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Kenyan government
sets up committee to study petitions
by Jennifer Wanjiru, Rights Features Service
(March 7,
2001) The Kenyan government set up an inter-ministerial committee
to study the petitions opposing the intended destruction of 167,000
acres of forestland, 70 percent of which is in the Mau Forest,
Lands and Settlement Minister Joseph Nyaga announced.
The move
comes as pressure increases on the government to stop the intended
excision of forestland in Kenya. Members of the Ogiek indigenous
community who live in Mau Forest fear that they will lose huge
tracts of their ancestral land if the degazettement is allowed
and before a constitutional case they have filed in court is heard.
Petitioners
have up to March 15 to oppose the excision.
Meanwhile,
farmers in the Mt. Kenya region on March 6 uprooted beacons put
by surveyors in Hombe Forest, which has been earmarked for excision.
They warned
the government surveyors that they will "not sit and watch them
destroy the forest." This is the second confrontation on government
surveyors after the Ogiek intercepted
some surveyors in Mau Forest and confiscated their equipment.
One Ogiek
youth was arrested and charged with a capital offense.
In a related
development, a meeting bringing together nongovernmental organizations
and community-based organizations will be held in Nairobi on May
8 to discuss and oppose the intended excision of forestland in
Kenya.
The meeting
will among other things discuss the state of forests, the future
of forests, and the implication of the intended degazettement
of forests.
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