Re: ugnet_: Pygmies fleeing Congo war bring tales of cannibals

[Matekopoko]

Netters!

This move to engage in Cannibalistic activity certainly symbolizes the highest height of man's inhumanity to one another. What kind of Savagery (yes indeed ...this is what we must call the action of the so called Congolese Rebels against the Ituri Pygmies) is this in the years 2003?

Pygmies fleeing Congo war bring tales of cannibals

By Fiona O'Brien

MANGINA, Congo, Jan 22 (Reuters) - From a hilltop in Congo's dense northeastern forests, Amzati Njogi watched rebels eat his mother, brother, sister and her two small children.

When the rebels came, Njogi, a pygmy from the virtually impenetrable forests of the Ituri region, was out hunting for food with a bow and arrows.

"I am going to tell you exactly what I saw," he said, his four-foot frame rigid as he began to tell his story. "I saw bad things taking place. I heard people screaming, my mother, sister. I decided to go closer...to see what was going on. Then it all went quiet."

As Njogi crept nearer to the family home, he saw men with guns. "I saw them with machetes cutting someone's throat. Then there was a big fire. I asked God to get me through it."

He crept even closer, making sure no one could see him as he moved through the undergrowth.

"I looked for a while. Then I saw that they were cooking them on the fire and adding salt," he said. "I saw them kill and eat and share...I fled for a whole day until I got to my uncle's house."

Njogi's is one of many witness accounts of atrocities which have poured blood through Congo's remote Ituri region in recent months. Many tell of killings, rapes of 12 or 14 year old girls, looting on a massive scale.

Rebels fighting their way through the northeastern corner of the massive central African country have terrorised the civilian population, forcing thousands to flee their homes and spend months on the road.

The stories of cannibalism, said to be targeted only at pygmies and members of the Bantu Nande tribe which inhabits the region, have travelled far and wide. It is difficult to verify the tales, or know on what scale cannibalism could have taken place.

Officials sent to investigate the human rights abuses in Ituri say they believe the instances of eating human flesh are more likely to be ritualistic than for food -- attempts to harness magical powers, or to render those who eat human meat invincible.

But the stories are gruesome enough to have sent hundreds of pygmies fleeing from their banana-leaf homes deep within the Congo's jungles. Most have fled because of hearsay, but it is the first time they have been scared enough to leave their natural environment.

"(We fled) because of war, we were scared of the messages that we heard from other pygmies saying your friends who live over there have been eaten, if they see you, you will be eaten too, you have to leave," said Morisho Yongo, a pygmy from the forests to the west of the Ugandan border.

OUT OF THE FORESTS

At Mangina, a gathering place for thousands of civilians who have fled the rebel terror in Ituri, groups of pygmies sit apart from the other refugees, easily recognisable from their tiny statures and tattooed faces.

Aid workers say the pygmies are uncomfortable around the others, unused to mixing, sick from an unfamiliar diet, and desperate to get home to their lifestyles of hunting and gathering in the forests.

Their tribes are threatened. Logging and the spread of agriculture has robbed them of much of the forests where they live, their lifespans are short and mortality high.

At the pygmy help centre (PAP) in Beni, 30 km (15 miles) south of Mangina, Benoit Kalume says one of the main problems is the lack of access pygmies have to health care or education, as well as a low sense of self esteem ingrained after generations of mistreatment by other Congolese.

"They are neglected by everyone, they are thought of as sub- human," he said outside the PAP offices which were set up by local people in September to do research and provide assistance to an estimated 40,000 pygmies living in Ituri.

"They have almost no land, they can't find anything to eat because they can't hunt as the forests are devastated by agriculture. They have no access to medical care which means there is a very high death rate."

The pygmies -- or "children of the forest" as they call themselves -- say it is the first time they have ventured out of the forests for any significant amount of time.

Congo's war, which has dragged in numerous foreign armies, rebel groups and unruly militias, began in 1998 and has killed around two million people, mainly through hunger and disease. The fighting rarely threatened the pygmies' homes, and when it did they were able to plunge deeper into the forests and hide.

But the heightened fighting and gruesome human rights violations in Ituri over the past few months have brought panic levels in the region to a level seldom seen before.

Njogi's uncle Angali Sale said a Bantu woman came to him for help after rebels forced her to cook and eat parts of her own husband.

"They slit the throat of this husband, took his head off and cut him into small pieces," he said. "Then they made his wife cook the meat, then made her eat it. She did. When she finished, they told her to go and not to look back."

Others tell of houses being burned, small girls being raped, arbitrary killings. The United Nations says it has credible evidence that human flesh has been eaten, and that human rights abuses have taken place on a large scale.

For the pygmies, the past months have been terrifying. Father Silvano Ruaro, an Italian missionary who has worked in Congo for 33 years, said he had never experienced a comparable level of brutality.

"It's true there have been lots of rapes, witness statements of cannibalism," he said. "And that's a good question: what made the pygmies leave the forests? I have been here for 33 years, and I have never seen anything like it."