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Pygmies in the Congo treated like "pets": report

Africa

Pygmies in the Congo treated like "pets": report

Indigenous pygmy groups are being exploited by the Congo's ethnic Bantu people, and sometimes subject to slavery, according to a study by a Congolese human rights group.

Congo batwa pygmy 11 13 2011
Pygmies knit in a school in Impfondo, Republic of the Congo, on March 15, 2011. Officially, the Pygmies make up 10 percent of the country's total population, which is estimated at 3.6 million. They are traditionally nomads who live in the vast forests of central Africa. (Laudes Martial Mbon/AFP/Getty Images)

Pygmy groups in the Congo are being exploited by the country's ethnic Bantu people, and are treated like "pets" and sometimes even subject to slavery, according to a Congolese human rights group.

The Congo's indigenous pygmies "are considered by Bantu people as property in the same way that... pets are," Roch Euloge Nzobo, program director at the Congolese Human Rights Observatory (OCDH), told Agence France-Presse.

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AFP said researchers spent five years studying relations between the pygmies and Bantu people, under a project financed by the EU.

Pygmies, known for being unusually short, are in danger of extinction in Congo, and suffer discrimination and exploitation, according to the report.

"The accounts we got show that some slavery is well and truly alive in Congo among its indigenous people," the report by OCDH said, according to AFP.

In February Congo introduced a law aimed at protecting the rights of pygmies. This makes the Congo the first country in Africa to provide legal protection for indigenous peoples, UN news agency IRIN reported.

"The law mandates punishment and fines against anyone who uses indigenous persons as slaves," Nzobo told IRIN.

http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/africa/111113/pygmy-pets-congo-pygmies-slavery-human-rights