Wanjiru Macharia
17 November 2009
Nairobi — A lobby group on Tuesday accused the government of violating the human rights of settlers evicted from South Western Mau.
Kenya National Commission on Human Rights official Samuel Tororei claimed after a fact finding mission in the affected areas that the government was subjecting the people, who were now living in makeshift structures, to suffering.
The settlers left the forest under duress on realising that there were plans to use force to get them out, he said. "Contrary to reports that the hundreds of families left the natural resource on their own volition, they opted to leave under duress after armed officers were deployed there," said Dr Tororei.
He told reporters in Nakuru that the government was creating another batch of internal refugees by the haphazard and uncoordinated way it carried out the evictions. Women and children were suffering in the cold as the rains pounded the region.
Dr Tororei also told the government not to assume that all of the settlers in the Mau Complex -- more than 400,000 -- had original homes to go back to, because most of them sold their land to buy the farms in the forest. "The government should buy land for the evictees or allocate money to compensate them, before carrying out the evictions," said Dr Tororei.
The commission doubted the government's commitment to resolving the Mau issue amicably because it stood accused of gross violations of human rights, he said.
The settlers started trooping out of the forest last Monday following the expiry of a 14-day eviction notice issued by the Kenya Forestry Service and the subsequent deployment of more than 300 armed forest rangers, who pitched tent at Saino, Kapkembu and Kiptagich, on the border of the 2001 excisions and South Western Mau.
Pupils have dropped out of school because the institutions were closed following the movement. However, Dr Tororei commended the rangers and other security agencies in the forest for being professional and not resorting to violence.
Be the first to Write a Comment!
Copyright © 2009 The Nation. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). To contact the copyright holder directly for corrections — or for permission to republish or make other authorized use of this material, click here.
AllAfrica aggregates and indexes content from over 125 African news organizations, plus more than 200 other sources, who are responsible for their own reporting and views. Articles and commentaries that identify allAfrica.com as the publisher are produced or commissioned by AllAfrica.
