Maasai in Tanzania Move to New Homes Amid Eviction Effort

Tanzanian authorities say violent clashes on June 10 between police and ethnic Maasai people they were trying to evict from a conservation area left one officer dead and scores of Maasai shot and wounded. While rights groups have condemned Tanzanian authorities for what they call unlawful evictions, some Maasai families say they had no choice but to move from their ancestral home to a reservation 600 kilometers away.

Government officials say the Maasai are being asked to voluntarily leave their homes, located in parts of the Ngorongoro Conservation Area. They also say the goal of the eviction is to protect a conservation area from a growing Maasai population and their cattle. But activists say they are being forced out to make way for trophy hunting and conservation zones. Onesmo Ole Ngurumwa, the executive director of Tanzania Human Rights Defenders Coalition, said they have been advising citizens to sit together with the government and write down their recommendations, and they have done that.

About 27 Maasai families already have shifted from Ngorongoro to Msomera village, where the government provides those evicted with a house and land where they can let their cattle graze.