Posted on 07/28/2002 4:36:29 AM PDT by Oldeconomybuyer
BRUSSELS (Reuters) - An exhibit featuring singing and dancing pygmies in a small Belgian town has enraged African immigrants and sparked a protest involving some 100 people, local media has reported.
Some 10 pygmies were flown in from Cameroon by a man who swears to be trying to improve their lot, but the display in the southwestern town of Yvoir has drawn criticism as a "scandalous" exploitation of human beings.
"This exhibit is scandalous," Joseph Anganda, a coordinator of the New Immigrants Movement, an activists group, told local RTBF television on Saturday while protesting outside the park where the exhibition was set up.
"It's a mistreatment of humans. It's a hostage-taking."
African immigrants say it harks back to the days of colonialism when European countries put Africans on display in a humiliating way at world expositions in the late 1800s.
The exhibit also features pygmy mannequins in a makeshift village to show visitors about their way of life.
Leon Raets, the exhibit's coordinator, insists that he is only trying to raise people's awareness of the plight of the pygmies in Cameroon and raise money for humanitarian projects.
At least one pygmy, Melanie Ebate, appeared to have a pretty good idea of what she was doing there. "We came to show our...dance," she told RTBF.
Asked what her reaction would be if she and her colleagues were told to stop performing and go back home, she replied: "We would be angry."
Marie Alem, a Cameroon representative of a development organisation who accompanied the pygmies to Belgium, defended the exhibit.
"I don't think that this exhibit is shocking," she told RTBF. "We have taken measures to be respectful."
Pygmies are a race of Central African blacks living chiefly in the great forests of the equatorial belt. They are the shortest of all known races, ranging from less than four feet to about five feet (1.2 to 1.5 metres) in height.
Despite the scandal, the display in Yvoir -- better known for its butterfly exhibits -- has had trouble attracting visitors.
Raets, who works as one of the park's officials, told Le Soir daily that it had only received about 1,600 people since it opened at the beginning of the month.
"For the most part, visitors turn back when we tell them that they will not see the butterflies exhibit that we organised in previous years," he said.
Seriously, are there any pics?
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When it rains, they're the last to know.
Some people must be ashamed of their heritage.
The immigrants country of origin is crap, it is run ineffectually so it will remain crap and the New Immigrants Movement is hell bent on making their new country crap just like their old country.
Guess it is the fate if First World Countries to join the Third World Crapholes. Pardon the language pleased it's just that I'm pissed.
I am sorry to report that this seems like a non-issue shouldering its way into the world stage as a "news story."
I am certain that there must be 100 more valuable minor real stories locally that affect the life of my community and my family.
More immediate, more relevant and of infinitely more substance.
Who pushes this stuff and why? I can't help wondering.
We don't have enough domestic professional victims?
Yeah.
Right up there with tiny Tim and the influence of the Carthaginian culture in the development of modern political structures.
The pygmies at the UN wear ties and have perfected the technique of making hundreds of millions of US tax dollars disappear forever.
That is a priceless contribution to Western culture.
Translation: "We didn't get our cut."
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