Times Online Pygmies beg UN for aid to save them from Congo cannibals
PYGMY leaders have called on the UN to set up an international tribunal to put government and rebel fighters from the Democratic Republic of Congo on trial for acts of cannibalism against their people.
Sinafasi Makelo, a representative of Mbuti pygmies, told the UN�s Indigenous People�s Forum that during the four-year civil war his people had been hunted down and eaten.
�In living memory, we have seen cruelty, massacres, and genocide, but we have never seen human beings hunted down as though they were game animals,� he said.
�Pygmies are being pursued in the forests. People have been eaten. This is nothing more, nothing less, than a crime against humanity.�
More than 600,000 pygmies are believed to live in the Congo�s vast jungles, where they eke out a subsistence existence. Both sides in the war regard them as �subhuman�, and believe that their flesh can confer magical powers.
UN human rights activists reported this year that rebels had cooked and eaten at least a dozen pygmies. Some of the worst atrocities took place when the Congolese Liberation Movement, one of the main rebel groups, tried to take the town of Mambasa from the rival Congolese Rally for Democracy last year.
PYGMY leaders have called on the UN to set up an international tribunal to put government and rebel fighters from the Democratic Republic of Congo on trial for acts of cannibalism against their people.
Sinafasi Makelo, a representative of Mbuti pygmies, told the UN�s Indigenous People�s Forum that during the four-year civil war his people had been hunted down and eaten.
�In living memory, we have seen cruelty, massacres, and genocide, but we have never seen human beings hunted down as though they were game animals,� he said.
�Pygmies are being pursued in the forests. People have been eaten. This is nothing more, nothing less, than a crime against humanity.�
More than 600,000 pygmies are believed to live in the Congo�s vast jungles, where they eke out a subsistence existence. Both sides in the war regard them as �subhuman�, and believe that their flesh can confer magical powers.
UN human rights activists reported this year that rebels had cooked and eaten at least a dozen pygmies. Some of the worst atrocities took place when the Congolese Liberation Movement, one of the main rebel groups, tried to take the town of Mambasa from the rival Congolese Rally for Democracy last year.
Comments