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Ogiek community claim unfair treatment in Mau evictions

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A section of the Mau Forest. FILE PHOTO | NMG

The Ogiek Community living in the Maasai-Mau water catchment area have faulted the mode of their eviction from the area, saying that, they, being forest conservers, are now unfairly targeted alongside the real destroyers of the forests.

The community’s members, residing in the Maasai-Mau Trust land, which they say is their native land, according to the provisions of section 70 of the Native Land Ordinance of 1938, say they have inhabited the area since 1933.

The government however, through involved authorities have been inhumanely evicting members of the community from their native land, without resettling them elsewhere nor offering compensation, according to Bishop Johnson Kiptanui, the chairperson of their welfare group, Ogiek-Kipsigis Assimilation of Maasai-Mau Trust land.

According to him, thus far, about 2,000 members of the community have been evicted from their land, and no word on their compensation and resettlement given.

Bishop Kiptanui says their woes began in 1977, in the form of harassments by the then regime.

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However, these have persistently escalated in the latter years, until in 2008, when the Mwai Kibaki-Raila Odinga regime formed a taskforce led by Hassan Nuur, to make clear demarcations between Ol Bosi-Moru Forest, which belongs to the government, and the community's trust land.

Six years later however, during the subsequent regime, five group ranches; Sisiyan, Nkaroni, Enoosokon, Enakishomi and Reyio group ranches, which had hitherto emerged and backed by some politicians, encroached into the trust land, taking a larger portion of the 17,000ha, in which the 100,000 members of the Ogiek community lived, and forcing them to the peripheries.

"It is the owners of the group ranches, in which some politicians from the region have vested interests, who are propagating the destruction witnessed in the water catchment area today; us, as Ogiek Community, are naturally conservers of the forestlands, and hardly ever engage in deforestation nor dilapidating the land" said Bishop Kiptanui.

According to him, currently up to 40,000 individuals, christened “acceptees of group ranches”, from neighbouring counties have been brought in and settled in the now defunct group ranches, after purchasing parcels of land therein.

"It is them, who are not versed in forest conservation, who are dilapidating the forest. But the government, in its ongoing evictions, have targeted the whole lot; including us the natives of the forest; most of whom have no formal education to defend ourselves," he said.

Bishop Kiptanui points out that two court cases are still ongoing to determine the extent of the boundaries of the trust land, and an injunction order had been issued to the Kenya Forest Services (KFS), Kenya Wildlife Services (KWS), County Government of Narok, and Director of Survey, to cease the evictions at least until the cases have been heard and settled, a directive which has however gone unheeded.

Richard Langat, a resident of Maasai-Mau pointed out that the eviction exercise has largely involved burning of homesteads, churches, schools and crops they grow, which have thus far resulted in many of their members’ dislodgment, and more set to face the same fate as the exercise continues in the coming weeks.

"We are not against protection of forests; in fact, as our maxim, we strongly support the process. However, due to intrusion from others, for their own personal interests, we now have been caught up in a scuffle that should not be ours. We have now been forced out of our ancestral land, because others encroached in, and embarked on destroying the forest, which the government is itself trying to protect, just as we did," said Bishop Kiptanui.

The evictions, which began earlier this month, targeting to get illegal settlers out of the 146,000-hectare Maasai-Mau Forest, is panning out to be a humanitarian crisis as hundreds of families are now camping in churches and schools adjacent to the forest, with many appealing to the government to give them alternative relocating spaces.

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