In an article published in April, RFI covered the killings and rights violations of the Batwa indigenous people in Kahuzi-Biega Park.
The fees were based on a report by Minority Rights Group International (MRG), which alleged that Congolese guards and foot soldiers carried out attacks between 2019 and 2021 with the aim of driving the Batwa out of their homeland.
The park, a safe haven for endangered gorillas and one of the Democratic Republic of Congo’s biggest tourist attractions, receives most of its investment from the German government in cooperation with the US Fish and Wildlife Service. USA, a federal agency, and the New York-based Wildlife Conservation Society. .
In April, following those allegations, the German government set up a commission of inquiry to investigate the alleged killings.
In its findings, published on June 1, the commission said no widespread atrocities had occurred during its surveillance.
The killed Batwa, he added, had been used as “human shields” in clashes by armed teams between park rangers, DRC army outfits and poachers.
One of the researchers, journalist and researcher Robert Flummerfelt, who wrote the original MRG report.
He distanced himself from the research findings, calling them a “cover-up. “
Immediately afterwards, Flummerfelt reported that gunmen were coming to kill him and his Congolese co-investigator.
Since then, the two have fled the country and Batwa resources have been forced into hiding.
“Sources threatened and investigators mocked the gang rape,” Flummerfelt said.
The French Development Agency, AFD, funded through the government, has shown interest in supporting the park.
While the Germans were conducting their research, the AFD showed RFI that it was conducting its own feasibility study.
Flummerfelt wonders about time.
“The French government has begun to publicly explore the possibility of investing in the park at the exact moment when the German government is freezing investment in reaction to the documentation of serious atrocities,” he said.
Contacted through RFI, afD indicated that its examination is ongoing and following its same previous procedures.
But French Senator Guillaume Gontard, a member of the Greens, is deeply concerned.
“Regardless of the German and American institutional partners, the French Development Agency cannot fund this project,” he told RFI.
“I’m worried and outraged. “
While the French investment may not yet be signed and sealed, RFI has received evidence that a government-funded company is already playing a key role in the German-backed commission of inquiry, which includes officials from the Congolese Institute for Nature Conservation (ICCN). , which manages the park.
Germany Frenchman Baptiste Martin, an independent expert on human rights at the Geneva Centre for Humanitarian Studies, to carry out the research.
In a letter dated June 21, German bank KFW showed the human rights organization Survival International that it supported Martin’s appointment.
“Mr. Martin was selected to assist in the work of the commission based on his remarkable and highly applicable credentials as an expert in confrontational and post-confrontation conditions and his decades of experience covering civilians in foreign peacekeeping operations in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. and the region,” the letter reads.
However, Martin also ordered through the AFD that it conduct its feasibility study.
“The same ‘international expert’ who is running for either government at once, investigates Germany’s atrocities while running to bring new investments from France online,” flummerfelt says. “It’s a big clash of interests. “
Fiore Longo, director of Survival International’s French office, also said she was surprised.
“It’s disgusting. I have no other word to describe that,” he told RFI. “This is one of the worst scandals I have ever witnessed in my professional life. It shows that they [environmentalists] think they are above everything.
RFI has received audio recordings where Baptiste Martin is heard saying that Kahuzi-Biega’s funding was “theoretically” based on the feasibility study he was conducting.
“This is the [objective] of the formal procedure, the truth is that we have already announced it to ICCN and now we are only working on the main points of how to do it,” Martin can be heard saying.
The recordings, which corroborate a separate investigation through Al-Jazeera, show that Martin completed the German investigation on the floor on April 6, according to the final report, at the same time that he was organizing his participation and that of members of the AFD team. , in the German survey.
Members of the AFD portfolio rate team were also present from April 6 to 10.
In its written reaction to RFI, afD stated that since it was not an “interested party” in the German investigation, “AFD did not attend or participate in the investigative activities”.
But audio recordings otherwise.
“AFD was also looking to move to the region, so we took one from AFD,” Martin explains in the recording.
Flummerfelt contacted Martin at the sites that would be for the investigation. In the audio file, Martin says he needs to take the teams to more “touristy” Batwa villages.
“We ask questions that are far removed from the express topic,” he laughs.
As several Batwa villages are outside the fighting zone, this has not been difficult to organize.
“The qualified foreign candidacy for the governments of Germany and France in particular sought to establish control of French officials so that, while participating in German-funded research, they would not see the direct effects of the atrocities, trying to avoid the villages. where Batwa women were raped or Batwa civilians were killed,” Flummerfelt explains.
Since the audio indicates that afD is interested in funding the park, Flummerfelt calls for a reform.
“The French government will have to be asked if it is still satisfied with funding a park that is at the center of not only accounts of organized violence against indigenous peoples, but also efforts to track down and potentially kill indigenous leaders. “said a Congolese human rights investigator and an American journalist,” he says.
Senator Gontard, vice-chairman of the French Senate’s Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and the Armed Forces, has taken action.
On June 9, he wrote to Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna urging the ministry to fund Kahuzi-Biega Park. He still didn’t get a response.
Gontard told RFI that if the homicide and rape allegations outlined in the Minority International report are shown and the AFD makes the decision to go ahead with the investment for the park, “there may be a threat of complicity in the imaginable prosecution of those crimes. “
AfD’s investment would also contravene Law No. 2021-1031, he said. Approved by the Senate in August, the law makes special reference to conservation projects in spaces where indigenous peoples live.
“When their territorial rights are identified and respected, [indigenous peoples] ensure effective coverage and sustainable control of the herbarium environment, which they rely on for their livelihood, fitness and way of life,” Gontard said, adding that this is an effort to save you from land grabbing.
“The involvement of France’s AFD would be unacceptable. “