U.S Government Supports Genocide Against Indigenous Peoples Through Conservation

Originally posted on Anti-aggressionleague.com

The Worldwide Fund for Nature refuses to bring a halt to the genocidal campaign their goons are carrying out against the Baka Pygmies in the Congo Basin. The so called eco guards that WWF funds have beaten, rapped, tortured, and sometimes murdered Baka Pygmies for subsistence hunting and forging in their own homeland, the same homeland that WWF, in collusion with the Cameroon government, appropriated and designated as a protected area. Survival International, Cultural Survival, Conservation Watch, Rain Forest Foundation UK and other indigenous rights organizations have gathered ample witness testimony to the atrocities committed by the conservation death squads that WWF funds. USAID supports WWF's activities in the Congo Basin through an initative called Central Africa Regional Program for the Environment or CARPE for short. USAID does not do any of the ground work themselves ,but rather provides grants to WWF and similar conservation NGOs to implement their policies. The program has been implemented in 8 West African countries on the specious pretext of developing 'low carbon economies' and preserving forest biodiversity.

UN Convention 1021 defines genocide as: a) Killing members of the group;(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group. By prohibiting the Baka from hunting and forging for food, through the threat and initiation of violence, the WWF and their eco guards have not only starved the Baka, but have also prevented them from passing down their culture to their children which altogether constitutes (a)killing members of the group (b) causing serious bodily harm and (c) deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction.

Even the WWF has acknowledged the atrocities committed by their eco guards. In fact, the WWF commissioned a report on human rights abuses committed during night raids in April of 2015, but since then they have done nothing to address it. Their own guidelines state that they don't support the establishment of protected areas without consulting the indigenous people and that the indigenous people must be included in the forest management process, but this is clearly just lip service.

Within the same protected areas where the Baka are prohibited from hunting, forging, building shelter and carrying out their traditional rituals, WWF allows its corporate partners, like French logging company Rougier Group, to carry out logging operations, which undoubtedly places a much greater strain on the forest than the daily activities of a traditional society. For instance, the logging roads that Rougier group has to build to move trucks in and out not only destroys the habitats of several species, it also provides poachers with easier access to the forests. The further one digs into WWF's partners and donors, the more apparent it becomes that their conservation efforts are a ruse; they are nothing more than a green front for extractive industries, and the logging industry in particular. Prominent corporations that partner with WWF through their Global Forest & Trade Network include Domtar, the largest paper manufacturer in Canada, Coca Cola, which obviously uses a lot of coca leaves and water in its production, Ta Ann Holdings Berhad, a logging company that clear cuts rainforests in Boreno, as well as Bollore Group, Pasquet Group, and Rougier Groups, three French logging companies that operate on Baka and Bayaka land in the Congo Basin. All three companies have been fined for illegal logging practices by Cameroon's Independent Forest Monitor multiple times, and these three were not the only offenders in Cameroon. Other partners like German logging company Danzer Group (IFO) and Belgium company Decolvenaere have also been caught violating logging regulations in the Congo Basin. Aside from the extractive industry, WWF also partners with major corporations like WalMart, Johnson & Johnson, and Royal Caribbean Cruises, but their penchant is for logging companies; 75 out of the 157 companies that participate in their Global Forest & Trade Network are logging companies or manufacturers of paper and wood products sourced from the Congo Basin. It is clear as day that the indigenous forest people like the Baka and Bayaka Pygmies are forcibly removed not to maintain the biodiversity of the forests, they have been doing that for millennia, but to make way for the European loggers.

If the WWF were truly interested in conservation, they would work with the indigenous pygmy tribes to demarcate the national parks as their territory. The Baka were in the forest management business long before Europeans arrived with their good intentions. Furthermore, the Baka have a vested interest in preserving the Congo Basin, unlike the European and American Conservationists, since they actually live there and depend on the forests to survive. Deforestation would be their undoing, the European and American conservationists would not have that same problem. At most they would have to find some other industry to lobby for.