A series of audio recordings, images and leaked documents obtained exclusively by Al Jazeera’s Investigative Unit (I-Unit) appear to show the failures of a German government-funded inquiry into reports of killings at the Kahuzi-Biega National Park in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).
The Commission of Inquiry, which investigated allegations that park guards and Congolese soldiers killed members of the Batwa Indigenous community in the park between 2019 and 2021, reported on June 1 that no widespread atrocities had taken place.
The inquiry was set up in April after a report published by the London-based human rights organisation Minority Rights Group International (MRG) documented a deadly campaign to expel Indigenous Batwa people from their native land in the park.
The report concluded at least 20 members of the Batwa Indigenous community were killed in the park by “joint contingents” of park guards and Congolese soldiers in three waves of violent attacks.
A researcher and the journalist who authored the MRG report say that since the report was published, they have been forced to go into hiding after receiving a tip-off that armed men had been sent to kill them.
A series of photographs obtained by the journalist, Robert Flummerfelt, and shared exclusively with the I-Unit, appear to show the bodies of villagers in the park after alleged attacks by park guards and Congolese soldiers.
The photographs show several people who appear to have been fatally shot and stabbed in the park after what Flummerfelt says were violent raids between July 2019 and December 2021.
The images, which Al Jazeera was unable to independently verify, also depict a body that appears to have been mutilated with a series of deep machete slashes across its torso.
The journalist, Robert Flummerfelt, says he believes park guards and Congolese soldiers carried out the raids as part of a coordinated campaign to expel Indigenous communities from the park to make the area more attractive for foreign conservationists and foreign tourists. He alleges that at least 20 villagers were killed and Batwa women were gang-raped.
The Kahuzi-Biega National Park, which receives the majority of its funding from the German government, is home to the critically endangered eastern lowland gorilla, and it is one of the DRC’s most important tourist attractions.
The controversy over events at the park escalated…