Wren has focused his efforts on the nine Pygmy tribes. In the Eastern Congo, a region torn apart by violent rebel militias who war over the land’s lucrative natural resources, the Pygmy population is at an even greater disadvantage. Wren said estimates peg the Pygmy population anywhere from 300,000 to 600,000 across a handful of African countries, though many villages are so remote that a truly accurate number isn’t obtainable. “The other tribes believe that if they eat a Pygmy, they’ll be impervious in battle.” “I’ve spoken to Pygmies who’ve watched their relatives be hunted and eaten,” said Wren. It’s a firmly established caste system built on a foundation of superstition and prejudice. Deforestation has caused the wildlife to scatter, which has forced the hunter-driven Pygmies to rely upon their slave owners for survival, said Wren. Their tribes are pushed into the jungles with little to protect themselves from the elements and they become slaves when landowners claim the soil from underneath them. Pygmies are often referred to as animals, said Wren, and are denied medical care, education and citizenship in their own country. The Pygmies, whose average man reaches no taller than 4-foot-9, are a people shun by the other tribes in Eastern Congo. It was something he didn’t quite grasp until Wren saw it with his own eyes during his previous month-long trips to the DRC in July 2011 and August 2012. Wren was once among those who found it hard to imagine that slavery still exists in this day and age.
#Justin wren free#
The project is called “Fight for the Forgotten,” which through a partnership with the Congo-based Shalom University, aims to free 1,000 enslaved Pygmies in one year and relocate them to land where they’ll eventually be able to self-sustain themselves. So far, Wren’s raised nearly half of the $50,000 he’ll need to return to the DRC this summer to aid nine enslaved Mbutu Pygmy tribes facing starvation, inhumane persecution, and in some cases, extermination. The story - a universal one about helping those less fortunate - is striking a chord. TMZ, Gawker, and Deadspin all picked up the warm and fuzzy clip, which got 400,000 views in the first 24 hours and is closing in on one million hits. 26, and aired the next night on The Jimmy Kimmel Show and the following morning on The Today Show.
The video took off on, a social-media tracker site on Feb.
In the video, a group of wide-eyed Congolese children crowd around Wren, joyfully petting him like he’s a golden retriever - the first time they’ve ever seen a white man (with arm hair no less) in their remote village. 28 to find more than 2,000 emails in his inbox after a two-minute cellphone video he’d posted online months earlier had gone viral overnight. The fighter-turned-Christian missionary woke up on Feb. “If this wasn’t what I was supposed to be doing, I just needed a little sign.” “I asked God to give me a sign that this wasn’t what I was supposed be doing right now, that he had other plans for me,” said the 25-year-old Wren. Now he wanted to return to the Democratic Republic of Congo for a third time this summer with enough funding to help liberate 1,000 Pygmy slaves in one year, but he was struggling to get momentum going for the cause. In of a moment of weariness five weeks ago, Justin Wren prayed to God for a sign. Wren, a multi-time state wrestling champion (in all three styles) and a two-time national champion who’d competed on The Ultimate Fighter 10 in 2009, had put a promising fighting career on hold.
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