Baka “pygmies” are being arrested, beaten and tortured for entering their ancestral forests in Cameroon since they were leased to French billionaire Benjamin de Rothschild for big game trophy hunting. Armed guards threaten to shoot the hunter-gatherers on sight. Their crime? "Trespassing" in the "protected areas" to provide for their families. Meanwhile, tourists can pay de Rothschild €55,000 for the privilege of shooting a forest elephant. We think this is wrong, which is why we're giving the Baka a platform to speak out against the theft of their land and the abuse they are subject to.
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The U.N. warned about conservation abuse. Given stories like this, it's no surprise that the UN's indigenous peoples' expert chose conservation-related abuse as the focus of her speech at the UN General Assembly in October. Great news for our "tribal conservationists" campaign.
But although the UN can no longer ignore land theft and violence across national parks, the general public is still being kept in the dark. You can help us change this by introducing Survival's campaign to your friends and family.
Contact us at info@survivalinternational.org to request flyers.
This is not an isolated incident. Across Africa, tribal people are accused of “poaching” because they hunt to feed their families. And they face arrest and beatings, torture and death, while big game trophy hunters are encouraged. Survival International is leading the fight against these abuses.
The tribesman shown in the video says:
How are we supposed to live? How are we supposed to live? We have nowhere left to live. Everywhere has been burnt to the ground. Our homes that we build in the forest, the safari hunting company burns them all down.
The soldiers that walk with them in the forest here and the police that walk with them in the forest here and the wildlife guards that walk with them in the forest here, they fimnd people in the firest and just start beating them. They set fire to our camps in the forest and burn and ruin everything in them.
We can't stand this, we don't want any more of this. They need to leave our forest, leave it in peace, like our fathers left it to us. Now we can't go into the forest, we can't go into the forest.
