(18 Mar 2025)
RESTRICTION SUMMARY:
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Lwiro, DRC – 17 March 2025
1. Mid of chimpanzees look on from the edge of their enclosure
2. Mid of chimpanzees playing
3. SOUNDBITE (French) Luc Itongwa, Deputy Director of Lwiro Primates Rehabilitation Center:
++STARTS ON SHOT 2, PARTIALLY OVERLAID BY SHOTS 4 – 7++
“Right now we have 127 chimpanzees, and 118 small monkeys. So to feed them, we are forcing the situation. The director is not here, and she’s sending whatever she can to feed the animals, but it’s not enough. With the war, everything has really stopped.”
4. Mid of Luc Itongwa, deputy director of the center, playing with chimpanzees
5. Mid of chimpanzees looking on from the edge of their enclosure
6. Mid of Itongwa and caregivers standing at the front gate of the sanctuary
7. Wide of a caregiver moves food for the chimps in a wheelbarrow
8. Mid of primate caretaker Jean Bisimwa Cirimwami opening gate
9. Various of Cirimwami walking inside the sanctuary
10. SOUNDBITE (French) Jean Bisimwa Cirimwami, Caregiver:
++STARTS ON SHOT 9, PARTIALLY OVERLAID BY SHOT 11++
“When the animals hear gunfire, they also start hiding, they start yelling. They even want to run away, to escape. But if we are there, they say ‘Oh, since we see our brothers here, our papa here, we must be safe,’ but inside themselves, they can’t eat properly like they ate when there was not something like this happening.”
11. Various of chimpanzees sitting in their enclosure
12. Mid of chimpanzees look on from the edge of their enclosure
STORYLINE:
Keepers at the Lwiro Primates Rehabilitation Center in the Democratic Republic of Congo say they are struggling to feed the center’s hundreds of chimpanzees and monkeys.
It’s been two months since M23’s takeover of the eastern Congolese city of Goma and a month since their advance into regional capital Bukavu.
Just kilometers outside of Kavumu, the center takes in orphaned primates who would die in the wild.
Deputy director of the center, Luc Itongwa, said that banks have not been open since fighting started.
“Our partners are mostly outside the country. In order to get money, we are blocked at the banks. There’s no way to get the money we need to feed the animals when the money is in the banks. These banks are closed,” he said.
He said that they have 127 chimpanzees and 118 small monkeys to take care of at the center, and that they are now relying on small donations.
“But it’s not enough. With the war, everything has really stopped.”
M23’s advance into South Kivu province, where the Lwiro center is located, came quickly after the takeover of Goma.
The Rwanda-backed rebels claimed control of Bukavu, South Kivu’s provincial capital and eastern Congo’s second-largest city, in mid February.
Primate caretaker Jean Bisimwa Cirimwami said that as M23 advanced, gunfire could be heard from the rehabilitation center.
“When the animals hear gunfire, they also start hiding, they start yelling. They even want to run away, to escape,” he said.
He said that though the caretaker’s presence calmed the animals, he could tell they were scared. “They can’t eat properly like they ate when there was not something like this happening.”
M23 is one of about 100 armed groups that have been vying for a foothold in mineral-rich eastern Congo near the border with Rwanda, in a conflict that has created one of the world’s most significant humanitarian crises.
More than 7 million people have been displaced.
AP video shot by Janvier Barhahiga
AP video shot by Janvier Barhahiga
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