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Kenyan
government to annex Ogiek land
by John Kamau, Rights Features Service
(November
13, 2000) The Kenya government has discussed a plan to degazette
some 60,000 hectares from the East Mau Forest, thus depriving
the Ogiek indigenous group of the last remnants of their ancestral
land, the Ogiek Welfare Council reported.
"This is
the greatest robbery of the Ogiek ancestral land," says Joseph
K Towett of the Ogiek Welfare Council, a lobbying group that campaigns
for the rights of the Ogiek.
By degazetting
the area in East Mau, the Kenyan government will remove the area's
legal protection as a forest.
In a statement
released to Nairobi-based Rights Features Service (RFS), the council
says a notice "will appear in the Kenya Gazette of Friday 24th
November" to that effect.
"This will
be unconstitutional since we already have a suit in the affected
forest whereby we have already been granted an order stopping
the illegal exercise which the government now intends to legalize,"
says the council.
The council
also says that there "is massive influx of people from neighboring
districts who claims to have been allocated land by the Government
at the Ogiek forest."
The chairman
of the Ogiek Welfare Council, Joseph K. Towett, interprets the
move as "intended to pre-empt the Ogiek constitutional case."
"This means
that the government does no recognize the suit we have filled
in the High Court of Kenya," says Towett.
Towett says
that the new move by the government will "prolong the hearing
as it seeks to create room for more affidavits from interested
parties."
"The idea
of degazettment is set to threaten not only the Ogiek, but more
than five million Kenyans depending on water and other basic necessity
from Mau forest complex," says the Welfare Council.
The Lake
Nakuru basin relies on rivers that originate from the expansive
Mau complex which is the home of the Ogiek, the world's best-known
honey hunters.
The council
also accuses the provincial administration of intimidating Ogiek
leaders into dropping contempt proceedings filed against government
officials who have failed to stop continued allocation of Ogiek
land to outsiders. The provincial administration is being used
by prominent politicians and powerful Individuals in the government
to run the Ogiek's political affairs.
"The [Ogiek]
want their ancestral land to be restored to its original limits,"
says Towett. "Another lifestyle should not be imposed on us."
The Ogiek
maintain that they have "rights to ownership of Mau Forests" and
will not let go.
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