Warning: contains description of violence

Dear Jack,

In July 2020 Raj Kumar Chepang, a young man with a family to feed, ventured into the Chitwan National Park in Nepal. Raj Kumar knew the lush forests well – many of his people, the Chepang, had lived there before being evicted from in and around the park.

With a group of friends, Raj Kumar searched the streams for fish, edible ferns and Ghongi, a snail that the Chepang say helps prevent malaria. But then they were discovered by an army unit patrolling the park.

The soldiers attacked Raj Kumar and his friends. According to his friends, the soldiers stamped on their necks and backs with their boots, and beat them repeatedly with sticks. They tortured and abused them for hours.

They were eventually released, and told to return the next day to pay a fine, but Raj Kumar’s friends say that he “could not even walk … and [we] carried him home.” A few days later he died.

“Raj Kumar’s biggest crime was that he could not see his family starving and went to search for food in the jungle,” his mother said.

After a long battle by his family for justice, Chiran Kumar Budha, a sergeant in the Nepali army, was sentenced to life in prison for Raj Kumar’s killing.

But the Chepang and other Indigenous people in the area still live with persecution and violence, as militarized conservation projects operate on or near the lands they rely on for their livelihoods. Western conservation organizations like WWF and the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) continued to provide support for Chitwan National Park, despite this and many other atrocities.

The ZSL, which still works in the area, has not spoken out against the murder of Raj Kumar, while WWF lobbied for the perpetrators of another violent killing in Nepal to be released.

These organizations should be held to account for providing funding and support to park authorities with a long history of violent persecution of Indigenous people. This Act for Survival week, please tell funders to stop funding ‘fortress’ conservation.

Thank you,

Sophie Grig
Research & Advocacy