Court urged to probe ‘campaign of extermination’ against pygmies

THE International Criminal Court is being urged to investigate “a campaign of extermination” against pygmies in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

An international human rights group presented a dossier to the ICC in The Hague yesterday containing compelling witness statements.

Minority Rights Group International say they have evidence of mass killings, cannibalism and rape. The ICC say their most urgent task is to pursue Congo’s war criminals.

More than 600,000 pygmies are believed to live in the Congo’s huge forests, where they survive by hunting wild animals and gathering fruits. However, many Congolese regard them as “subhuman” with some believing their flesh can confer magical powers. “There have been systemic rapes and killings on a huge scale,” the group’s director, Mark Latimer, said. He is calling on ICC prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo to charge those responsible. One witness they spoke to survived the late night massacre of an entire village. He said that everyone was shot and hacked to death and the huts were burnt. “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,” he said.

He identified the rebel group, the Movement for the Liberation of Congo, which is part of the transitional government and controls much of the North, and their allies, as being behind much of the violence against the pygmies.