Posted on 01/09/2003 8:11:20 AM PST by Destro
Thu 9 Jan 2003
Pygmies being eaten by rebels in Congo's ongoing war, UN reveals
JAMES ASTILL IN NAIROBI
REBEL soldiers are massacring and eating pygmies in the dense forests of north-east Congo, UN investigators said yesterday.
A UN team has spent the past week investigating allegations of cannibalism in remote Ituri province, where fresh fighting between several rebel groups has displaced around 150,000 people in the past month.
Many of the displaced tell of rebel fighters capturing and butchering pygmies across the front-line, said Manoddje Mounoubai, a spokesman for the UN cease-fire monitoring mission in Congo yesterday.
"The UN is taking these accusations very seriously and has sent a team of six officials to investigate the accusations and other human rights abuses in the region," Mr Mounoubai said.
However, other UN officials in the capital Kinshasa and the eastern city of Goma said the widespread incidence of cannibalism had already been established.
"Ituri is completely out of control and cannibalism is just the latest atrocity taking place," said one UN official, who asked not to be named until the investigators deliver their report. "Perhaps this will finally alert the world to what’s going on."
Ituri’s forest-dwelling pygmy tribes have been caught between opposing pro-government and Ugandan-backed rebel groups in the last battles of Congo’s four-year regional war.
The two Ugandan-backed movements routinely enslave pygmies to forage for forest food and prospect for minerals, said a UN official linked to the investigation. Any hunters returning empty-handed are killed and eaten, the official said.
Sudi Alimasi, an official with the pro-government Congolese Rally for Democracy -Liberation Movement said the group began receiving reports of cannibalism from people displaced by fighting over a week ago. "We hear reports of [enemy] commanders feeding on sexual organs of pygmies, apparently believing this would give them strength," Mr Alimasi said. "We also have reports of pygmies being forced to feed on the cooked remains of their colleagues."
Cannibalism has re-emerged throughout eastern Congo as the last vestiges of colonial influence have been eroded during the war. Much of the vast forested area is controlled by the Mayi-Mayi, a loose grouping of tribal militias united by magical beliefs and a taste for human flesh.
On a recent assignment to eastern Congo, The Scotsman saw many Mayi-Mayi fighters wearing the body parts of their Rwandan enemies.
"Several groups have turned cannibal in the Congo," said Professor Julian Bauer, a Kenya-based activist for indigenous peoples. "Some of them are eating people in connection with their spiritual rituals and some of them just think it’s good meat."
An agreement last month between the Congo’s government and main rebel groups has triggered intense fighting in Ituri, in a last-ditch grab for the area’s mineral spoils. Most of the area remains too dangerous for UN and humanitarian agencies to reach.
"We are hearing reports of untold horrors in Ituri," said Wyger Wentholt of Médecins Sans Frontières, one of the few western agencies present in the region. "The violence is escalating, displacing tens of thousands of people. A lot of them are telling us about cannibalism."
abortion = yes
nice logic, UN.
Talk about having a quick bite to eat....geez.
That just about says it all.
If this is the world without "colonial influences," then this world needs more colonial influences -- now more than ever.
Yes it would, so take a short break, have a small snack, and give it a little thought, why don't you?
Looks like a metaphor for the US Senate
"Some of them are eating people in connection with their spiritual rituals and some of them just think it’s good meat."
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