Nature Being Destroyed by Rwandan War (7 October, 1996)

Nations which supplied and continue to supply arms for the war in Rwanda must make reparations to Zaire, says a member of the country's Board for the Conservation of Nature. South Africa twice supplied Rwanda with arms in clandestine deals during the apartheid era, and last week it was announced the ANC Government would also be supplying arms for the continuing civil war.

Speaking in Johannesburg at the weekend, Albert Ngezayo-Prigogine said the world must react immediately to what was going on in the Virungas, in particular in Virunga National Park on the border between Zaire and Rwanda. When war erupted in Rwanda in 1994, refugees started settling on the boundary of the park, a sanctuary for mountain gorillas. In an area which only had occasional poaching of small animals, 'all hell broke out,' he says. 'By December 1994 there was shooting at Virunga. You could believe the war was there. It wasn't - they were shooting animals. Virunga National Park has been a World Heritage site since 1979. It belongs to the whole world, and it is endangered.

'I sell fresh air, sunsets, sunrises, mist and snow to people who pay to see it, and share it with animals and leave it as they found it. Virunga is in the throes of disappearing, and the world must take note,' says Ngezayo-Prigogine, who was born and raised in the area. He said the carnage had nothing to do with need, only greed and bloodlust. Now that the animals were all but gone, refugees were felling the rainforests. 'The refugees must be moved from the boundary. They are turning it into a desert. If they aren't moved, Virunga will disappear. The criminals must go on trial, wherever and whoever they are.'

Since September 1995, when he started the Foundation for the Survival of Virunga National Park, he has been writing to governments and conservation agencies around the world to ask for help. But none has been offered. The Zairean government gave him a crack unit of twelve paratroopers in July 1995 after twelve Italian tourists, two of them children under five, were machine gunned on July 10, 1995. The Virunga unit has done much to stem the tide, bringing 87 poachers to trial to date, says Ngezayo-Prigogine. He needs funds for at least 50 soldiers, and is in South Africa to open a chapter of his foundation. By Anita Allen. Courtesy of The Star.