Dear Jack,

You may remember that almost exactly a year ago, our campaign to stop big conservation corporations taking Indigenous peoples’ lands for so-called Protected Areas, and then keeping out the Indigenous owners by force, made headlines around the world.

Survival’s research, followed up by investigative journalist Ian Birrell, showed that rangers employed by one of these organizations, African Parks, were committing appalling abuses against Indigenous Baka people, including beatings, torture and rape. (The Baka’s ancestral forest had been taken over by the Odzala-Kokoua National Park in the Congo, which is managed by African Parks.)

Our complaints to African Parks, its board member Prince Harry, and its funders, had already led the organization to hire Omnia, a law firm established by Cherie Blair KC, to investigate.

But despite our requests, African Parks has still made no commitment to publish the results of Omnia’s investigation, or to implement its recommendations.

Furthermore, a series of incidents have prompted serious concerns about whether this investigation will be just the latest in a series of investigations which conservation organizations have commissioned after uncomfortable media scrutiny, then shelved quietly when the fuss has died down.

In recent months:

• Survival has received reports of intimidation of Baka people by African Parks guards just before the investigation began on the ground. At least two Baka people, who have given information about abuses at the hands of guards, describe being confronted by park rangers who questioned their motives for reporting the abuses, and threatened them.

• The investigators arrived to interview Baka victims of abuse in an African Parks car, and were accompanied by a Congolese government official. This risks a chilling effect on the Baka’s willingness to speak openly.

• Survival has received shocking reports of further beatings of a group of Baka women and children by African Parks rangers, which resulted in one Baka woman losing her unborn child. This took place as the investigation was ongoing, suggesting that the guards still believe they can act with impunity.

Survival urged Omnia to look not only at the abuses, but more broadly at the racist and colonial fortress conservation model that underpins African Parks’ management of Odzala.

But our concerns have not been resolved, and the whole basis through which African Parks has come to control so much Indigenous land is going unchallenged. This in turn means that, whatever the result of the investigation, it won’t help the Baka get their land back, and with no access to their forest, their very survival as a people is threatened – a green genocide.

We will, of course, keep you informed when we learn the results of Omnia’s investigation. But we’re not holding our breath, and in the meantime, please join us in urging African Parks and other big conservation corporations and their funders to finally recognize the Baka’s rights.

Best wishes,

Caroline Pearce
Director