TRIBAL rights group Survival International has condemned German and United States authorities for funding the massacre of indigenous people in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Guards patrolling the Kahuzi-Biega national park have committed a series of horrific atrocities against the indigenous Batwa people, whose lands were taken to create the park, famed for its gorilla-spotting treks, the organisation said. 

At least 20 Batwa people have been killed and dozens of women have been gang-raped at gunpoint, while children have been burnt alive during joint patrols with the Congolese military, according a new report by Minority Rights Group International. 

But European and US funding agencies and the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) appear to have violated a United Nations arms embargo by supporting the park authority’s paramilitary activities without notifying the UN security council, the group said. 

Its key funders include USAid and the German government, while the French public development agency AFD is also planning to fund the park.

“The organised violence documented in this report is unlikely to have taken place without decisive support from international supporters of the [park],” the report stated, adding that “international backers … are complicit in these abuses.”

The park was expanded in 1975, leading to the eviction of thousands of Batwa people from their land. Most have been forced to live outside in poverty, but some have tried to return. 

Survival International spokeswoman Caroline Pearce hit out at “a racist and colonial model of conservation that sees human beings and their rights as disposable.”

“The German and American governments and WCS have turned a blind eye to these atrocities, continuing to fund the park while its guards have killed and raped dozens of Batwa people,” she said, demanding an end to the funding of horrific abuses.