A spokesperson for the World Bank said on Wednesday that the lender had stopped all new payments from a $150 million fund meant to expand a national park in southern Tanzania.

The suspension is linked to reports of extrajudicial killings and rights abuses, with claims that guards recently killed people and forced people to leave their homes last year.

The World Bank’s independent complaints system says that two anonymous complainants have said that rangers from Ruaha National Park killed local villagers without a court order, forced them to disappear, evicted them, tortured them, and took their cattle.

“The World Bank is deeply concerned about the allegations of abuse and injustice related to the… project in Tanzania,” a spokesperson said in a statement. “We have therefore decided to suspend further disbursement of funds with immediate effect.”

Mobhare Martini, a spokeswoman for the government, said the claims were not true but that the government was looking into them “to see if there was any misconduct from any staff so that it can take the right action.” He said the last instalment of the loan that had been put on hold was $25 million.

Human rights activists have spoken out against several government plans in Tanzania to increase tourism. This is especially true in the north of the country, where thousands of Maasai have been forced to leave their traditional homes.

The Oakland Institute, a think tank in California, released a report last year accusing Ruaha park rangers of sexual assault. The report also said that local communities across Tanzania were paying the price for saving the environment to bring in tourists.

The park is 81 miles (130 km) west of Iringa. A 45,000-square-kilometer (17,000-square-mile). In the past, the park was famous for having a lot of elephants. 34,000 of them lived in the Ruaha-Rungwa environment in 2009, but that number dropped to 15,836, give or take 4,759, in 2015. Six lions and 74 vultures were found also dead in February 2018 with wide allegations that the animals were poisoned by communal further fueling clashes between locals and authorities.

Wildlife tourism is one of Tanzania’s biggest economic sources, the government is keen on expanding the sector and claims it has provided fair compensation to people evicted from their homes and disturbed by the wild.

Following recent conversations around reparations to countries with colonial heritage, Portuguese President, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, has added his voice to the argument that his country was responsible for crimes committed during the transatlantic slavery and the colonial era and suggested there was a need for reparations.

For over four hundred years, at least 12.5 million Africans were taken hostage, forced to be moved long distances by mostly European ships and merchants, and then sold as slaves.

At a meeting with foreign reporters late Tuesday night, Rebelo de Sousa said that Portugal “takes full responsibility” for the wrongs done in the past and that those wrongs, such as the killings of colonists, had “costs.”

“We have to pay the costs,” he said. “Are there actions that were not punished and those responsible were not arrested? Are there goods that were looted and not returned? Let’s see how we can repair this.”

Those who made it through the trip worked on farms in the Americas, mostly in Brazil and the Caribbean, while others made money off of their work.  More than any other European country, Portugal traded almost 6 million Africans. The country has not done much to face its past, and schools don’t teach much about its part in transatlantic slavery.

More and more African and Caribbean countries want to set up a group to deal with making up for crimes that happened during the transatlantic slave trade. Payments of money or other forms of getting things right could be part of reparations.

Last week, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk said in an address at the closing of the four-day U.N. Permanent Forum on People of African Descent (PFPAD), called on countries to take real steps toward reparations for people of African descent. He appealed while adding his voice to calls for justice for the horrible crimes committed during slavery.

Last year, Rebelo de Sousa said that Portugal should say sorry for transatlantic slavery and colonialism, but he didn’t say sorry in full. He said on Tuesday that it was more important to own up to the past and take responsibility for it than to say sorry.

“Apologising is the easy part,” he said.

The United Kingdom, Japan, France, Germany, Italy, Portugal, the Netherlands, Denmark, Spain, and the United States of America were among the eleven countries that colonized more than 90% of the world’s 193 countries.