Aka Cultural Survival

The Aka have faced many different challenges in the past years.  Most recently, "The conflict in the DRC (Congo) has been especially brutal for the country’s ‘Pygmy’ peoples, who have suffered killings and rape, and allegedly been the victims of cannibalism from the heavily armed fighters.
In 2003, Mbuti representatives petitioned the UN to protect their people from horrific abuse by armed militia in Congo, including extremely high incidences of rape of women by the armed men. One of the outcomes has been a soaring rate of HIV/Aids.  In living memory, we have seen cruelty, massacres, genocide, but we have never seen human beings hunted and eaten literally as though they were game animals, as has recently happened,’ Sinafasi Makelo, Mbuti spokesman.  Where ‘Pygmy’ communities continue to have access to the rich forest resources on which they have traditionally depended, their levels of nutrition are good."
The Aka fall into this category of pygmies and they too have been the target of many new threats.  The Aka people are facing the like of loggers who are trying to come in and cultivate the land they use.  "In the Congo, multinational logging companies rushed in at the first signs of peace to extract valuable timber.  Local communities are often tricked into signing away their rights to the land, losing their cultural heritage, the source of their livelihoods and their food security in exchange for a handful of salt, sugar or a machete.  The results are devastating to the people, the forest, the climate and the future of this desperately unstable country.  In the wake of the loggers come thousands of settlers, eager to farm on the newly accessible land, hostile to the forest peoples whose lands have been destroyed."(http://www.survivalinternational.org/tribes/pygmie)
These threats are pushing these people off of their native lands and forcing them to leave behind their native traditions and cultures.  The lands and rights of the people are being ripped out right from underneath them and it is destroying their world.