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Kenya's Indigenous Honey Hunters Lose Their Forest Home
03/24/00
By Tervil Okoko
NAIROBI, Kenya, March 24, 2000 (ENS) - The Ogiek people of Kenya's central Rift Valley have lost a legal battle
over their habitat and heritage. A Kenyan court handed down a ruling today that the judges characterized as
benefitting the environment after the indigenous community sought to
block a government eviction order to remove them from a natural forest.
The high court, sitting in Nairobi, dismissed the lawsuit that has been going on since May 1999.
"The eviction is for the purpose of saving the whole Kenya from a possible environmental disaster and it is
being carried out for the common good within the statutory powers," judges
Samuel Oguk and Richard Kuloba said in their summary of judgment.
The judges said their verdict was aimed at people who have made homes in forests and are exploiting forest
resources without following the statutory requirements. Yet the Ogiek
have alternative land that was given to them in the colonial days, land which
is not inhospitable, the judges said.
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 had sued the government seeking a declaration that their eviction from Tinet Forest by the government
contravenes their rights to the protection of the law, not to be discriminated against, and to reside in any part of
Kenya. Tinet Forest is located about 250 kilometres (155 miles) west of Nairobi.
The Ogiek wanted a declaration that their right to life had been contravened by forceful eviction from the
forest. They were also seeking orders that the government compensate them and
pay the legal costs.
The court dismissed all their petitions but assigned the legal costs to the Kenyan government.
Identifiable by the traditional regalia of skin-wrapper and a handy club, the Ogiek people are a minority
people living in the Rift Valley. They still hold to their traditional way of
life and regard natural forests as their habitat. They are the only other
indigenous community in Kenya apart from their Maasai neighbors, Caught between a cultural conflict and political
imbalances brought about by modernity and civilization, the Ogiek took the
government of Kenya to court for evicting them from their ancestral forest land last May.
The Ogiek also claim a group of corrupt individuals had invaded forest land previously inhabited by the Ogiek
before they were evicted by the government.
Before the verdict, leaders of the Ogiek community, led by lawyer Juma Kiplenge, complained that the state
tried to intimidate them into dropping the court case by harassing their
spokesmen.
Two community leaders, Ezekiel Kesendany and outspoken former
chief, Joseph Rorogu, are currently on the run from authorities. Kesendany has been grilled by the local
security committee on allegations that he took foreigners to trespass on´Tinet Forest where the community has
resided for ages.
In their view, the government is not honest when it says it is protecting the environment for the common
good. The Ogiek accuse some powerful individuals close to leading politicians of wanting to grab their ancestral land.
Even as the Ogiek shed tears about the loss of their ancestral land, large chunks of this land have already
been from the forest land and given to private individuals.
"It is ironical that the state was very keen to evict the Ogiek on grounds that Tinet is a gazetted forest,
conservation and water catchment area, yet some powerful people are busy
alienating it from the Kiptagich [northern] side," said David
Sitienei, chairman for the Tinet district of KANU, Kenya's ruling
party,
While Sitienei is being criticized for being frank, Kesendany is being hunted for taking officials from the
Kenya Human Rights Commission and Catholic church for a tour of the area
in November last year.
Lawyer for the government of Kenya, Judy Madahan, argued that in 1941 the Ogiek community abandoned the
land they were allocated and went back to the forest.
According to the state, the Ogiek community was given land in Kipsigis Native Reserve but abandoned it.
Madahan said any rights which the Ogieks had in Kipsigis Native Reserve
were voided by a 1970 adjudication.
As result of the lapse, other Kenyans took advantage of the Ogiek's failure to participate in the land
redistribution after independence from Britain in 1963 and registered
themselves as Ogieks for purposes of acquiring the Kipsigis Trust Land.
"The Ogieks have been shortchanged and that is a violation of their right to land and cultural
heritage," says lawyer Juma Kiplenge who has been battling the Ogiek land cases in
court for two years.
Human rights groups accuse the government of being insensitive to the community's basic needs, saying the
Ogiek's right to land and natural habitat has been trampled upon for too
long. They have called upon the government to revoke the eviction so that
the community can live in peace in the forest.
Source: © Environment News Service
(ENS) 2000. All Rights Reserved
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