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Pygmy chief arrested for destroying forest in DR Congo park
by Staff Writers
Bukavu, Dr Congo (AFP) Jan 31, 2020

A Pygmy chief accused of destroying forest in DR Congo's Kahuzi-Biega National Park, a haven for critically endangered gorillas, was arrested by the army on Friday in the east of the conflict-torn country.

One of the last groups of eastern lowland gorillas, down to just 250 animals, faces an emerging threat from a conflict between rangers and local Pygmies, who claim they were robbed of ancestral lands when the park was extended in the 1970s.

Pygmy chief Jean-Marie Kasula and seven of his followers including two women were arrested in the village of Muyange on the edge of the park in eastern DRC on January 24, colonel Michel Koth said in South Kivu's provincial capital Bukavu.

Park director De-Dieu Bya'Ombe Balongelwa accused Kasula's armed group of "scaring tourists" and "destroying the ecosystem" of the refuge.

He invited tourists to now "come and visit the gorillas without any problems".

South Kivu has been a battleground for rival militias for a quarter of a century.

In 2018, Pygmies began to move onto land inside the park's perimeter and started to cut down trees, mainly to make charcoal.

According to the park authorities, Pygmies have destroyed vast acres of woodland -- an act of deforestation that gnaws away at the gorillas' habitat.

Their return led to open conflict between Pygmies and rangers in which people on both sides have been killed.

Koth said that in the latest clashes on Tuesday, Kasula's men killed two civilians and injured a ranger.

When AFP interviewed Kasula in October, he said his community had simply "decided to return to our land in strength".

"We've been suffering for 48 years," he said. "This is our Eden!"

In 1994, the park was listed by UNESCO as among World Heritage Sites in danger.

ro-mbb/bmb/dl/txw

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