A new investigative report details human rights abuses committed against Indigenous Batwa people between 2019 and 2021 in the Kahuzi-Biega National Park (KBPN) located in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). The report, published by the NGO Minority Rights Group on Wednesday, says 20 Batwa were killed, 15 Batwa women were raped, and 2 […]
The Batwa Indigenous peoples lived in the Kahuzi-Biega forests of present-day Democratic Republic of Congo for centuries before Belgian colonial rule imposed formal change in 1937 with the establishment of the Zoological and Forest Reserve of Mount Kahuzi. The Batwa were never consulted nor compensated as the legal status of their ancestral lands changed. Colonial […]
A chief from the Bakanga clan of Batwa living within view of Mount Kahuzi was asked in the 1970s to help delineate a boundary using surveyor’s chains. He agreed, not knowing that he was being made to participate in sealing his own fate. According to his son, by the time he understood what was happening, […]
A series of raids by soldiers and rangers in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s Kahuzi-Biega National Park have left one Indigenous man dead and a pregnant woman missing, feared burned alive in her home, activists have reported. Two other women were also reportedly injured in the joint operation between Nov. 12 and 14 on two […]