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Kenyan Government evicts
traditional landholders while promoting logging
afrol.com, 15 January 2000 -
In Kenya's East Mau Forest, the conflict is growing between the
Government and logging companies on one side, and the Ogiek people
and organisations supporting them on the other side. The
Government is accused of defying a High Court order by continuing
to allocate the Ogiek people's land claims.
The Ogiek are an local hunting and
honey-gathering people that have lived in the Mau Forest in
central Rift Valley province for hundreds of years. The Mau Forest
is a forest reserve, a home for about 10,000 Ogiek indigenous
people and a water catchments for major rivers and lakes in the
region.
According to rights groups
supporting the Ogiek, the Kenyan government is now "forcing
them out of the forest, insisting that the area is environmentally
protected under the country's Forest Act. But Kenya is allowing
powerful logging companies to cut down trees in the forest, and
much of Kenya's protected forests have been illegally sold or
given to developers."
For years, Ogiek representatives
have asked President Daniel arap Moi and other Kenyan officials to
take action to protect them. When these requests proved
unsuccessful, the Ogiek went to court in 1997 to stop Kenyan
officials from surveying and allocating the Ogiek's land to others.
The Ogiek's lawsuit eventually went to the Kenyan High Court, who
dismissed the case in March 2000.
As Kenyan authorities began with
the demarcation and allocation of Ogiek land in East Mau Forest
earlier in January this year, a new phase in the conflict started.
"This is purely a Government project which is legal, and
anybody interfering with it will face the full force of the law,"
said the Elburgon District Officer, who was accompanied by the
police and a team of surveyors, on 4 January. The demarcation is
seen as a violation of a High Court order by Ogiek activists, and
the Ogiek Welfare Council protested against the presence of the
Government land surveyors.
The Ogiek are now urging people to
lobby Kenyan officials to stop logging companies from cutting down
trees in the forest and to pass legislation that would give them
the right to inhabit Mau Forest and traditionally conserve the
forest. A website provided to them by an American organisation
helps them in doing so (www.ogiek.org).
Several non-governmental
organisations (NGOs) now urge the Kenyan Government to stop the
demarcation and allocation of land in the country's East Mau
Forest, "threatening the homeland of the indigenous Ogiek
people." They claim "the government's action violates an
order by the High Court of Kenya," which issued an injunction
on October 15, 1997 stopping the demarcation and allocation of
land in East Mau until the Ogiek's application for action could be
resolved by the court.
- By defying a court order, Kenya's
government has shown a callous disregard for the rule of law, says
Bobson Wong, executive director of the New York-based Digital
Freedom Network (DFN), one of the many NGOs now supporting the
Ogiek people in their fight. DFN has even helped the Ogiek making
a website doing the PR work and addressing environmental and human
rights journalists. Other NGOs supporting the Ogiek include the
Kenya-based Rights News and Features Service, the Maasai
Environmental Resource Coalition, and the U.S.-based Cultural
Survival.
The Ogiek, about 5,000 families,
are officially referred to in Kenya as Dorobo. They are a hunting
and honey gathering community who mainly farm bees in the 100
mile-long Mau highland forest along the Western escarpment of the
great Rift Valley in Molo South, Nakuru District. Some are engaged
in subsistence farming or livestock rearing.
They are seen as the only
"indigenous community" in Kenya apart from their Maasai
neighbours. The Maasai, used to the hard hand of the Government in
environmental and resource questions, are helping out their
neighbours in this important legal battle.
In the mid-1970s, the Maasai
themselves were abruptly relocated from land that was subsequently
enclosed within Amboseli National Park, one of the continent's
most famed wildlife reserves. In response, Maasai groups began a
systematic effort to kill many of Amboseli's most prized tourist
attractions, including dozens of leopards, elephants, and rhinos.
This program of extermination was undertaken as part of a
desperate protest campaign designed to counter the growing threat
tour operations posed to Maasai land rights.
Although a compromise later was
reached, the Maasai, just as the Ogiek, have lost much of their
traditional land rights to profitable Government environmental
interests. In both the Ogiek case and the Maasai/Amboseli case,
Kenyan Government plaid on old colonial legislation and forced
eviction to win its claims. The Kenyan High Court, accepting the
Ogiek eviction from the Mau Forest, was leaning on environmental
legislation and a colonial order from 1941, allocating other lands
to the Ogiek.
Source: Based Rights News & Features, Ogiek.Org and
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