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  • Completely eliminated 1/3 of Pygmy people
  • Death from malnourishment since they were evicted from their forests, preventing them from their normal hunting practicies
  • Unable to access resources for medical treatments, causing many disease deaths
  • Hunted down, raped, massacred, eaten- "crimes against humanity'
  • Killed because of prejudice, to gain magical powers, and for access to natural resources and land
  • women are forced into sex slavery

Genocide Begins

  • Pygmies were considered 'subhuman' and treated as animals by members of the militia
  • During the Congo War, militias invaded the forests and carried out mass killings and cannibalism
  • Believed by eating the Pygmies, they would posses "magical powers"
  • 600,000 pygmies were hunted down and killed during the Congo Civil War between 1998-2003
  • Most killing is done by "Les Effaceurs", or The Erasers, who are trying to rid the world of Pygmies
  • Interhamwe(organization of Hutus in Rwanda) contributed to about 100,000 Pygmy fatalities during Rwandan genocide

Efforts/Awareness

History

  • The pygmies have been in Congo since Europeans discovered the area
  • Hunter-gatherer group of about 70,000-80,000 people
  • Local farmers began to cut down trees of forests inhabited by Pygmies in early 20th century
  • Officially evicted from their forests in 1991 in Uganda, and in 1960 in DCR after creation of national parks
  • UN representative, Makelo, has reached out to try the government and DRC fighters for murder/cannibalism in a letter to the president
  • Not many efforts to stop because of overshadowing of other mass killings
  • Zephyrin Kalimba, president of Rwanda association for Indigenous people: “The Batwa families are very vulnerable and bound for extinction if nothing is urgently done."
  • Due to regional conflict and inaccessibility of village, no investigations are made for crimes against humanity

About

Who: Batwas (Pygmies) people

What: Displacement and genocide of Pygmy people

When: Displacement began in 1960s, ethnic cleansing beginning in 1999 to present

Where: Mainly in forests of Democratic Republic of Congo, a country in Central Africa and Uganda

Why: Militia groups during Congo war wanted to clear the land for mineral and other natural resources use

The Pygmy Genocide

"The Secret Genocide"

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