Posted on 07/06/2004 6:42:31 AM PDT by NativeNewYorker
THE HAGUE, Netherlands, July 6 (UPI) -- Complaints of widespread slaughter of pygmies in the Democratic Republic of Congo were filed with the International Criminal Court in the Hague Tuesday.
The Minority Rights Group International says it has gathered evidence of mass killings, cannibalism and rape by a rebel group in the northern part of the country, the BBC reported.
An estimated 600,000 pygmies, who are defined as people whose adult males are less than 5-feet are believed to live in the DR Congo's forests where they survive by hunting wild animals and gathering fruit.
"There have been systemic rapes and killings on a huge scale," the group's director, Mark Latimer, told the BBC. "This level of quite horrific violence which has been perpetrated against the pygmies is part, or was part, of a campaign aimed at exterminating them."
Many Congolese regard pygmies as subhuman while others believe eating their flesh can confer magical powers.
If a pigmy is slaughtered in the forrest, does anyone hear it?
"If a pigmy is slaughtered in the forrest, does anyone hear it?"
Not if the UN muffles the sound.
Jesse Jackson was contacted and would have been interested in doing something to prevent THIS African genocide had there been anything in it for him.
They have no Budweiser franchise so Jessie's not interested.
Is this worse than"Dwarf Tossing"or what?
He he he.....good line.
Really sad.
A little bit of background: The Pygmies seem to be the native people of the Central African forests.
One of the things that we see when we look at the Pygmies and Bushmen is that the demographics of Africa, in particular Central and Southern Africa, as they are today are fairly recent (within the last 2000-5000 years, and in the case of South Africa, within the last 500-1500 years.) Jared Diamond writes in his book Guns, Germs, and Steel (one of the best history books I've ever read, BTW) about "how Africa became Black".
The Bantu speakers who make up the majority of people in Central and Southern Africa (Bantu people from the Congo, Angola, and Mozambique are probably ancestors of many African Americans) seem to have originated in the savanna south of the Sahara desert about 3000 BC. They had agriculture (crops such as yams) and expanded into the Congo basin, where they cleared land for gardens and pushed the Pygmies into the depths of the forest. Not too different from how eastern peoples expanded into Europe and established agriculture, except that there the natives adopted agriculture rather than continuing to hunt and gather.
(BTW, the Pygmies have pretty much lost their own language; they speak the languages of their Bantu farmer neighbors with a few words from their own languages, and have always vassals of these groups rather than truly independent hunters- they provide meat, animal skins, and honey to the Bantus in exchange for grain or yams.)
As for Southern Africa, the Bantu people expanded into that region later. When they migrated into East Africa, they came into contact with other Black Africans (Nilotic people such as the Masai, Dinka, and Somalis) and acquired dry-climate crops like millet and cattle/other livestock (which don't thrive in the forests due to tsetse flies) from these groups.
This happened about 1000 BC, at the beginning of the Iron Age. I am not sure when or how iron was introduced into Africa. It could have been Phoenicians, or it could have developed in a Bronze Age native culture.
When the Bantu began to expand into Southern Africa at the time of Christ, they had a number of technological advantages that enabled them to succeed at the expense of the Bushmen natives, namely agriculture (grains and livestock) and the social organization that went with it, and iron tools and weapons that enabled them to farm more effectively and defeat the Stone Age natives in battle.
Many Bushmen were killed or enslaved, particularly when they stole the Bantus' cattle. The Bushmen only survived on the fringes, and were pushed into the desert, a lot like what happened to the Pygmies with the forest.
Very interesting, thanks for that post!
On another note, I had always wondered why the Pygmies were so short. I found an article that tells why. They have an unusual form of pituitary dwarfism, it seems.
http://www.chclibrary.org/micromed/00060870.html
Pituitary dwarfism due to an isolated deficiency of GH. This accounts for about 1/3 of cases. These perfectly proportioned patients do mature sexually and may reproduce.
There is a subgroup of the second type of pituitary dwarfism listed above. In some cases there is normal or even high GH secretion, but there is a hereditary inability to form somatomedin-C (also called insulin-like growth factor-1 or IGF-1) in response to the GH. African pygmies are an example of this type of pituitary dwarfism. At least four somatomedins are produced by the liver in response to GH and are responsible for the actual growth of bone and tissues.
The Pygmies were known to ancient Egyptians and Greeks (by way of the Egyptians.)
http://www.eternalegypt.org/EternalEgyptWebsiteWeb/HomeServlet?ee_website_action_key=action.display.module&module_id=100&language_id=1&story_id=5
"Dwarfs in ancient Egypt":
There were two kinds of dwarfs known in ancient Egypt, the African pygmies and the Egyptian dwarfs. The African pygmies had hereditary dwarfism. These pygmies originated in the equatorial forests of Central Africa. The Ancient Egyptians brought them to Egypt from their trade stations in Nubia. The first pygmy was brought from Punt in the time of King Asosi of the Fifth Dynasty. Another was brought by Herkhuf from the land of Iam in Upper Nubia for the child King Pepi the Second.
The role of the African pygmies was to perform a dance called "the dance for god" or to dance in the royal palace to rejoice the king's heart.
This is sad. The Congolese have no heart, nor does the African-American community.
No fair. The white dude is wearing shoes. ;-)
Forty years of nation-building by the experts at the UN have borne marvelous fruit. Imagine what the UN could do in Iraq.
For some reason, I have always found the Pygmies and their languages interesting (I believe they speak a click dialect), but I have never really known exactly why they - well, were the way they were. I thought that perhaps they had been very isolated, practiced endogamous marriage, and somehow just kept getting smaller over generations. I didn't realize there was genuine dwarfism involved. Very interesting, thanks for the great information.
I thought that the Somalis were Hamitic, not Nilotic. I suppose that part of the world is a big melting pot where many different strains mix.
I think you may be right. My bad. My guess is that Bantu people were in contact with both Hamitic and Nilotic people in East Africa.
You got me. No snappy comebacks from me. I just hope Larry isn't too traumatized by the whole thing.
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