I’m writing from Kinshasa,
the capital of Democratic Republic of Congo
(DRC). These days I am torn between outrage
and bitterness when I hear about the unbelievable
violence that has once again been unleashed
on the heart of the Congo’s forest. On the
morning of May 2nd, police and soldiers
reportedly carried out a campaign of retribution
against villagers in DRC’s Bumba territory,
in northwest of the Equator province, after
the villagers stood up to workers from logging
company SIFORCO, a subsidiary of Swiss
group Danzer.
In April, villagers
from the Yalisika community, which is in
Bumba territory, protested against SIFORCO,
because they said the company had not delivered
on its promises it made in 2005 and revised
in 2009 to provide infrastructure and services
to the community in exchange for logging
their forests. Faced with community opposition,
SIFORCO called in the help of local authorities
and security.
Greenpeace was told
that sixty men descended on the village
of Yalisika, with shocking results. One
villager died – Frederic Moloma Tuka – and
several women were raped, including minors.
Several other people were beaten, while
16 people were arrested and taken away.
It was reported that police and soldiers
were brought to the village in a truck provided
by SIFORCO, which was then also used to
transport the detainees back to Bumba jail.
Several converging testimonies claim that
following the retaliation attack, while
the detainees were being trucked between
Yalisika and Bumba, the truck stopped at
the SIFORCO site, where the logging company's
site manager was seen to pay the police
and soldiers. Read the summary of our report
here.
When Greenpeace learned
of the horrific situation, our team rushed
to the scene with members of the Congolese
NGO network, RRN (Réseau Ressources
Naturelles) to better understand what had
happened. This mission collected testimonies
from the witnesses, the medical corps and
local authorities, all of whom confirmed
the same version of events, which Greenpeace
reported during a press conference in Kinshasa.
Yalisika is in Bumba,
in the Congo Basin, which is home to the
world’s second largest tropical forest after
the Amazon, a significant part of which
is in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
A vital source of food, medicine and other
basic services for more than 40 million
Congolese people, these forests are also
invaluable for their biodiversity and their
role in mitigating climate change. Unfortunately,
they are under threat from industrial logging
companies, most of them foreign-owned, which
plunder the DRC’s rich resources with impunity
– and then take the profits elsewhere.
In addition to the environmental
havoc that industrial logging causes- including
the destruction of the last remaining large
blocks of intact forests - logging operations
in the DRC often lead to serious social
conflicts. Forest communities and indigenous
peoples continue to be excluded from the
decisions determining the fate of their
forests and logging in DRC is often characterised
by the use of violence by security forces
called in to quell village resistance; human
rights are also frequently violated. Greenpeace
is bearing witness and regularly documents
such scandals, warning that under current
circumstances expansion of Congo’s logging
industry can only exacerbate social conflict
and environmental destruction.
In recent years, tragedies
like what has occurred in Yalisika have
been reported all too often from Congo’s
forests, including arbitrary arrests, rapes
and beatings. In 2010, Greenpeace reported
a conflict between SODEFOR (subsidiary of
Lichtenstein-based NST) and a village community
in the Oshwe territory, Bandundu province.
The conflict is still not settled. In September
2010, parts of the Oshwe population cried
out “TOBOYI SODEFOR!” (Get out SODEFOR!).
And again in May 2011, SODEFOR was involved
in a conflict with forests communities.
The Yalisika story is
being widely covered by media and followed
in DRC, and I hope it’s just the beginning
- the crimes committed must not go unpunished
and the villagers cannot be forgotten. There
must be justice for what are serious human
rights violations, and those responsible
must be officially identified and sanctioned.
With the Congolese government
all too absent and in any case lacking enough
means, and with no real forest regulation
or its enforcement, logging companies operate
as states within the state.
The Bumba tragedy proves
that once again, we are far from the so-called
“sustainable forest management”, celebrated
by donors (including the World Bank and
national aid institutions, notably from
Germany, France and the Netherlands), the
Congolese government and its partners. When
I think that these companies, SODEFOR and
SIFORCO, are trying to promote themselves
with “sustainable wood” labeled as FSC (Forest
Stewardship Council), ), I am even more
outraged. How can there be talk of sustainable
forest management when covered in such violence,
let alone the destruction of the last remaining
large blocks of intact forests? The logging
industry is certainly no solution for ‘sustainable
development’, forests or the climate.
What now? First, justice
must be done. Then, donors and other partners
must publicly stop their support to companies
like SIFORCO and SODEFOR.
It is urgent that donors
and the DRC Government shift their support
away from destructive logging and towards
plans that will foster climate and biodiversity
protection, as well as real sustainable
development for the 40 million of Congolese
who rely on their forests.
