Vapour
06-03-2003, 06:52 PM
http://www.heraldsun.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5478,6478399%255E401,00.html
Pygmies ask UN to save their bacon
By Priscilla Cheung in New York
23may03
PYGMY activists from Congo demanded yesterday that the United Nations set up a tribunal to try government and rebel fighters accused of slaughtering and eating pygmies caught in the country's civil war.
Army, rebel and tribal fighters Esome believing the pygmies are less than human or that eating the flesh would give them magic power Ehave been pursuing them in the dense jungles, killing them and eating their flesh, the activists said at a news conference.
There were reports of markets for pygmy flesh, the representatives alleged.
"In living memory, we have seen cruelty, massacres, genocide, but we have never seen human beings hunted and eaten literally as though they were game animals, as has recently happened," said Sinafasi Makelo, a representative of the Mbuti pygmies in Congo.
"This is nothing more, nothing less than a crime against humanity. This is a certain kind of genocide," Makelo, a delegate to the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues which is meeting at UN headquarters, said.
Njuma Ekundanayo, an expert member of the Permanent Forum, said attacks against the pygmies "are not only coming from the army but also from other groups".
"We don't understand why the military practises cannibalism against the pygmies," she said.
The fighters also raped and sexually assaulted pygmy women, and sexually transmitted diseases were spreading in pygmy communities, the activists said.
About 600,000 pygmies are believed to live in Congo, struck by a five-year-old civil war fuelled by deep-seated ethnic and tribal hatreds.
Pygmies ask UN to save their bacon
By Priscilla Cheung in New York
23may03
PYGMY activists from Congo demanded yesterday that the United Nations set up a tribunal to try government and rebel fighters accused of slaughtering and eating pygmies caught in the country's civil war.
Army, rebel and tribal fighters Esome believing the pygmies are less than human or that eating the flesh would give them magic power Ehave been pursuing them in the dense jungles, killing them and eating their flesh, the activists said at a news conference.
There were reports of markets for pygmy flesh, the representatives alleged.
"In living memory, we have seen cruelty, massacres, genocide, but we have never seen human beings hunted and eaten literally as though they were game animals, as has recently happened," said Sinafasi Makelo, a representative of the Mbuti pygmies in Congo.
"This is nothing more, nothing less than a crime against humanity. This is a certain kind of genocide," Makelo, a delegate to the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues which is meeting at UN headquarters, said.
Njuma Ekundanayo, an expert member of the Permanent Forum, said attacks against the pygmies "are not only coming from the army but also from other groups".
"We don't understand why the military practises cannibalism against the pygmies," she said.
The fighters also raped and sexually assaulted pygmy women, and sexually transmitted diseases were spreading in pygmy communities, the activists said.
About 600,000 pygmies are believed to live in Congo, struck by a five-year-old civil war fuelled by deep-seated ethnic and tribal hatreds.