Five Batwa men finally freed in Eastern DRC, after a year in prison without a trial

We’re delighted to announce that as of 15 September, five Batwa men who had been detained in prison in Bukavu, Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, since August 2019 are all, at long last, back home with their families. This is thanks to the tireless work of our partner CAMV and the legal team they’ve been working with in Bukavu. Two were released two weeks ago and the remaining three were finally released yesterday.

The five men, arrested respectively in February and October last year and imprisoned without trial, were accused of illegal possession of weapons and participation in a militia (Raiya Mutomboki). This was in the context of Kahuzi-Biega National Park responding very aggressively to the return of Batwa communities to their ancestral lands. These Batwa had been evicted from their ancestral lands to make way for the park, and some community members, tired of years of patient but utterly frustrating negotiations to try to return, had returned to their land.

Their situation – more than a year in prison in appalling circumstances without charge – makes a sharp contrast with another legal case that has just opened in front of a military tribunal in Bukavu. In this second case, five ecoguards who, also in August 2019, shot and killed one Batwa man and injured a number of young people playing football, were finally called to a hearing in court last week, on 10 September.

The hearing was a civil case brought by the families of the dead and injured. It had to be a civil case because, despite several eyewitness accounts, the ecoguards have never been arrested or charged. Last Thursday, the five were supposed to appear to face charges, but none of them turned up in court. Their hearing has been postponed until 1 October and they continue to remain free men, employed by the national park.  

We are also keeping a close eye on the military tribunal in Bukavu as a third case was supposed to come before it tomorrow, 17 September. This is the case of eight Batwa people including prominent Batwa leader Jean Marie Kasula, six of whom were condemned to 15 years in prison, following a one-day trial in February 2020 that did not follow due process – the Kasula case that we have highlighted before. However, we are surprised to hear this morning that the hearing has now been postponed to 27 October, officially because the 1st President of the Court has been given two weeks of medical rest. We are deeply concerned over the difficult condition of detention in Bukavu Central Prison and unreasonable postponements may have a negative impact on the health of the four Batwa men remaining in jail. We sincerely hope that during the next hearing the case against them is thrown out of court and that all eight are free to go home and live unmolested.

All these cases show the way in which justice in DRC is heavily weighted against those with less power and the way in which so-called “conservation” has trampled over people’s rights. As it stands conservation at Kahuzi-Biega and elsewhere in DRC is based on a failed approach of evicting the very communities who have the ability to care for their lands, leaving their lands vulnerable to exploitation by external forces, including parts of nominally conservation organisations. The Batwa people could be effective custodians of biodiversity if their ancestral rights are respected and we hope that the conclusion of these three cases will be a first step towards a recognition of that fact.