On 4 February 2020, Jean-Marie Kasula, along with five other men and two indigenous Batwa women were prosecuted in a one-day trial at Bukavu Garrison Military Court (TMGB). They were charged for possession of weapons and munitions of war, criminal conspiracy, and malicious destruction of Parc National du Kahuzi-Biega (PNKB).
On that same day, Kasula was sentenced to 15 years in prison along with the five (5) other men, while the two women were given sentences from one to five years. The accused men were each fined USD 5,000 and the women for 200,000 Congolese Franc (around USD 103) each. The fines are for purported damages to PNKB, which is under the protection of the Congolese Institute for the Conservation of Nature/L’Institut Congolais pour la Conservation de la Nature (ICCN).
The two women, Nsimire M’Manda and Faida Bahati, were released on bail on 30 July and Kasula and one man were provisionally released on 27 August. But, on 21 January 2021, Kasula was again arrested after the eco-guards found him supposedly digging the soil within PNKB for minerals. The eco-guards took photos and videos of this second arrest and posted them in social media, which went viral.
The first case of Kasula received conflicting opinions within the indigenous movements in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). His second arrest further complicated the situation. Since his provisional release in August, the eco-guards have been harassing Kasula and making unfounded statements against him.
Diel Mochire Mwenge of Programme Intégré pour le Développement du Peuple Pygmée (PIDP) and Joseph Itongwa Mukumo of Alliance Nationale d’Appui et de Promotion des Aires du Patrimooine Autochtone et Communautaire en RD Congo (ANAPAC-DRC) view Kasula’s cases as shameful to indigenous peoples who take pride in their culture and identity as conservationist and peaceful problem-solvers.
“We deal with our problems not through the use of weapons,” Mochire said, and indeed Kasula is reported to have strongly denied that he has ever used weapons.
Whatever the facts of the case, they stand with Kasula because, for them, Kasula is a member of the indigenous Batwa community. He is a brother. They believe he deserves support to get his total freedom back. They think that Kasula, and the others, deserve full access to justice. Their case should be given proper due process and be allowed to work with lawyers of their choice.
Kasula’s case might seem like an incident of denial of justice, particularly when understood in the context of the one-day trial that the military court administered. But in a broader perspective, his case, and the preceding similar cases of imprisonment without trial, are much more than that. These incidents are tied to DRC’s colonial past, which, among others, linked to the indigenous Batwa being forcibly removed from their ancestral lands and territories in the name of conservation.
Displacement in PNKB and the role of ICCN
The ICCN was created in 1925 and the PNKB in 1970. The indigenous Batwa have freely walked and lived on those forests far longer than before these institutions were established or the creation of DRC as a nation-State. They are among the first inhabitants of sub-Saharan Africa.
They have lived there way before the arrival of the ruthless King Leopold II of Belgium in 1876. His colonial rule launched the bigoted beliefs towards the Batwa communities. Colonialism condemned them to a life full of strife and struggle even after DRC gained its independence in 1960.
Batwa is a term referring to a number of cultural groups found living across the Great Lakes, i.e. Burundi, Rwanda, Uganda, and the DRC. Within the DRC, they reside around the areas of Lake Tumba region of north-west, as well as in Kivu near the Uganda and Rwanda borders, and the Bambuti of the Ituri forest in north-east. They are hunter-gatherer communities that have been violently evicted with the creation of PNKB. Since then, they have been prohibited access to their ancestral forest. They have been alienated from their livelihood and their cultural and spiritual heritage.
The shooting of Mbone Christian Nakulire and his father in 2017 by ICCN’s park rangers exemplifies the ICCN’s abuse of power over the lives and territories of the Batwa communities throughout those five decades. To what should have been just a normal day of walking in their ancestral forest to gather some medicinal herbs, their day ended with Mbone’s father being badly wounded and him dying. Mbone was just 17 years old.
Mbone’s father, Munganga Nakulire, still remembers when a “white man they called Adrien Deschryver arrived with a couple of village leaders and settled things.” Deschryver is PNKB’s founder and a descendant of the last Belgian colonies Minister. Munganga was five years old when he and his family were thrown out of the park. For all those years, he recalls living a life “like animals, maybe even a bit worse” on the fringes of PNKB.
ICCN agreed to pay for the funeral expenses and extend further compensation for the damages caused to Mbone’s family. But the shooters were left free from any prosecution or consequences. For them, it was just another day at work.
The ICCN is responsible for managing seven national parks, including the PNKB. It employs the rangers or ‘eco-guards’ whose “job is to protect, conserve and manage the national parks, reserves and other sites of conservation interest.”
The ‘eco-guards’ have long been accused of grave human rights abuses toward Indigenous Peoples of DRC, including rape and extrajudicial killings. Their manner of conservation and management have been causing constant clashes with the Batwa communities.
‘Eco-guards’ in other national parks in DRC are not different from those in PNKB as revealed in an exposé of BuzzFeed. The report also uncovered how the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), the world’s leading conservation organisation, turned a blind eye to these violations over the years.
Discrimination towards the stewards of the forest
Referring to the actions of the first case of Kasula, the spokesperson of PNKB, Hubert Mulongoy, said in a report, “Failure to comply with the clauses is no reason to attack the park. We have respected more than 80% of these clauses. It is true that sometimes funding is lacking but we are trying.”
The PNKB spokesperson is known to also have accused Kasula of leading an attack on a ministerial convoy on the same day he was present in military court in Bukavu. Mulongoy is also known to have been releasing unfounded accusations of the involvement of some national and international NGOs of providing arms to Kasula.
The respect for 80% of the clauses Mulongoy was referring to was PNKB’s support for “the schooling of indigenous children and the recruitment of some of them as ‘eco-guards.”
Mulongoy’s statement failed, among others, to recognise the role of the Batwa community as stewards of the forests. The Batwa do not need PNKB’s schooling. Mulongoy and PNKB will be giving them a better deal by moving aside and respecting the right of the Batwa community to manage and protect their own ancestral forest. That might also settle their worries over PNKB’s meagre funds.
Unfortunately, Mulongoy is not alone in his perspective. Despite several studies proving indigenous groups around the world often do a better job of protecting forests, parks and reserves, the conventional conservation concept, like that held by WWF, still prevails. This deeply held concept is a product of a colonial past that hovers like a dark cloud in people’s modern-day consciousness; not withstanding those whose ancestors suffered from the brutalities of colonisation.
There has been a growing demand to decolonise conservation and, instead, support indigenous-led management of their natural resources. With the rise of the Black Lives Matters (BLM) movement which has evolved into a global rallying cry against discrimination and brutality, there are even hopes of having an African awakening, the day when the African region unites in decrying the seemingly unshakeable tendencies of ‘othering.’ In the case of the DRC, it is illustrated through the indifference of their country(wo)men to the struggles of the Batwa community, and the rest of their indigenous brothers and sisters.
But for Kasula, including the five other men and the two indigenous women, awakening from decolonisation and ‘othering’ are mere abstractions that are likely not going to save them from their impending reality.
Kasula remains in jail after being arrested the second time and the women’s freedom is temporary as the case is still ongoing; the four other men are also still in jail. Their current situation is not distant from all the other indigenous Batwa in DRC, and even beyond. Their struggle for land rights and the impacts of having been displaced and disposed from their ancestral lands for decades will continue to haunt them.
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