A group of Pygmies living in the Democratic Republic of Congo have been targeted for extermination by rebel groups battling in the mineral-rich Ituri and Kivu region, a human rights group has claimed.
Minority Rights Group International said today it has submitted evidence to the prosecutor at the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague on acts of mass killings, cannibalism and systematic rape against the Bambuti Pygmies since 1998.
The group accused the former rebel group RCD Goma, elements of the Rwandan Interahamwe rebels and combined forces of Vice President Jean-Pierre Bemba's MLC/RCD-N, which in 2002-2003 launched a military campaign in the region, of carrying out the atrocities.
"The perpetrators of these crimes should be pursued and punished - no matter how high their office," said Mr Mark Lattimer, director of Minority Rights Groups International.
Mr Bemba was one of four vice-presidents sworn in last year as part of a power-sharing government intended to end a five-year-old war that had torn the giant African country apart.
The human rights group has taped interviews with locals about crimes committed in the forests of Kivu and Ituri since July 1st, 2002, when the ICC's jurisdiction over crimes committed in Congo began. It is asking the ICC's prosecutor to investigate, and UN peacekeepers to protect the Pygmies.
The Pygmies have been forced to act as trailfinders and were subsequently the subject of revenge by opposing armed groups. Violence has also been linked to the Bambuti believed to have a special power.
Mr Thomas Luhaka, executive secretary of MLC and a parliamentarian in the transitional government, told Reuters an enquiry into violence in Ituri province has been held.