krista says these mutilations were done to scare the population. Although they fled, most of the community returned and rebuilt their homes on the same site.
He says he's speaking out in an effort to prevent this from happening again.
“We want the tears of our people to be seen by everyone,” he adds.
Sexual violence
Gang rapes were also carried out during the attacks by soldiers and park rangers, Colbert says – adding the victims he interviewed were able to describe the uniforms worn by attackers. However not everyone survived.
“There was one pregnant mama who died after she was raped,” he says. While the report documents at least 33 rapes, it also indicates that number could be substantially higher.
The villagers were, for the most part, unarmed – although some held spears. Only during one attack did a Mutwa (singular of Batwa) man have a gun.
The soldiers and park guards are said to have fired on civilians with automatic rifles and heavy weapons in the November 2021 attacks.
The sound was enough to cause most to flee, two children from one family hid in their home.
Witnesses and the children’s mother said the attackers set the home alight, and forced the front door shut as the children tried to escape. They both burned to death.
Murder in the name of biodiversity
The lush Kahuzi Biega National Park is home to gorillas and other animals that draw top tourist dollars. Robert Flummerfelt, the report's author, says the attacks were carried out in the name of preserving biodiversity.
“But the solution to dramatic declines in biodiversity is not equipping paramilitary apparatuses to run around and marginalise and brutalise indigenous people, and force them off of their ancestral lands,” he adds.
“I think the biggest problem here is a neo-colonial approach to conservation.”
Flummerfelt is referring to what some call “fortress conservation”, or the belief that biodiversity is incompatible with the presence of human communities.
In 1951, then colonial ruler Belgium included Mount Biega in the forest reserve. The Batwa were not forced from their homes until Belgian conservationist Adrien Deschryver asked them, in the early 1970s, to show him where the eastern lowland gorillas lived.
“Using the Batwa’s intimate knowledge to gain access to the forest and its rare gorillas, Deschryver returned to the forest alongside armed park guards and soldiers in the mid-1970s to violently force Batwa out of their villages, which were burned to the ground or otherwise destroyed,” the report says.
The community lived on the edge of the forest outside the reserve, but they were not welcome in the other villages, and were effectively seen as squatters who needed to be fed.
“An indigenous person must not live as a refugee in their own country,” says Krista.
In 2018, the community decided to move back into their ancestral 30 square kilometre area space inside the Kahuzi Biega Park.
Arms embargo violations and impunity
The documented attacks against the Batwa by Congolese soldiers and park rangers must also be seen in the context of the existing UN Security Council arms embargo on the DRC. Any weapons or training provided to Congolese groups must be declared to the UN Sanctions Committee.
The report indicates that training supplied to the park guards over the past five years was not declared, in effect, violating the arms embargo.
It says that training in July and August 2019 included "combat tactics" and "weapons handling", as well as the use of heavy weapons and mortars. These were used in an attack against a Batwa village attack a few weeks later.
This is significant given the international support provided to the Congolese government by a number of organisations.
Minority Rights Group International lists the US Fish and Wildlife Service, a federal agency, and New-York based Wildlife Conservation Society who have provided training with the aim of “improving law enforcement”.
The German government is also a strong supporter of wildlife conservation in the DRC, with the country’s KfW development bank contributing to projects working on biodiversity in the park alongside the GFA Consulting Group, a Hamburg company working on development projects.
Maisha Group, a private security company founded by former Israeli special forces, is also involved. It's working on projects supported by American organisations focused on “wildlife security”.
This international support may be well-intentioned, with the aim of stopping illegal poaching and helping to protect wildlife and biodiversity in the region. However, Minority Rights Group International asserts that Congolese authorities are misusing this support to attack unarmed civilians.
Furthermore, the crimes committed against the Batwa are carried out amid a culture of impunity. “In the DRC, human rights aren’t respected,” says Colbert, bitterly.
Batwa leader Krista agrees. “In the DRC, as a Batwa, Congolese justice is very elusive,” he adds.
Allegations denied
The park management has denied the allegations detailed in the report, saying that some Batwa children go to school, while others work in the park as guides for wages.
“Sixty percent of my park employees are Batwa who are paid at the end of each month. Those who maintain all these roads, all these tracks, are often the Batwa or people from the neighboring communities, who are paid,” park director De-Dieu Bya’Ombe told RFI correspondent Charlotte Cosset.
“It’s really work that we all do together and the communities benefit,” he adds, describing how a sense of community spirit is fostered among the indigenous communities.
This is somewhat contradicted by an account from a park ranger cited in the Minority Rights Group International report, alleging that Bya’Ombe encouraged them to use lethal force against the Batwa if they were holding machetes.
“One park guard said that the order became an effective shoot-to-kill order, paraphrasing ‘if you see a pygmy in the forest, kill him’.”
The Batwa community has long been accused of "ruining" the pristine environment of the Congo River Basin, an area that is widely acknowledged as key to the planet’s ecosystem.
“The reason there’s biodiversity to protect is because the lifestyle of the Batwa has been, since time immemorial, consistent with preserving biodiversity, living in harmony with their natural surroundings,” says Flummerfelt.
While he acknowledges that some poaching and tree cutting occurs, Flummerfelt says those who participate do so out of desperation, or the need to survive, and live off the land, as they have done for generations.
They are not heading large clandestine operations run out of Bukavu, the regional capital, to commercially exploit natural resources.
“You’ll hear it from conservationists and it’s deceptive and it distracts from the core question of what rights this community has,” Flummerfelt says.
Batwa leader Krista sums it up: “Maybe an animal has more value than the life of a pygmy.”
Investigations into rights abuses
The German government has reacted to the Minority Rights Group International report, saying it would take the accusations very seriously. German Development Secretary Jochen Flasbarth has asked Congolese authorities for clarification.
“Conservation can only succeed in the long term if the local, especially indigenous, population is involved and their human rights are fully respected," he said in a statement.
A commission of inquiry has been set up by the state-backed Congolese Institute for the Conservation of Nature (ICCN) in order to verify the allegations of rights violations by park personnel and soldiers.
AFD responds to RFI enquiry
France’s international development agency (AFD) was cited in local Congolese media recently as signing an agreement to work in and around Kahuzi Biega National Park in order to help preserve biodiversity and nature.
AFD responded to RFI’s enquiry, clarifying that contrary to local media reports, it does not finance the park.
In a statement sent to RFI, it said it is awaiting the results of a feasibility study carried out on the week of 4 April 2022 by its own environmental and social expert, as well as a biodiversity expert, according to a statement RFI received from AFD.
AFD “will condition its support on respect for the results and recommendations of the environmental and social due diligence that will be carried out, with the aim of improving the situation of local populations,” says the statement.
However, AFD, a French government-funded agency, indicated it “will rely on environmental and social due diligence conducted by the NGO Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS).”
This seems problematic given that, as mentioned earlier, the report indicated that WCS provided training to park guards on “law enforcement”.
Park director Bya’Ombe told RFI that AFD would finance a water supply project in Bukavu, taking water from the national park.
The Batwa community in Biega is not moving any time soon, says Krista, adding they would rather die on their 30 square kilometres of park land. And, after the numerous promises made in 2014 were broken, hope is all they have.
“We are all scared and live in fear,” Krista says.
“We live with this situation, and a sadness hangs over us, because perhaps this could happen again.”
