The
human rights crime continues after the interim stop order by CHRAGG.
Rangers
have sold illegally seized cattle.
Outrageously
malicious lies by Minister Maghembe.
And
outrageously delayed action.
Court
case finally filed by the villages in the East African Court of Justice.
This
blog post is outrageously delayed as well since I wanted to report about the
court case, that’s been delayed, and then filed, but silenced for reasons that
vary according to who you ask. Now it’s allowed to mention it... The previous,
now old, blog post has some updates.
Updated below (Minister Maghembe was fired on 7th October!).
What could not be allowed to happen again, happened,
and like in 2009 the Maasai in western Loliondo division of Ngorongoro district
again suffered a violent and illegal arson attack. From 13th to 26th
August 2017 hundreds of bomas were burned to the ground by rangers from
Serengeti National Park and Ngorongoro Conservation Area assisted by local
Loliondo police – and others, namely OBC and KDU (anti-poaching, close to OBC) rangers
- and thousands of people were left without food or shelter. Cows were dispersed
during this extreme drought, and there was terror and panic everywhere. The
arson started in the Oloosek area of Ololosokwan village where a Serengeti
ranger had shot the herder Parmoson Ololoso* in both legs and one arm on 8th
August, and then the arson continued all the way to Piyaya 90 km further south.
People returning after the illegal evictions were brutally beaten by the
rangers and some arrested and sent to Mugumu at the other side of Serengeti
National Park. Cattle were seized and big fines demanded. All this did not
happen in any protected area, but on village land that per Village Land Act
No.5 of 1999 should be managed by the local villages. The affected villages are
Ololosokwan, Kirtalo (Soitsambu ward), Oloipiri, Olorien, Oloosoitok (Maaloni
ward), Maaloni, Arash, Ormanie (Arash ward), and Piyaya.
This human rights
crime has been committed at a quite unexpected moment. In late 2016 OBC, that
organises hunting for Sheikh Mohammed of Dubai, sent out a press release about
a “report” that they had prepared detailing the necessity of their long-time
wish for turning the 1,500 km2 of village land and important dry season grazing
area next to Serengeti National Park, land that just happens to serve as their
core hunting area, into a “protected area”. PM Majaliwa tasked Arusha RC Gambo
with “solving the conflict” and the RC set up a select committee that on 20
April 2017 presented a rather sad compromise proposal (that’s what’s transpired
even though the report hasn’t even been made public) to the PM. Then nothing
has been heard from PM Majaliwa.
Onesmo Olengurumwa of Tanzania Human Rights Defenders
Coalition sent out a call to immediate intervention already on 13th
August (and I wrote the first blog post), and on the 25th the International
Work Group for Indigenous Affairs (IWGIA) issued an urgent alert, but haven’t
updated their information. Then, on 30th August, Onesmo Olengurumwa,
together with four representatives from Loliondo (Kipilangat Kaura, Mushao Naing'isa, Pirius
Maingo, and Molongo Sikoyo) met with the government organ
Commission for Human Rights and Good Governance (CHRAGG, that hadn’t been of
any help at all in 2009) to hand in a formal complaint, which had effect since
CHRAGG on 4th September issued an interim stop order demanding that
the government explain the operation – but brutal beatings, arrests and seizure
of cattle continue anyway! On 7th September Survival International
sent a protest letter to various Tanzanian authorities and international
organisations. The 12th-18th September issue of the
Jamhuri paper, in which Manyerere Jackton indulges in hate speech and
defamation of the Maasai of Loliondo, had Survival’s letter and the words “NGO ya Uingereza yajaribu Magufuli”
(NGO from England tests Magufuli) on the frontpage, but I have still not been
sent the “article”! Onesmo Olengurumwa was again “questioned about his
citizenship” (a pure intimidation tactic) on 20th September…
On Monday 18th September, the rangers – I
don’t know who exactly gave the direct order, but obeying orders can no longer
be an excuse here – went further into lawlessness and depravity starting to
auction off cows illegally seized on village land and impounded at Klein’s
gate! Many cows impounded by the rangers had already died. This is a purposeful
and totally illegal destruction of the livelihoods of the affected people. The
beatings by rangers continued during this illegal sale, and Parketuyan Toroge had
to be admitted to hospital in Mugumu in critical condition. I’ve been told that
it’s feared that one herder who had already lost many cows in the drought could
commit suicide. The Nipashe paper quoted
Ololosokwan village chairman Kerry Dokonyo (translated): “We ask President Magufuli to help us intervening in this issue, because
we are subject to extreme abuse. Leaders don’t want to help us. What they want
is to remove us from this village without following the law. They use force.”
After
burning our bomas and houses they have begun seizing cattle in the village
driving them to the national park area and locking them up while claiming that
they entered, when it’s not true.” Some of those affected were interviewed by Deutsche
Welle Swahili and Ayo TV, and mentioned – besides the illegal seizing of cows
on village land following the arson attack - being given incorrect receipts
when “buying” their own cows.
On 23rd September, after heading the
commissioning ceremony of officer cadets President Magufuli addressed the
nation at Sheikh Amri Abeid Stadium in Arusha. Among the many placards held by
the audience, those against Maghembe, OBC and the abuse and attacks against
land rights in Loliondo stood out. “OBC
inatunyanyasa Loliondo, Maghembe ni jipu, utuondolee” (“OBC oppresses us in
Loliondo. Maghembe is a boil. Remove him”. The president likes to use
boils/abscesses as metaphors.), was one example. Instead of addressing the
concerns of the protestors, the President ordered the placards to be collected
so that he could read them later.
On Thursday 21st September 2017, a court
case was finally filed in the East African Court of Justice: Ololosokwan,
Kirtalo, Olorien and Arash versus the Attorney General, the Minister for
Natural Resources and Tourism, Jumanne Maghembe, and the Ngorongoro District
Commisssioner, Rashid Mfaume Taka.
The
criminals
As mentioned, on 17th August a press statement
from the Ministry for Natural Resources and Tourism quoting Ngorongoro DC
Rashid Mfaume Taka, explained that the operation was conducted by Ngorongoro
Security Committee, Serengeti National Park and Ngorongoro Conservation Area
Authority, and that the aim was to protect the ecosystem and the tourism
business. The arson on village land wasn’t denied, but outrageously explained
as “just” five kilometres from the park boundary. Mfaume Taka, a former
university lecturer, who was believed to be a new kind of DC, is now treating
people as “problem animals” and pretending never to have heard about neither
Tanzanian law nor human rights. This shows the colonial roots of the office of DC,
managing the natives, and also shows how it turns anyone into a psychopath. With
this human rights crime OBC’s own journalists (Manyerere Jackton who has
written over 40 articles full of hate speech and defamation of the Loliondo
Maasai, and Masyaga Matinyi who occasionally joins him) went from making up
crazy stories about the DC to treating his every word as the truth. In both the
Mtanzania and the Jamhuri the DC says that the operation is not at all about
the 1,500 km2 wanted for a “protected area” by the hunters from Dubai, since PM
Majaliwa is yet to say something about the proposal.
Several Tanzanian ministers for natural resources and
tourism have gone out of their way to please the hunters from Dubai (see the
previous blog post), but Jumanne Maghembe has taken it a step further… While
the RC’s committee was working on finding a “solution to the conflict” on 28th
January 2017 Maghembe showed up in Loliondo, and flanked by OBC’s journalists he
declared that the 1,500 km2 had to be declared a protected area before the end
of March. Then in March, Maghembe took the parliamentary standing committee on
lands, natural resources and tourism on such a tour of Loliondo that several
committee members members - Joseph Kasheku Musukuma (MP for Geita Vijijini, CCM), Paulina Gekul (MP for
Babati Mjini, Chadema), Godwin Mollel (MP for Siha, Chadema) and Omari Kigoda
(MP for Handeni Mjini, CCM) - protested about being used to rubber stamp Maghembe’s plan
for giving the land to OBC. After the start of the human rights crime, apparently
without having read the statement from his own ministry, Maghembe lied to media
that the 1,500 km2 already was a protected area that had to be emptied of
people and cattle, and that this was the purpose of the operation. On Azam TV
Maghembe was given 30 undisturbed minutes to, in front of the map from OBC’s
draft District Land Use Plan that for obvious reasons was strongly rejected by
the district council in 2011, keep repeating his lies, and repeating in a
gossipy and not that well-rehearsed way some of the defamatory lies cooked up
by OBC’s journalist about Loliondo land activists. My name – but unfortunately
not the name of my blog so that people could see for themselves – was mentioned
as someone who’d been chased out of Tanzania and was doing “business” inciting
the Maasai, as if people who’ve been fighting for their land since long before
I could find Loliondo on a map needed incitement and as if you could do
“business” blogging about land grabbing “investors” (though maybe you can if
you write about how “philanthropic” they are). Not even remembering who to
insult, Maghembe added that there’s “another one” who has a Tanzanian passport
without being Tanzanian. The fact is that anyone who speaks up for land rights
and human rights in Loliondo will be accused of being “Kenyan”. It doesn’t
matter if you’re born and bred in Tanzania, have had a Tanzanian passport for
many years, or even held political office in the ruling party. There’s one way
and one way only of not suffering this cruel harassment by authorities, and
that’s being a friend of land grabbing “investors”.
I
shouldn’t have to repeat this…
The same lies as Minister Maghembe is now telling
media, were already told by his predecessor Kagasheki in 2013, until the at
that time PM Pinda put stop to him and declared the obvious: that the land is
village land. The Maasai of Loliondo already lost considerable land in 1958
with the creation of Serengeti National Park. Loliondo Game Controlled Area was
also declared in the 1950s and it regulated hunting without interfering with
local people’s activities. With the Wildlife Conservation Act of 1974 that
regulated hunting in all of Tanzania the function of the LGCA changed to
limiting the borders of hunting blocks, and OBC’s hunting block is the whole of
the 4,000 km2 Loliondo CGA, which is more than the whole of Loliondo division
and includes, among other areas, agricultural land, forest, the two “towns” of
Wasso and Loliondo, the DC’s office and Wasso Hospital. People like Maghembe
base their lies on the Wildlife Conservation Act of 2009 that came into effect
in 2010 and in which GCAs are protected areas, exactly like game reserves, and
Maghembe was initially also talking about the 1,500 km2 as a “game reserve”.
Though this act also says that village land and GCA can’t overlap and that “within
twelve months of coming into operation of this act and after consultation of
the relevant authorities, review the list of game controlled areas for
ascertaining potentially justifying continuation of control of any such area”.
Therefore, OBC funded a draft District Land Use Plan that proposed turning the
1,500 km2 of important grazing land on which they hunt (there isn’t much
wildlife around the DC office …) into the new kind of GCA, and thereby evict
the Maasai that depend on this land. This irregular (it didn’t involve the
concerned villages) plan was strongly rejected by Ngorongoro District Council
since it would have led to destruction of livelihoods, environmental
degradation and increased conflict with neighbours.
All land in Loliondo is village land per section 7(1)
of the Village Land Act No. 5 of 1999 since it fulfils the following
definitions - one definition being sufficient to qualify as village land.
-Land within the boundaries of villages registered
according to the Local Government
(District Authorities) Act, 1982.
-Land demarcated as village land under any
administrative procedure or in accord with any statutory or customary law.
-General land that villagers have been using for the
twelve years preceding the enactment of the Village Land Act, 1999. This
includes land customarily used for grazing cattle or
passage of cattle (TNRF, 2011).
There hasn’t been any decision, proper procedure, or
even improper procedure to turn the 1,500 km2 osero into any kind of “protected
area” – only lies and human rights crime.
No
need to use “allegedly” about OBC
Besides playing divide and rule, “making friends” in
high and low places, and inciting conflict, OBC have at times been very open with their campaign for turning
the 1,500 km2 osero into a “protected area”.
In 2009 – a year with a severe drought, like 2017 -
OBC’s rangers together with the paramilitary Field Force Unit illegally burned
hundreds of bomas, and caused the same kind of suffering as has now hit Loliondo.
In the chaos of that human rights crime, 7-year old Nashipai Gume from Arash
was lost and hasn’t been found, ever since.
In late 2009, OBC’s managing director, Isaack Mollel,
boasted to media about having donated TShs. 156 million for land use planning.
As mentioned, the resulting draft District Land Use Plan was revealed as
proposing the 1,500 km2 as a “protected area”, and was strongly rejected by the
District Council in early 2011.
Always when interviewed, Mollel has claimed that the
land belongs to the government that has given the hunting block to OBC,
sometimes even in the same article as OBC’s “friends” are saying that they want
to work with this “good investor”, which bad “Kenyans” won’t let them do, and
that there isn’t any risk for the land, since it’s protected by the law as
village land…
And in November 2016 a press release from OBC about
their “report” detailing the need for alienating the 1,500 km2 was used by
several newspapers – and then presented to “stakeholders” when PM Majaliwa tasked
RC Gambo with “solving the conflict”. I have a problem with words like
“stakeholders” and “conflict” – even if I’ve often used the latter myself - when
it’s the case of criminals abusing the rightsholders.
 |
| Some of the gifts from OBC to the Miinistry of Natural Resources and Tourism to be used against "poaching" in Loliondo. From OBC's 2007 calender. |
There are others who are inciting this crime as well. As
mentioned in the previous blog post, the Serengeti chief game warden Mwakilema
told Maghembe’s co-opted standing committee in March that funds from Germany’s
Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) through the
state owned German Development Bank (KfW), for a Serengeti Ecosystem
Development and Conservation Project, were subject to the approval of the land
use plan that would alienate the 1,500 km2 for a protected area. This hasn’t
been denied nor confirmed by the Germans. Then, too many people from the
tourism and NGO businesses seem to have an urge, whenever they see anything
about human rights crime against the Maasai, to frantically comment about any
real or ideologically imagined fault with Maasai society.
Inexplicable
behaviour by some leaders
Many leaders in Loliondo are strangely slow and
inactive in reacting to the ongoing human rights crime. Increased repression
with illegal arrests and malicious prosecution could explain the fear of some
of them, and so could the confusion after their friend, the DC, became a human
rights criminal, and their “ally” the RC isn’t saying anything at all, but too
many people have told me that the explanation is that the leaders are selfish
and useless. Most shocking and bewildering is the lack of reaction by the MP
for Ngorongoro, William Olenasha, who was elected not least because of his
seriousness in land issues. All I talked with seemed to trust him as a person
(so did I, very much), even if not being supporters of his party, but now his
legitimacy is widely, almost unanimously, questioned. Apart from in social
media on 14th August having said he’s very sorry, that it’s not
illegal to reside near the boundary, and that he and other leaders are working
hard to stop the operation, Olenasha has been completely silent! Only on 20th
September the MP commented in a very restricted access group (of which I’m not
a member) saying that he must work in another way as a deputy minister than as
a MP, and that he is writing to and meeting relevant authorities – but didn’t
provide any copy of such writings, and talked in a strangely detached way about
defending the land just like important services like water, electricity, roads
etc… I’m hearing many complaints about how some councillors, and not least the
council chairman, are delaying action. Only
one councillor has been speaking up strongly in media and that’s Yannick
Ndoinyo of Ololosokwan, while the councillor for Soitsambu is also said to be
active, together with the village chairmen of Ololosokwan, Kirtalo, Olorien and
Arash. Time will tell exactly who has been useful and it will be reported in
this blog. Then the judgement will come in 2020…
The human rights crime must be stopped, the victims
helped, and the perpetrators punished! Where are those who were so loud when
the ongoing atrocities were just a vociferous threat and even when they were
less than that?
There have been some short rains, but it’s still the
peak of the drought season of a drought year.
Updates:
On 25th September while herding sheep and
goats in the Oloosek area Simanga Parmwat was badly beaten by OBC rangers.
The de-humanization spirit has spread south to NCA
where rangers on the 26th shot two pregnant donkeys and subjected
six people to beatings at Oldupai (Olduvai).
On 27th September KDU rangers took away 600
cows on village land in Enalubo.
It’s been ridiculously
difficult to obtain exact information, but on 25th September 7 bomas
were burned in Ilmasheren and 2 were burned in Oldashi. Both areas are in
Oloipiri village under “investor-friendly” leadership. The rangers also
physically assaulted people and stole a motorbike. The same day the rangers
burned an unknown number of bomas in Oltulelei in Olorien village.
On 5th
October the senator of Narok County in Kenya, Ledama Olekina, took the ward
councillor, the village chairman and a couple of other representatives from
Ololosokwan to see the Kenyan opposition leader Raila Odinga and seek his
support defending their land, asking him to speak with President Magufuli. Raila agreed to do so.
On 6th
October Buffalo Luxury Camp in Oloosek extracted fines for cows that had
entered the camp, which the company doesn’t have any authority to do.
On 7th
October Serengeti rangers illegally seized cows on village land near Klein’s
airstrip, and detained them at Klein’s gate.
In a
cabinet reshuffle on 7th October Maghembe was removed as Minister
for Natural Resources. This is cause for celebration, but sadly he’s replaced
by an ignorant loud-mouth who has been boasting about his lack of regard for
human rights: the former Deputy Minister for Health Hamisi Kigwangalla.
Susanna Nordlund
*earlier spelled “Pormoson”. Parmoson Ololoso who was
shot in Oloosek by a Serengeti National Park ranger on 8th August
(five days before the arson attack and human rights crime started) was taken to
Narok by his brother in law Nicholas Kipees, since Parmoson was discharged from
Wasso Hospital without enough treatment. A CT scan was done and it was
discovered that two vessels in Parmoson’s right thigh were badly injured. He
was referred to Kenyatta National Hospital in Nairobi for surgery. The brother
in law came with Parmoson from Nairobi, and they returned on 22nd
September for the operation – always using taxis, since public transport isn’t
possible – and were told that the cost is estimated to KShs 200,000 – 300,000!
Parmoson could not be admitted to hospital before paying a deposit of KShs
100,000, which the family is now trying to gather.
Assistance towards Parmoson’s treatment is very
welcome!
The Mpesa number of Parmoson's brother in law Nicholas
Kipees is: +245 729 054 132
Update: Parmoson has got help from Narok county government even though he isn't even a Kenyan.
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