Batwa Pygmies Live In Misery After Being Forced Out Of Forests In Uganda, DR Congo

Jackson Muhizi, who lives in a makeshift shack in a slum in the town of Kisoro west of Uganda's capital, has no kind words for the government and people who encroached on the forests in the country.

He is one of the Echuya Batwa, commonly known as pygmies, who for centuries have lived in the forests of southwest Uganda and northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo.

"For a long time, my ancestors lived in the rainforests. I was also born in a forest. We used to depend on the forest for food, medicine and shelter, but we were shocked when people came with tractors and started cutting down trees, forcing us to move deeper in the forests."

Later, Muhizi said, they were forced by the government to leave the forest after it was turned into a game park in 1992 so that mountain gorillas could inhabit the whole forest in which they lived.

"I now survive on collecting used plastic bottles which I sell to people who later take them to plastic recycling companies in the capital, Kampala."

Similarly, Batwa from forests in Ituri and North Kivu provinces in the Democratic Republic of Congo were forced out by encroachers and militiamen.

Dismus Atwa, a Batwa pygmy, told Anadolu Agency that he was forced to flee with his tribe mates from forests in the Tanganyika district of Katanga province due to violence between Indigenous hunter-gatherer Batwa inhabitants and ethnic Luba militiamen.

"I fled from Katanga to the town of Aru, where I now live on begging. The Luba militiamen attacked us in the forest and forced us to flee. They have occupied the forest in which we had lived for a long time," he said.

With two children aged 4 and 6, Serena Maho, a Batwa pygmy woman, lives on the streets of Rukungiri, a town 319 kilometers (198 miles) west of Kampala.

"We have been neglected, and we now live on the streets. The forest was our home, but we were sent away without being given (any indication) where to stay," she said.




Population of Batwa

According to the last national census in Uganda in 2014, there were 6,200 Batwa pygmies, and recent estimates by the Uganda Bureau of Standards show they now total around 11,000.

In Democratic Republic of the Congo, Batwa pygmies number up to 100,000 in the Lake Tumba region in the country's northwest and in the forests in North Kivu and South Kivu provinces, especially near the Ugandan and Rwandan borders, according to the independent humanitarian organization Refugees International.

A non-governmental organization, called the Mgahinga and Bwindi Impenetrable Forest Conservation Trust (MBIFCT), was set up by well-wishers to help displaced Batwa pygmies in Uganda.

"But that organization can't help all of us. It has limited resources and cannot reach all of us because we are scattered in different parts of western Uganda," said Tom Sabiti, a Batwa pygmy living in Bundibugyo district.

"We are poorly represented politically. We are marginalized, with no access to health services and other social services," he said.

Bashir Hangi, a spokesman for the Uganda Wildlife Authority, defended the government's move to relocate Batwa pygmies from the forests so that mountain gorillas could inhabit them.

"The government had a program to resettle them out of the forests so that they start living in villages. The mountain gorillas are the biggest tourist attraction in the country," he said.

Hangi said the revenue they get from tourists is shared with the people who live in villages and towns near the forests, and among those who benefit are the Batwa.

Frank Mugabi, the spokesman for Uganda's Ministry of Gender, Labour and Social Development, expressed a similar view, while noting that the program is not without problems.

"The government has programs meant to help the Batwa come out of poverty, just as it has for all Ugandans. The only problem is that they are scattered in western Uganda, and at times, government programs take time to reach all the people," he said. -