Pygmies on display

Yvoir, Belgium

Immigrant groups have denounced a small-town zoo’s exhibit of dancing Pygmies as a throwback to Belgium’s brutal colonial past. In the exhibit, eight real Pygmies from Cameroon demonstrate songs and dances several times a day, while life-size replicas of Pygmy families display hunting and other typical native activities. “Discover black Africa,” posters advertising the exhibit read. “Help these people who live as we did 2,000 years ago.” The Movement for New Migrants said the exhibit was “a racist, discriminatory, money-making scheme,” and an embarrassment to the nation. A government agency, though, concluded that while the exhibit was certainly in bad taste, it was not racist.