UN human rights experts* have expressed grave concerns about continuous encroachment on traditional Maasai lands and housing, accompanied by a lack of transparency in, and consultation with the Maasai Indigenous Peoples, during decision making and planning. This trend most recently culminated in security forces’ violence against the Maasai Indigenous Peoples who were protecting their ancestral land in the Loliondo Division of Ngorongoro District, in northern Tanzania.

Tanzanian authorities must immediately halt the violent forced eviction of the Indigenous Maasai community in Loliondo, and launch an urgent investigation into the security crackdown which has left dozens of people injured, many missing and a police officer killed, Amnesty International said today.

In ‘The Invention of Green Colonialism’, Guillaume Blanc has laid bare the colonial roots of the West’s drive to ‘save’ African wildlife and landscapes from the people of Africa. Such policies today often come in the guise of ‘sustainable development’ and the like. The bottom line, in Blanc’s view, is that as the West often lays waste to its own environment it imagines an ‘African Eden’ that never existed. The rural poor bear the brunt of this fantasy, which often seems to place the welfare of animals above the people of Africa.

Though a moratorium on evictions has been extended in Brazil, families still face forced removals. Activists are fighting for the right to land amid increasing precarity.

MMG is facing the possibility of a prolonged disruption at its copper mine in Peru after failing to clear the site of all protesters in an operation that has further inflamed tensions with indigenous groups.

• On March 27, Nepali authorities evicted about 100 members of the Indigenous Chepang community living in Chitwan National Park and set fire to their huts.
• They allege the community members are encroaching on national park land, famous for its rhinos and tigers, and building new settlements despite warnings and resettlement plans rolled out by the government.
• However, community members say that only providing shelter, and not land for subsistence farming and their traditional livelihoods, does not solve the community’s problems.
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Uganda: On Feb. 28, President Yoweri Museveni wrote a letter addressing it to Robinah Nabbanja, the Prime Minister. The letter directed her to halt land evictions across Uganda. Museveni said he was using his powers under Article 98(1) and 99(1) of the Constitution that enjoins him to ensure good governance and protect the Constitution, President Museveni directed as follows:

To scale back large land grabs in the country, the Minister of Lands, Housing and Urban Development Judith Nabakooba has ordered resident district commissioners (RDCs) to routinely monitor, inspect and report every month land acquired by large land investors to ensure that land they acquire is not occupied by tenants or customary landowners.

She urged RDCs and the district security committees to heed President Yoweri Museveni’s recent directive stopping land evictions across the country.

According to reliable information received by Indigenous Peoples Rights International (IPRI) and the International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs (IWGIA), the Government of the United Republic of Tanzania is currently planning the eviction of the Maasai Indigenous people from a 1,500 km2 area in their ancestral land located in the Loliondo Division of Ngorongoro District, Arusha Region, east of the Serengeti National Park.

THE fate of 12 000 villagers in Chilonga, Chiredzi, has been effectively sealed after the High Court on Thursday ruled there was “finite wisdom” in gave President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s administration’s decision to evict them.

The controversial decision by government, which courted global outrage, has been raging for almost a year now. High Court judge Justice Joseph Mafusire dismissed an application by villagers in which they were challenging their pending eviction.

High Court judge Justice Martin Mafusire has dismissed an application by Chilonga villagers challenging government’s plans to evict more than 12 000 families from their ancestral land in Chiredzi to pave way for a lucerne grass project.

By Nyashadzashe Ndoro 

Banner photo: Since most of the evicted families were Bengali-speaking Muslims, it was alleged that they are illegal immigrants who had forcibly occupied government land as well as land of indigenous people and also settled on grazing land. (PTI PHOTO.)