Outrage as tour operators sell “human
safaris” to Andaman Islands
Still from video
showing Jarawa girls forced to dance for tourists
along the illegal Andaman Trunk Road.
© Anon Tour
operators in India’s Andaman Islands are selling
“human safaris” to the reserve of a
recently-contacted tribe, despite government
promises to ban the practice.
Tourists
travel along a road through the
Jarawa’s forest, treating tribespeople like
animals in a safari park. In 2013, the Andaman
government promised to open a sea route to the
Islands’ most popular tourist destinations, which
would stop tourists needing to drive through the
Jarawa’s reserve. The sea route has recently
become operational.
But
despite the authorities’ commitment to ensuring
all tourists would have to use the sea route, very
few currently do, and the market in human safaris
along the road is flourishing.
A tourist films a
Jarawa man up close on the road. Campaigners have
raised deep concerns about the dangerous,
degrading and exploitative nature of tribal
tourism.
© Survival One
tour company, Tropical Andamans, states that: “The
Famous Jarawa creek is a lonely planet in itself.
It is the dwelling place of the oldest tribes
found in these islands. The tribes known as
Jarawas, are aloof from the civilized world. They
are the wonder of the modern world, for they feed
on raw pigs, fruits, and vegetables. They don’t
speak any language known to general public. Their
pitch black skin and red eyes will leave you
dazzled in case you happen to meet them.”
A
tourist website, Flywidus, offers a glimpse of
“primitive tribals” to tourists driving through
the Jarawa reserve, and another, Holidify,
describe the Jarawa as a “major attraction” and
claims that the Jarawa “love the high of specific
drugs, one of it being tobacco.”
In
2002 India’s Supreme Court ordered the road
closed, but it has remained open continuously
despite pressure from human rights
campaigners.
Survival
International led
a global campaign against the human safaris,
calling for a boycott of the Andaman tourist
industry until they came to an end. Nearly 17,000
people from around the world pledged
not to holiday in the islands in protest.
In
a recent statement, the Andaman government said
that the road: “…shall remain open for the use of
both islanders and the tourists as no decision has
been taken by this Administration for closing it
down for the tourists. However, the tourists have
been advised to avail boat service.”
Tourist vehicles
queuing to enter the Jarawa tribal reserve.
Background
briefing
–
The road brings a daily invasion of hundreds of
tourists into the heart of the Jarawa
reserve. The promotion by tour operators of
sightings of the Jarawa is illegal in the islands,
but this is not being enforced.
– The UN,
India’s Minister for Tribal Affairs and members of
the European Parliament have all condemned the
practice.
– One tourist described his trip:
“The journey through tribal reserve was like a
safari ride as we were going amidst dense tropical
rainforest and looking for wild animals, Jarawa
tribals to be specific.”
– The Jarawa, like all
recently contacted peoples, face catastrophe
unless their land is protected.
– The human
safaris are also dangerous – one Jarawa boy lost
his arm after tourists threw food at him from a
moving vehicle. They sparked global outcry in 2012
after footage emerged of a tourist forcing several
Jarawa girls to dance.
– Tribal peoples’ land
rights have been part of international law for
generations. The key to their survival and
prosperity is to ensure their land remains under
their control.
– All uncontacted
and recently contacted tribal peoples face
catastrophe unless their land is protected.
Survival International is leading the global fight
to secure their land for them, and to give them
the chance to determine their own futures.
Survival’s
Director Stephen Corry said: “The new sea ferry
was supposed to stop tour buses driving through
Jarawa land, and so put an end to these dangerous
and disgusting human safaris. But the government
wants it to be optional which defeats the purpose
entirely. Tourist companies are still selling the
safaris and profiting from the exploitation of
tribal people. Ethical tourists should boycott the
islands until this is stopped."
Read
this online: http://www.survivalinternational.org/news/11839
“Pygmy” man pleads with Bronx Zoo
organization after son is killed for
conservation
Mr Nakulire in
hospital.
© Survival
International A
Batwa “Pygmy” man has issued a desperate
plea to the organization which runs New York’s
Bronx zoo, after his 17-year-old son was shot dead
by a park guard.
The
boy was gathering medicinal plants with his
father, Mobutu Nakulire Munganga, in Kahuzi-Biega
National Park in the Democratic Republic of Congo
(DRC) on August 26. An
anti-poaching squad opened fire on them.
Mr
Nakulire was wounded but managed to escape, while
his son, Mbone Christian, was killed at the scene.
Mr. Nakulire has spent weeks in the regional
hospital recovering.
The
guards receive logistical support, funding and
training from the Wildlife Conservation Society
(WCS), a big conservation
body which is the parent organization of New
York’s Bronx zoo. WCS was
co-founded by notorious eugenicist Madison
Grant.
WCS has been funding the
management of Kahuzi-Biega for over 20 years.
According to international law and WCS’s own human
rights policy, indigenous peoples’ consent is
required for conservation projects on their
land.
Between
the 1960s and 1980s, authorities violently and
illegally evicted up to 6,000 Batwa from the park.
“The Batwa of today are not healthy like our
grandparents were,” writes Mr Nakulire, who was
himself evicted as a child, in his
complaint. “We struggle to find enough to eat
and are forced to cope with new diseases and the
loss of many forest medicines…
Mbone Christian
Nakulire was just 17 years old when he was
killed.
© Survival
International “Yet
no one has ever come to seek our consent for the
Kahuzi-Biega National Park,” the complaint reads.
“Why then does WCS
continue to fund and support it?
“Nothing
will ever make up for the loss of my son, but I am
making this complaint so that you can help me and
my people find justice and return to our land,”
ends Mr Nakulire. “WCS must honor its human rights
policy and help end our suffering.”
In
September Survival released a detailed
report on how WCS and
other big conservation organizations are funding
grave human rights abuses in the Congo Basin,
including the Republic of Congo which borders the
DRC.
Survival’s
Director Stephen Corry said: “This tragedy is the
latest chapter in a long and shameful story. First
Mr Nakulire’s people were violently and illegally
evicted, now they face death if they try to
return. WCS must keep its
promises about respecting the Batwa’s rights. If
they don’t have the Batwa’s consent for what
they’re doing, they simply shouldn’t be
there.”
Background
briefing
- Mr Nakulire’s complaint
can be read here.
- The World
Wildlife Fund has also funded and equipped
park guards in Kahuzi-Biega.
- Tribal peoples
like the Batwa have been dependent on and managed
their environments for centuries. Their lands are
not wilderness. Evidence proves that tribal
peoples are better at looking after their
environment than anyone else. They are the best
conservationists and guardians of the natural
world. They should be at the forefront of the
environmental movement.
- But tribal peoples
are being illegally evicted from their ancestral
homelands in the name of conservation. The big
conservation organizations are guilty of
supporting this. They never speak out against
evictions.
- Survival International is leading
the global fight against abuse in the name of
conservation.
_
"Pygmy” is an umbrella term commonly used to refer
to the hunter-gatherer peoples of the Congo Basin
and elsewhere in Central Africa. The word is
considered pejorative and avoided by some
tribespeople, but used by others as a convenient
and easily recognized way of describing
themselves._
Read
this online: http://www.survivalinternational.org/news/11823
Renowned indigenous leaders call for end
to uncontacted 'genocide'
Yanomami shaman Davi
Kopenawa, who signed the open letter warning of an
unfolding genocide.
© Fiona
Watson/Survival Three
of Brazil’s most prominent Indian leaders have
denounced their government’s concerted attack on
indigenous rights as “genocidal.”
Davi
Kopenawa Yanomami, a shaman and leader from
the Yanomami
people of the northern Amazon, Raoni
Metuktire, leader of the Kayapó people, and Sonia
Bone Guajajara, a Guajajara
leader and activist, have released an open
letter.
It
was released to mark International Indigenous
Peoples’ Day/ Columbus Day.
In
the letter they say: “A genocide is unfolding
in our country, Brazil…
“Our
government is destroying us indigenous peoples,
our country’s first people. In the name of profit
and power, our land is being stolen, our forests
burned, our rivers polluted and our communities
devastated. Our uncontacted
relatives, who live deep in the forest, are
being attacked and killed.
“But
we won’t be silenced. We do not want the riches of
our land to be stolen and sold. For as long as we
can remember, we have looked after our lands. We
protect our forest, as it gives us life.
“We
indigenous brothers and sisters of more than 200
different tribes are coming together in protest.
From the heart of the Amazon rainforest, we are
crying out to you. At this time of emergency, we
need you. Please tell our government that our land
is not for stealing.”
Raoni Metuktire,
renowned Kayapó leader and activist, who has
campaigned for indigenous rights and against the
infamous Belo Monte dam in the Amazon.
© Antonio
Bonsorte/Amazon Watch The
letter was written in response to growing concerns
about the close ties between the Temer government,
installed after the impeachment of Dilma Rousseff
last year, and the country’s powerful and
notoriously anti-indigenous agribusiness
lobby.
Campaigners
have described the current administration’s
attitude towards tribal peoples as “the worst for
two generations.” Uncontacted
tribes are the most
vulnerable peoples on the planet, but where
their land rights are respected, they continue to
thrive.
FUNAI, the country’s
indigenous affairs department, whose agents patrol
and protect tribal territories, has had its budget
significantly cut. This has left many tribes
fatally exposed to violence from outsiders and
diseases like flu and measles to which they have
no resistance.
There
has also been a serious spike in anti-indigenous
violence by people trying to steal tribal lands
and resources. In August, around 10 uncontacted
Indians were
reportedly massacred in the Javari Valley.
Earlier this year, ranchers attacked
a group of Gamela Indians with machetes,
horrifically mutilating several of them.
Sonia Guajajara, a
prominent indigenous activist, at a protest in
Paris in 2014.
© Survival
International Uncontacted
tribes are not backward and primitive relics of a
remote past. They are our contemporaries and a
vitally important part of humankind’s diversity.
Where their rights are respected, they continue to
thrive.
Survival’s
Director Stephen Corry said: “Brazil’s government
is determined to undermine indigenous rights
throughout the country. It’s deliberately leaving
uncontacted tribes’ territories open to invasion
in the full knowledge of the deaths and suffering
which will inevitably result. What’s happening in
Brazil is an urgent and horrific humanitarian
crisis, and the international community should
throw its weight behind indigenous leaders and
others in Brazil calling for an end to the
persecution.”
Read
this online: http://www.survivalinternational.org/news/11833
New report exposes widespread abuse
funded by big conservation
organizations
WWF has been working in
the Congo Basin for decades – supporting squads
who have committed violent abuse against tribal
people.
© WWF A
new Survival International report details
widespread and systematic human rights abuses in
the Congo Basin, by wildlife guards funded by the
World Wildlife Fund (WWF)
and other big conservation organizations.
The
report documents serious
instances of abuse between 1989 and the
present day in Cameroon, the Republic of Congo,
and the Central African Republic (CAR) by guards
funded and equipped by WWF and the Wildlife
Conservation Society (WCS), the parent organization of
New York’s Bronx zoo.
It
lists more than 200 instances of abuse since 1989,
including pouring hot wax onto exposed skin,
beating, and maiming with red-hot machetes. These
incidents are likely just a tiny fraction of the
full picture of systematic and ongoing violence,
beatings, torture and even death.
As
well as these especially cruel incidents, the
report also documents the forms of harassment that
have become part of everyday life for many people,
including threats, and the destruction of food,
tools and personal belongings.
Read
the full report here.
WWF funded guards in
Gabon.
© WWF As
well as Survival, over the past three decades,
numerous independent experts and NGOs have raised
concerns about these abuses. These have included
NGOs like Greenpeace, Oxfam, UNICEF, Global Witness, Forest
Peoples Programme, and research specialists from
University College London, the University of
Oxford, Durham University, and Kent
University.
WWF and WCS have even partnered
with several logging companies, despite
evidence that their activities are unsustainable,
and have not had the consent of tribal peoples as
required by international law and their own stated
policies.
One
Bayaka man said: “A wildlife guard asked me to
kneel down. I said: “Never, I could never do
that.” He said: “If you don’t get down on your
knees I’m going to beat you.”
A
Baka woman said: “They took me to the middle of
the road and tied my hands with rubber cord. They
forced my hands behind my back and cut me with
their machete.”
Survival has documented
hundreds of instances of abuse, and collected
testimonies from many “Pygmy” people.
© Survival
International A
Bayaka woman said: “They started kicking me all
over my body… I had my baby with me. The child had
just been born three days before.”
Tribal
peoples have been dependent
on and managed their environments for
millennia. Their lands are not wilderness.
Evidence proves that tribal
peoples are better at looking after their
environment than anyone else.
But
big conservation organizations like WWF are partnering with industry
and tourism and destroying the environment’s best
allies. Now tribal people are accused of
“poaching” because they hunt to feed their
families. And they face arrest and beatings,
torture and death, while big game trophy hunters
are encouraged.
Survival’s
Director Stephen Corry said: “This shocking report
lays out, in detail, the abuse and persecution
that “conservation” has brought the indigenous and
tribal peoples of the Congo Basin. These are just
the cases that have been documented, it’s
impossible to imagine there aren’t a lot more
which remain hidden.
“The
big conservation organizations should admit that
their activities in the region have been
catastrophic, both for the environment and for the
tribal peoples who guarded these forests for so
long.
“WWF
and WCS supporters might
ask these organizations how they could have let
this situation carry on for so long – and
what they’re going to do now to make sure it
stops.”
“Pygmy”
is an umbrella term commonly used to refer to the
hunter-gatherer peoples of the Congo Basin and
elsewhere in Central Africa. The word is
considered pejorative and avoided by some
tribespeople, but used by others as a convenient
and easily recognized way of describing
themselves.
Read
this online: http://www.survivalinternational.org/news/11828
Survival announces winners of annual
photographic competition
The winning photo of a
Samburu man in Kenya by Timo Heiny.
© Timo Heiny / Survival
International Survival
International, the global movement for tribal
peoples’ rights, is delighted to announce
the twelve winning entries of its annual
photo competition. The winning photograph is
of a Samburu
tribesman in Kenya by Timo Heiny, and appears
on the cover of Survival’s 2018 “We, the People”
Calendar.
The
winning entries give an insight into tribal
peoples’ largely self-sufficient and
extraordinarily diverse ways of life. The
photographs feature tribal
peoples from around the
world - including many who Survival work
with.
The
eleven runners-up, whose pictures also appear in
Survival’s
2018 Calendar are:
Alice
Kohler – Araweté, Brazil,
Sabine Hammes –
Bayaka, Central African Republic
Renato Soares
– Kalapalo, Brazil
Mattia Passarini – Kinnaura,
India
Segundo Chuquipiondo Chota – Ashaninka,
Peru
Percy Ramírez Medina – Quechua,
Peru
Gabriel Uchida – Uru Eu Wau Wau,
Brazil
Phillippe Geslin – Inuit,
Greenland
Renato Soares – Kayapo,
Brazil
Geffroy Yannick – Kham,
Tibet
Giordano Cipriani – Hamar, Ethiopia
Another of the
runners-up, an Araweté woman in Brazil by Alice
Kohler.
© Alice Kohler /
Survival International Stephen
Corry, Director of Survival said: “Powerful images
have always been at the heart of our fight for
tribal peoples’ rights. We are delighted to have
had so many strong entries this year, and hope
that they will help energize people to get behind
our mission.”
Survival
International was founded in 1969 following an
article by Norman Lewis in the UK’s Sunday Times
Magazine about the genocide of Brazilian Indians,
which featured powerful images from the acclaimed
photographer Don McCullin.
Calendars
are £13.99 and available from Survival’s
shop.
Read
this online: http://www.survivalinternational.org/news/11822
End in sight for India's notorious human
safaris
The human safaris have
risked exposing the Jarawa to diseases to which
they have no immunity.
© Survival Notorious
“human safaris” in India’s Andaman Islands may
soon stop, after the authorities announced that a
new sea route around the islands will soon
open.
The
new route will keep tourists off the infamous
Andaman Trunk Road, which was built illegally
through the forests of the isolated
Jarawa tribe.
The
road brings a daily invasion of hundreds of
tourists into the heart of the Jarawa reserve, who
treat the Jarawa like animals in a safari
park.
One
tourist described his trip: “The journey through
tribal reserve was like a safari ride as we were
going amidst dense tropical rainforest and looking
for wild animals, Jarawa tribals to be
specific."
The
Jarawa, like all recently
contacted peoples, face catastrophe unless
their land is protected.
The
human safaris are also dangerous – one Jarawa boy
lost his arm after tourists threw food at him from
a moving vehicle.
In
2002 India’s Supreme Court ordered the road
closed, but it
has remained open.
Survival
International led a global campaign against the
human safaris, calling for a boycott of the
Andaman tourist industry until they came to an
end. Nearly
17,000 people from around the world pledged
not to holiday in the islands in protest.
The
boycott will be called off as soon as the Andaman
government agrees to ensure that tourists are no
longer able to use the road.
A tourist poses with a
group of Jarawa.
© Mauricio Cordova /
Survival International 2008 Background
briefing
-
In 2012, shocking footage emerged of Jarawa girls
being made to dance at the side of the road,
during a human safari. This led to a global outcry
against the dehumanizing use of tribal people as
tourist exhibits.
- The Jarawa are one of the
tribes indigenous to the Andaman islands. They
live as hunter gatherers, and chose to reject
contact with mainstream Indian society until 1998.
Several other Andamanese tribes were wiped out
following British colonization of the islands in
the 19th century.
- In 1999 and 2006, the
Jarawa suffered outbreaks of measles – a disease
which has devastated many recently contacted
tribes. and which is often a consequence of forced
contact.
-Tourism is a major industry in the
Andaman islands. The new sea route will be used to
access the north of the islands and attractions
like the limestone caves and mud volcano at
Baratang without tourists intruding into the land
of the Jarawa.
- The Islands’
Lieutenant-Governor, Professor Mukhi, announced
recently that the sea route will be quicker and
more comfortable than the current journey by
road.
Still from video
showing Jarawa girls forced to dance during a
human safari.
© Anon
Survival’s
Director Stephen Corry said: “Treating the Jarawa
as a tourist spectacle was a disgusting practice
– it also put their lives in danger. It’s
more than time for the human safaris to end. If
this sea route can do that, then we welcome it. If
not, we’ll carry on campaigning until the Jarawa’s
right to determine their own futures and stop
being harassed by tourists is secure.”
Read
this online: http://www.survivalinternational.org/news/11801
Amazon Indians plead for help after
“massacre”
A still from aerial
footage from 2011 of an uncontacted Amazon tribe
in Brazil near the Peruvian border.
©
BBC/FUNAI/Survival Brazilian
Indians have appealed for global assistance to
prevent further killings after the reported
massacre of uncontacted tribespeople, and have
denounced the government
cuts that left their territories
unprotected.
Paulo
Marubo, a Marubo indigenous leader from western
Brazil, said: “More attacks and killings are
likely to happen. The cuts to FUNAI’s funding are
harming the lives of indigenous people, especially
uncontacted tribes, who are the most vulnerable.”
(FUNAI is Brazil’s
indigenous affairs agency).
Mr.
Marubo is the leader of Univaja, an indigenous
organization defending tribal rights in the Uncontacted
Frontier, the area with the highest
concentration of uncontacted tribes in the
world.
Paulo Marubo, leader of
a Javari Valley indigenous organization from the
Uncontacted Frontier.
© Amazonas
Atual COIAB, the organization
representing Indians across the Brazilian Amazon,
denounced the massive cutbacks to FUNAI’s budget
that has left many tribal territories
unprotected:
“We
vehemently condemn these brutal and violent
attacks against these uncontacted Indians. This
massacre shows just how much the rights of
indigenous peoples in this country have been set
back [in recent years].
“The
cuts and dismantling of FUNAI are being carried out to
further the interests of powerful politicians who
want to continue ransacking our resources, and
open up our territories for mining.”
Unconfirmed
reports first emerged from the Amazon last week
that up to 10 uncontacted
tribal people had been killed by gold miners,
and their bodies mutilated and dumped in a
river.
The
miners are reported to have bragged about the
atrocity, whose victims included women and
children, in a bar in a nearby town. The local
prosecutor’s office has opened
an investigation.
These Sapanawa Indians
made contact in 2014. They reported their
community had been attacked, and so many members
of the village killed that they could not bury the
dead.
©
FUNAI/Survival The
alleged massacre was just the latest in a long
line of previous killings of isolated Indians in
the Amazon, including the infamous Haximu
massacre in 1993, in which 16 Yanomami Indians
were killed by a group of gold miners.
More
recently, a group of Sapanawa
Indians emerged in the Uncontacted Frontier,
reporting that their houses had been attacked and
burnt to the ground by outsiders, who had killed
so many members of the community that they had not
been able to bury all the bodies.
All
uncontacted
tribal peoples face catastrophe unless their
land is protected. Survival International is
campaigning to secure their land for them, and to
give them the chance to determine their own
futures.
Survival’s
Director Stephen Corry said: “The decision by the
Brazilian government to slash funding for the
teams that protect uncontacted Indians’
territories was not an innocent mistake. It was
done to appease the powerful interests who want to
open up indigenous lands to exploit – for
mining, logging and ranching. These are the people
the Indians are up against, and the deaths of
uncontacted tribes won’t put them off. Only a
global outcry can even the odds in the Indians’
favor, and prevent more such atrocities. We know
public pressure works – many Survival
campaigns have succeeded in the face of similar
odds.”
Read
this online: http://www.survivalinternational.org/news/11815
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