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Demarcating land
violates spirit if not letter of court order
by
the Digital Freedom Network
(January
25, 2001) Strictly speaking, the Kenyan government has not violated
a High Court order by beginning
to demarcate land in the East Mau Forest, according to the
indigenous rights group Survival
International.
"They
are not strictly speaking illegal or violating the Court's injunction
by demarcating the land parcels, as opposed to actually allocating
them," says Virginia Luling, Survival International's Africa
Campaigns Officer. However they are clearly in contravention of
the spirit of the order."
Demarcation
and allocation of land in East Mau Forest was stopped by the High
Court of Kenya following an application by the Ogiek community
on Oct. 15, 1997. The injunction was ordered until the matter
is solved and determined by the court. The government has on different
occasions been violating the order by secretly allocating the
land to powerful politicians and senior civil servants. "We are
in process of demarcating the cutline in readiness of degazettement,"
said Ole Serian, Nakuru District Commissioner, addressing Ogiek
Welfare Council officials on January 3, 2001 during a courtesy
call to his office. (Degazettement
of the area would remove its legal protection as a forest.)
"There
are only two possibilities," Luling continues. "Either
the case is not settled, in which case the [District Commissioner]
etc. are risking that the Ogiek may win, in which case they will
have wasted a lot of public money on the demarcation and caused
a lot of anxiety for nothing. Or else it has in fact been fixed
in advance, which is clearly what they think. If that is so, international
publicity about it should be embarrassing."
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