Soldiers rape and assault Marma girls in
Chittagong Hill Tracts
The Marma, like other
tribes of the CHT, have faced years of violence,
land-grabbing and intimidation.
© Mark
McEvoy/Survival Two
sisters from the Marma indigenous tribe of the Chittagong
Hill Tracts in Bangladesh are being held
against their will after being raped and sexually
assaulted at gun point, allegedly by members of
the Bangladesh security forces.
The
Jummas, a collective name for the tribes living in
the CHT, continue to face
endemic
violence, land-grabbing and intimidation on
their ancestral land. Jumma women and girls are
frequently subjected to rape and sexual assault at
the hands of Bengali settlers and the armed
forces.
The
Marma girls, aged 19 and 14, describe men in army
uniforms entering their house during a raid in the
early hours of January 22. They report that the
older sister was raped and the younger was
sexually assaulted during an attempted rape.
The
army and other security forces have denied the
attacks took place, and the authorities are now
not allowing the girls to be released from
hospital. Their room is being guarded by police
who are refusing to allow human rights activists
or journalists to talk to the victims.
The
sisters fear for their own, and their family’s,
safety. Those who have been able to speak to the
girls report that they are traumatised, not only
by the initial brutal attacks but also by the
numerous interrogations by male police officers
and the entry of male security personnel into
their hospital room throughout the day and
night.
The
girls speak only their tribal Marma language and
have been refused access to familiar indigenous
food brought to the hospital by well wishers.
Raja
Devasish Roy, the Chakma king, Survival and other
human rights activists have called for the girls
to be released from the hospital and for the
perpetrators to be brought to justice.
Read
this online: http://www.survivalinternational.org/news/11929
Peru passes law approving Amazonian
“death roads”
Tomas was contacted
between 2001 to 2003 and now lives in the Amazon
region where one of the deadliest roads has been
proposed.
© David
Hill/Survival Peru
has approved a law that could devastate several uncontacted Amazon
tribes.
The
law declares “in the national interest” the
construction of roads in the remote Ucayali region
that borders Peru and Brazil.
The
area lies inside the Uncontacted
Frontier, home of the highest concentration of
uncontacted tribes on Earth.
Several
illegal roads that cut
through uncontacted Indians’ lands have already
been opened up. Thousands of illegal gold miners
operate in the region, and have polluted dozens of rivers with
mercury.
Uncontacted
tribes face catastrophe unless their land is
protected. They have the right to their land under
Peruvian and international law.
Road
building in the Amazon almost always leads to a
devastating influx of settlers, loggers and
ranchers.
Pope
Francis, speaking from the region just days before
the road law was passed, said: “Never before has
there been a greater threat to indigenous peoples’
lands.
“We
must break with the historical paradigm that sees
the Amazon as an inexhaustible resource for other
countries, without taking into account its
inhabitants.”
Survival
is calling on the Peruvian government to scrap
road building plans inside the Uncontacted
Frontier.
Read
this online: http://www.survivalinternational.org/news/11915
Kenya: Indigenous person killed in the
name of conservation
The Sengwer
tribespeople are being violently evicted from
their land
© Yator
Kiptum A
man from the Sengwer tribe was killed yesterday by
guards working for the Kenya Forestry Service
(KFS). Another man was
wounded.
This
brutal attack follows several recent violent
operations to evict Sengwer tribespeople from
their land.
Dozens
of armed security officers burned people’s homes,
food stores, and possessions, and killed
livestock, to force them out of the Embobut Forest
where they have lived for generations.
The
attacks started at the end of December.
Milka
Chepkorir, a Sengwer woman, says that the
destruction of their homes in the attacks results
in: “a loss of family ties as family members are
scattered and scared, and sexual abuse and
harassment and psychological torture is associated
with the horrible acts of evictions.”
Despite
the threats and violence, many Sengwer have vowed
to resist. One woman declared: “We are going
nowhere, even if the government decides to kill us
here.”
The
EU is funding a conservation project in the
region, which aims to protect water sources in the
hills. It condemned
the killing and announced it is suspending its
support for the project.
The
Sengwer are calling on the government to uphold
their right to live on their ancestral land, and
to consult with them urgently on how best to work
with them to conserve their forests.
Eviction
of the Sengwer started under British colonial
rule.
In
2014 the KFS and police evicted
thousands of Sengwer from their forest homes,
forcing many to live
in caves or temporary structures.
Following
more harassment in 2016, David Yator Kiptum,
Executive Director of the Sengwer Indigenous
Peoples Programme said: “Evicting members of the
Sengwer community from our ancestral home is not a
solution to conservation. Neither is it a solution
to climate change.”
The
Sengwer number about 33,000 people, of which about
13,500 live in the Embobut Forest. Here they hunt,
gather honey, plant crops and rear small numbers
of livestock.
Like
many tribal peoples they have a deep knowledge of
the ecology of their forests, which they have
maintained for generations.
The
evictions are in violation of international law,
and are destroying the people who know best how to
conserve the forest.
Three
independent UN experts have raised
their concerns about the attacks and
evictions.
Read
this online: http://www.survivalinternational.org/news/11911
Conservation giants implicated in public
health crises among "Pygmies"
A recent epidemic in
the Republic of Congo is said to have been
aggravated by the loss of indigenous
peoples' resources due to conservation
and logging projects.
© C. Fornellino
Romero/Survival A
Congolese organization has recently raised
concerns that conservation contributed to the
deaths of several dozen children, mostly Bayaka
“Pygmies,” during an epidemic in 2016 in the
Republic of Congo – the latest in a long line of
related reports.
The
deaths have been attributed by a medical expert to
malaria, pneumonia and dysentery, aggravated by
severe malnutrition.
Conservation-related
malnutrition among Bayaka children in this region
has been reported since 2005 at least, as the
Bayaka are prevented from hunting and gathering on
their lands by wildlife guards through violence and
intimidation.
These
guards are funded and equipped by the Wildlife Conservation
Society (WCS), one of
the world’s largest conservation organizations,
and the logging company it has partnered with,
CIB. Both organizations
have failed to take effective action to prevent
abuse.
“The
wildlife guards abuse us. They don’t want us to go
into the forest. How can we feed our children?” a
Bayaka man from Mbandza, the site of the epidemic,
told Survival in 2016.
These
guards have been accused of abusing Bayaka and
stealing their food for over 13 years. One such
attack that took place in Mbandza in early 2016
left one man hospitalized.
The Baka and Bayaka’s
consent is required by law for any major project
on their lands, but this is ignored by WWF and
WCS.
© Survival
International In
this way, the Bayaka are being illegally evicted
from their ancestral homelands by threat of
violence. As one Bayaka woman explained: “If we go
into the forest we eat well there compared to the
village. We eat wild yams and honey. We want to go
into the forest but they forbid us to. It
frightens us. It frightens us.”
Critics
have noted that the guards have also failed to
protect the wildlife the Bayaka depend on for
food, since they have difficulty tackling corruption and the creation
of logging roads, the two main
drivers of poaching.
Plummeting
health has been reported among Bayaka living in
the Dzanga-Sangha Protected Areas in the Central
African Republic – one of the World Wildlife
Fund’s (WWF) flagship
projects – since 2006. Conditions encountered
among older women “would be considered a public
health crisis by international health agencies,"
according
to research published in 2016.
Increased
malnutrition and mortality have been reported
among Baka “Pygmies” in Cameroon, where WWF also operates, and among
Batwa “Pygmies” in another of WCS’s project sites in east
Democratic Republic of Congo.
“Now
we are afraid of the anti-poaching squads. Before
when a woman gave birth we took her to the forest
to help her regain her strength and weight, now we
can’t do this. We would take our children to the
forest to avoid epidemics. Now we know illnesses
we never knew before,” one Baka woman in Cameroon
told Survival.
Watch
Baka describe the abuse they face as a result of
WWF’s conservation projects
Baka
health plummets due to conservation
In
the Congo Basin, the Baka, Bayaka and dozens of
other rainforest peoples are being illegally
evicted from their ancestral homelands in the name
of conservation. Their health is plummeting as a
result.
The big conservation organizations
that support these conservation projects, like the
World Wildlife Fund (WWF),
refuse to abide by basic international standards
and secure their consent.
Neither
WCS nor WWF has attempted to secure the
indigenous peoples’ consent, as basic due diligence and
their own human rights policies require.
Survival’s
Director Stephen Corry said: “Land theft is a
serious and deadly crime, as these reports show.
Many associate conservation with reason and
compassion but, for Baka and Bayaka, it often
means mindless violence and plummeting health.
When will WWF and WCS finally start complying with
their own human rights policies? ”
Timeline
1996:
The organization Berggorilla & Regenwald
Direkthilfe finds
that malnutrition and mortality has increased
among Batwa “Pygmies” since they were evicted from
Kahuzi-Biega, a national park in east Democratic
Republic of Congo (DRC)
funded by WCS.
1997:
WWF observes
that the fact that the Bayaka are banned from
hunting or gathering inside the Dzanga-Ndoki Park,
the park in the Central African Republic (CAR) that WWF helped to create, “punishes
[the Bayaka] severely” and is undermining their
food security.
2000:
A study finds
that the Batwa in Kahuzi-Biega, DRC, are suffering from
nutritional deficiencies, because they are no
longer able to hunt in the forest, and soaring
mortality rates. Malnutrition is particularly
pronounced among women and children.
2004:
A BBC investigation into
CIB’s logging concessions in Congo hears
from a Bayaka man: “We get so much suffering
because of [wildlife] guards. We can’t go and find
things in the forest as we used to. All we hear is
hunger.”
2004:
Bayaka from another community in Congo report
to Greenpeace: “Then we met another white man
(WCS) who came to tell us
to stop hunting and that the wildlife guards would
make sure we did. Now we are afraid to go far in
the forest in case the wildlife guards catch us so
we have to stay in the village. […] Now we are
dying of hunger.”
2005:
The Congolese Observatory on Human Rights, the
organization that reported on the 2016 epidemic,
documents three cases of violent abuse against
Bayaka by wildlife guards, and warns that some
Bayaka “are dying of hunger.”
2005:
A news report recounts
how Bayaka in one of CIB’s logging concessions
describe being targeted by wildlife guards that
mistreat and temporarily imprison them, and how
this has led to more frequent malnutrition among
children and vulnerable adults.
2006:
WWF and its partners
commission a report that finds that the Bayaka in
Dzanga-Sangha, CAR, are
struggling to feed themselves. The Bayaka
interviewed for the report state that the
conservation project has forced them out of some
of their richest hunting and gathering grounds.
They report that wildlife guards harass or attack
them even when they try to use the reduced areas
of land they have left, all the while accepting
bribes from the real poachers who were emptying
the forest of its wildlife. Some Bayaka women are
finding it so hard to find food, the investigator
hears, that they have been driven to sex work in
the nearby town.
2006:
An article in The Lancet cautions
that “Pygmy peoples’ health risks are changing as
the central African forests, which are the basis
for their traditional social structure, culture,
and hunter-gatherer economy, are being destroyed
or expropriated by […] conservation projects:”
2008:
UNICEF warns
that the Bayaka’s right to gather resources is
being “flouted on the most basic level because
indigenous people no longer have access to areas
rich in game” due to protected areas in Congo.
2012:
An anthropologist with 18 years’ experience
working with Bayaka in Congo reports
increasingly poor nutrition and increased
mortality. He attributes this to the removal of
forest resources by loggers and to
“conservationists’ exclusionary and draconian
management practices.”
2013:
A researcher at the University of Oxford reports
that the combined impact of conservation and
logging have led to poorer health and higher
levels of drug and alcohol addiction among the
Bayaka. He argues that conservation efforts would
benefit from gaining people’s consent
2014:
A medical study finds
that “punitive anti-poaching measures” and
dwindling wildlife have caused health to plummet
among Bayaka in Dzanga-Sangha, CAR, particularly among women.
“It is disheartening to see health decline so
closely tied […] to the conservation management
policies of the last twenty-five years,” the
study’s authors note.
2015:
A doctor with extensive experience working in
CIB’s logging concessions reports
that: “Aside from wounds inflicted by gorillas,
buffalo or other wild animals, my colleague and I
also see [gun] wounds in people claiming to have
been attacked – sometimes without warning – by the
protectors of wildlife: the wildlife guards.”
2015:
The same doctor tells Survival: “I find this
[wildlife guard violence] a very serious problem
and in my opinion most wildlife guards have other
motives than protecting the animals to work as a
wildlife guard.”
2016:
A second doctor with extensive experience working
in CIB’s logging concessions describes to Survival
the seasonal malnutrition she encounters among
Bayaka, which she attributes to repressive
conservation policies.
“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/11882
India: Tiger authority denounced by
government experts for violating tribal
rights
This Baiga woman was
evicted from Kanha tiger reserve.
© Survival India’s
National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) is coming under increasing
pressure over its illegal order banning the
recognition of tribal forest rights in tiger
reserves. The order prompted Survival
International to launch a global
tourism boycott in November.
Information
released to Survival has revealed that India’s
tribal peoples’ Commission (officially called the
National Commission for Scheduled Tribes (NCST)) has directly challenged
the NTCA’s order in private meetings in Delhi. The
Commission demanded that the NTCA suspend any planned
evictions of tribal peoples, who have been
dependent on and managed their forests for
millennia.
After
demanding to meet with the NTCA, the Commission argued that
the order violates India’s Forest Rights Act –
which guarantees tribal peoples’ rights to their
forests. It was intended to address the
“historical injustice” against tribes and other
“traditional forest dwellers.”
In
November, representatives of tribal communities
met with many human rights and environment
activists in Delhi, amidst mounting concern over
the NTCA order.
A Baiga woman works for
daily wages on Vedanta’s Bodai-Daldali bauxite
mine, Chhattisgarh
© Sayantan
Bera/Survival J.K.
Thimma, a Jenu Keruba man who lives in Nagarhole
National Park, and was present at the meeting,
said: “The NTCA order is
an attack against our culture and our tradition.
This is anti-Constitutional and the NTCA have no right to stop the
implementation of an Act passed by the Parliament…
This is denial for our existence. The order needs
to be withdrawn as soon as possible, it is
creating fear among all of us.”
Another
tribal man, Shankar Barde from Tadoba Tiger
Reserve, said: “After years of restrictions and
hardships, finally we were told early this year by
the district administration that our rights have
been recognized. We were excited… but then we were
told by the district administration that NTCA order does not allow our
rights to be recognized. This is a complete
injustice. Dozens of outsiders are earning large
sums of money in our backyard while we struggle to
even live with dignity.”
Indian
law specifically states that the NTCA does not have the power to
“interfere with or affect the rights of local
people, particularly… tribes.” Tribal rights are
under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Tribal
Affairs.
Despite
this, conservation authorities have violated the
rights of tribal peoples. Across India, tribal
peoples endure harassment, coercion, and illegal
eviction from their ancestral homelands in the
name of conservation.
Baiga children. Their
village was notified with eviction. Achanakmar
Tiger Reserve.
© Survival After
eviction, tribal
people face lives of poverty and exclusion on
the fringes of Indian society. Meanwhile, huge
numbers of tourists are then invited into tiger
reserves, disrupting tiger habitats and making
tigers more vulnerable to poaching.
Survival
International is leading the global
fight against injustice and abuse in the name of
protecting wildlife.
Survival’s
Director Stephen Corry said: “This order is an
attack on India’s tribal peoples – it’s also
illegal. Polluting and destructive industries such
as uranium mining and tourism are apparently
welcome in tiger reserves, but conservationists in
India remain determined to kick tribal people off
their land. It’s time they partnered with the best
conservationists and guardians of the natural
world, and stopped persecuting them. Tribal
peoples know their land and its animals better
than the conservationists.”
Read
this online: http://www.survivalinternational.org/news/11899
Brazil: the Guarani and a decade of
broken promises
The Guarani continue
fighting for their land rights despite continuous
attacks.
© Fiona
Watson/Survival Ten
years ago the Brazilian government signed a
landmark agreement with the Guarani
tribe, which obliged it to identify all their
ancestral lands.
The
core objective of the agreement,
which was drawn up by the public prosecutors
office, was to speed up the recognition of the
Guarani’s land rights in the southern state of
Mato Grosso do Sul.
However,
one decade on, most surveys have not even been
carried out and the authorities’ failure to
recognize the Guarani’s land rights continues to
have a terrible impact on the tribe’s health and
well-being.
With
no immediate hope of recovering their land and
rebuilding their livelihoods, thousands of Guarani
are trapped in overcrowded reservations where the
prosecutors say there is so little land that
“social economic and cultural life is
impossible.”
Other
Guarani communities live along busy highways or on
fragments of their ancestral land, hemmed in by
vast sugar cane and soya plantations. They cannot
plant, fish or hunt and have no access to clean
water.
A Guarani-Kaiowa couple
sit outside their makeshift roadside settlement of
the Apy Ka'y community, near Dourados,
Mato Grosso do Sul, Brazil.
© Paul Patrick
Borhaug/Survival Health
workers report that these communities are
suffering from severe side effects of pesticides
used by agribusiness. Some communities say their
water resources and houses are deliberately
sprayed by the ranchers.
A
recent study estimated that 3% of the indigenous
population in the state could be poisoned by
pesticides, some of which are banned in the
EU.
Malnutrition
especially among babies and young children is
common. According to Gilmar Guarani: “Children cry
and cannot put up with this situation any more.
They are really suffering and are very weak. They
are practically eating earth. It’s desperate.”
Mato
Grosso do Sul is home to the second largest
indigenous population in Brazil, with 70,000
Indians belonging to seven tribes.
Much
of their ancestral land has been stolen from them
by cattle ranchers and agribusiness, and now they
occupy a mere 0.2 % of the state.
John
Nara Gomes says: “Today the life of a cow is worth
more than that of an indigenous child… The cows
are well fed and the children are starving. Before
we were free to hunt, fish and gather fruits.
Today we are shot by gunmen.”
The
despair among the Guarani at the loss of their
lands and self sufficient life is reflected in
extremely high
rates of suicide . In the period 2000-2015
there were 752 suicides. Statistics collected
since 1996 reveal a rate that is 21 times greater
than the national one. This is probably
under-estimated as many suicides are not
reported.
Damiana Cavanha, leader
of the Apy Ka'y community, has seen the
deaths of three of her children and her husband.
She is determinedly planning a reoccupation of
their ancestral land where they are buried.
© Paul Patrick
Borhaug/Survival The
Guarani also face high levels of violence and are
constantly targeted
by ranchers’ gunmen whenever they attempt to
take back parts of their ancestral land. Recent
data shows that 60% of all the assassinations of
indigenous people in Brazil occurred in Mato
Grosso do Sul state.
With
a government and congress dominated by the
powerful agribusiness sector, the landowners in
Mato Grosso do Sul will not cede an inch. Many
have resorted to the courts as a delaying tactic,
to challenge the identification of Guarani
territories. One core Guarani territory has had 57
legal challenges.
Despite
this bleak scenario many Guarani vow to fight on:
“Brazil was always our land. The hope that feeds
me is that our land will be recognized, for
without it we cannot care for nature and feed
ourselves. We shall fight and die for it” says
Geniana Barbosa, a young Guarani woman.
Read
this online: http://www.survivalinternational.org/news/11886
Gillian Anderson, Dominic West, Julian
Lennon and Sir Mark Rylance join boycott of
India’s tiger reserves
This Jenu Keruba man
was shot by forest guards. Tribes like the Jenu
Keruba face routine harassment, and illegal
eviction from their ancestral home.
© Survival A
host of famous faces have joined Survival
International’s call for a global boycott of
India’s tiger reserves, in protest at the ban on
the recognition of tribal peoples’ rights in the
reserves.
They
include actor and activist Gillian Anderson OBE, actor Dominic West,
Oscar-winner Sir Mark Rylance, and musician and
photographer Julian Lennon. Celebrated Indian
author and environmentalist Amitav Ghosh also
expressed his support for tribal forest
rights.
India’s
Forest Rights Act guarantees tribal peoples the
right to live on and protect their ancestral land.
But the country’s National Tiger Conservation
Authority (NTCA) has
issued an illegal order to ban the recognition of
forest rights in tiger reserves across the
country.
After
petitioning the Indian government on this urgent
issue and receiving no reply, Survival is calling
for a global tourist boycott of tiger reserves
until the order is withdrawn.
Actor, activist and
Survival ambassador Gillian Anderson OBE has
joined the boycott of India’s tiger
reserves.
© Gage Skidmore/
Wikimedia Many
tribal peoples face illegal eviction from their
land, despite the fact that there is very little
evidence connecting their largely sustainable ways
of life to the decline in tiger numbers. Forest
authorities routinely harass and coerce tribal
people into “agreeing” to leave their forest
homes, and do not inform them they have the legal
right to stay.
After
eviction, tribal people face lives of poverty and
exclusion on the fringes of Indian society.
Meanwhile, huge numbers of tourists are then
invited into tiger reserves, disrupting tiger
habitats and making tigers more vulnerable to
poaching.
A
man from the Jenu Keruba tribe, who was evicted
from Nagarhole National Park, said: "They evicted
us on the pretext that we made noise, that we
disturbed the forest, but now there are a lot of
jeeps and tourism vehicles – isn’t that a
disturbance for the animals?”
Large numbers of
tourists frequently visit Indian tiger reserves in
jeeps.
© Brian
Gratwicke Tribal
peoples have been dependent on and managed their
environments for millennia. They are the best
conservationists and guardians of the natural
world. They should be at the forefront of the
environmental movement.
In
one tiger reserve in southern India where Soliga
tribal people won the right to stay, tiger
numbers have increased at above the national
average.
Survival’s
Director Stephen Corry said: “People are signing
up to our boycott once they hear about the human
misery behind India’s tiger reserves. The NTCA is pursuing an outdated
“fortress conservation” model, and expelling
the very owners of the forests who have guarded
and maintained them for centuries. It’s not only
causing untold suffering, it’s also not going to
save the tiger. The NTCA
should reverse its policy quickly, for the sake of
the tiger, the tribespeople, and the country’s
tourism industry.”
Read
this online: http://www.survivalinternational.org/news/11884
| 
