Editor’s note: As a director of conservation organisation African Parks, Prince Harry is an elite philantropist whose “good” intentions turn evil. The charity is complicit in beating to death, raping and torturing indigenous people who went into their forests to gather medicine and hunt for food.
An armed militia abused the Baka people, formerly known as the Pygmies, over years and chased them out of their ancestral home, the Congolese rainforest in Makouagonda.
But Prince Harry shouldn’t be our focus – he is just one of many who is involved in the conservation efforts which are deeply broken. According to Survival International, indigenous people are pushed out of nature “while mining, oil, and logging companies, and trophy hunters, are considered ‘partners’ of conservation and allowed to carry on with business as usual.”
Prince Harry’s charity is funded by the European Union, US and other philanthropists. Our focus should be on supporting grassroots movements, through donations or active participation, which collaborate with peasants, farmers and other groups defending their land.
The rich build a wall of militias around nature, so that only they themselves are able to enjoy it, because they don’t care about how they are harming people.
They also harm nature, while portraying themselves as “into the wild” with flowery words and photos in annual reports to convince the masses that they care.
Nature is more intricate than humans can even imagine. It is only nature, not humans, who can “manage” the forests. Many indigenous people know this. They are the ones who have learned to live in harmony with nature. Corporate-funded conservation groups across the world have been promoting nature management in the guise of conservation. Unfortunately there are some indigenous people who have bought onto this as well. The following story is a press release about African Parks, a noncharity that is currently being investigated about abuses against indigenous people. DGR strongly condemns the alleged torture and rapes. This Congo rainforest is a protected area – not a battlefield. Any extractive human activity (industrial or indigenous) should be prohibited in it.
A charity with strong ties to Prince Harry has been funding rangers responsible for horrific abuses against Indigenous people in the Congo, including torture and rape, according to a major investigation published in the UK’s Mail on Sunday.
The abuses have taken place in Odzala-Kokoua National Park in the Republic of Congo, which is managed by African Parks – Prince Harry is a member of their Board of Directors, a position to which he was “elevated” in 2023, after having served as their President for six years.
The investigation has uncovered evidence of countless atrocities committed by African Parks’ “armed militia” against local Baka people. The organization has known for years that the abuses were taking place, but they have continued unabated.
One Baka man told the Mail on Sunday’s Ian Birrell: “African Parks are killing us slowly. We’re suffering so much that we might as well be dead.”
Another said: “The past was far better for us – and the reason is all down to African Parks.”
A Baka man, Moyambi Fulbert, quoted in the report, had this message for Prince Harry: “I’d tell him to stop supporting African Parks. He is a powerful man. He eats well and lives well – but we don’t have anything now and it’s all because of African Parks.”
The Baka and other hunter-gatherers who have lived in and cared for the Congo Rainforest since time immemorial have seen much of their land stolen and turned into National Parks and other Protected Areas.
Baka man from Republic of Congo. A relative of his was attacked by rangers and later died.
© Survival
They have been pushed out, and now live in dire conditions, landless and dependent on others, or turned into ‘tourist attractions.’
They are banned from entering the rainforest they once called home, while mining, oil, and logging companies, and trophy hunters, are considered “partners” of conservation and allowed to carry on with business as usual.
Survival International Director Caroline Pearce said today: “African Parks, along with other big conservation organizations like WWF, takes Indigenous land to turn it into militarized parks or reserves – and then their guards attack people like the Baka just for trying to live their lives. Prince Harry can help stop this.”
“We’re calling on him to step down as a director of African Parks. He needs to distance himself from an organization that is complicit in evictions and the heinous abuse of Indigenous people.
The organization’s funders must withdraw their funding until the Baka are allowed to return to the park and their land ownership rights are recognized.
The abuses that the Mail on Sunday has uncovered are being repeated across Africa and Asia – this is not a one-off. The entire conservation model as practiced by the big conservation organizations is built on the theft of Indigenous land, and the dispossession of the people who are its rightful owners – just as in the colonial era. It’s time to decolonize conservation.”
Title photo by © Survival: The Baka community of Makouagonda, whose ancestral land was taken for Odzala-Kokoua National Park. They now live by the side of the road.
What the fuck Harry?
What Brian said…
Also when I think of the Baka people… https://youtu.be/YsQFkSZD6oo?si=O7Y7lRnioGq7MQA_
The impact of indigenous people hunting traditional animals may well be extremely destructive if the numbers of indigenous people are much greater than the numbers that have been present in pre-colonial times or if the hunting is done using more effective modern weapons. Even if neither of these considerations are true, it is likely that if the ecosystem has been degraded by agricultural expansion, logging, mining, trophy hunting or whatever, indigenous hunting will only be able to be sustainable if it is reduced below pre-colonial intensity. I have no knowledge whatsoever if these comments apply to the Baka people, but they certainly apply to some of the indigenous practices in the region where I live and major extinctions are threatened. Whilst many indigenous people in my part of the world appreciate the crisis and respond appropriately, punitive measures are sensibly taken against those who don’t – fortunately, at this stage shooting people will not be necessary in our region to save species on the brink of extinction. Yes, indigenous culture is valuable and should inspire mainstream culture to head in a more sustainable direction. But an uncritical, almost mystical worship of the noble savage and their cultural rights and a belief that an indigenous group can do no wrong is not sensible and is indeed racist in that it is identifying indigenous people as being beyond (up or down?) ‘ordinary’ people.
I echo and agree with David’s comments, and I’ll go one step further. If you truly advocate for the Earth and all the Native life here, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with being a misanthrope. When I was an Earth First! campaigner, about half of us were misanthropes, including the most well-known co-founder, Dave Foreman. So what? Humans fit the medical definition of being a cancerous tumor on the Earth, and as Dave put it, we should view ourselves as anti-bodies fighting the human pox. It doesn’t have to be this way, but until and unless humans change their attitudes and behaviors, that’s how we need to view our work.
As to indigenous people, the only ones who aren’t harming the Earth are the very few remaining hunter-gatherers. Agriculture itself is extremely ecologically destructive per se, and it leads to other destruction as well, starting with human overpopulation. Of course if areas are being kept free of indigenous people they also need to be kept free of all people, including the great Earth-destroyers, aka ranchers, farmers, loggers, miners, drillers, etc. But as David put it, just because someone is indigenous doesn’t give them any more right to kill any plant or animal they don’t eat, or to harm or destroy any habitat or ecosystem, as anyone else. If you are truly a radical environmentalist, you don’t prioritize humans, you prioritize the Earth and all the nonhumans here, because those are the ones who need the most help and who are the most endangered. I realize that some humans have it much better or worse than other humans, but as a whole the human race is thriving at the expense of the rest of the planet, and that’s what needs to be reversed.