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Court
to examine Ogiek petition on November 21
by John Kamau, Rights Features Service
(October
8, 2001) After the hearing of the much-awaited Ogiek land case
in Nairobi flopped last week, the case will now be mentioned on
November 21.
A mention
is an official perusal of the filed documents and heralds the
setting of the hearing dates.
When the
case came up for hearing last week the Ogiek lawyers found that
the government had sought more time to write a replying affidavit
and the High Court set November 21 as the day to mention the case
and set a new hearing date.
"We
think the hearing may have to be done next year," predicts
Kimaiyo Towett, the Ogiek spokesperson.
Last week
before the case opened up in Nairobi, Rift Valley provincial commissioner
Peter Raburu had called Ogiek elders and asked them to drop the
case. The commissioner, who is a government chief administrator
of the region, was told by the elders that the case will have
to go on.
"We
have briefed our lawyers on that meeting," said Towett.
The current
case challenges the government's decision to degazette some parts
of Mau Forest land and remove them from the protection of the
Forest Act.
Such removal
would give the government a chance to settle other people on the
Ogiek land and deny the Ogiek a right to their cultural grounds.
The Ogiek
argue that the degazettement should not be carried before a constitutional
case they filed in 1997 regarding the fate of Mau Forest and their
legal status within the forest is heard and determined. They also
argue that the decision to degazette the Mau Forest was in contempt
of a previous court order granted to the community.
Last week
a related case filed at the High Court sitting in the western
Kenya town of Eldoret allowed the government to degazette the
intended forests, including the Mau Forest.
The Eldoret
case had been filed by environmental lawyer Nixon Sifuna and sought
to stop the government from excising some 167,000 acres of forest
land, 70 percent which is in Mau Forest.
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