By Chris Lang
The East African Court of Justice has dismissed a case brought by four Maasai villages in Tanzania. In September 2018, the villagers won an important victory when the Court granted an injunction prohibiting the Tanzanian government from evicting the Maasai communities. The case has now been “dismissed for lack of merits”.
The violence that the Maasai have faced, and continue to face, in the name of conservation should come as a warning that the proposed target under the Convention on Biological Diversity of protecting 30% of the planet by 2030 (30×30) threatens the lives and livelihoods of millions of Indigenous People and local communities.
The 2017 evictions
The villagers took out the case against the Tanzanian government (Reference No. 10 of 2017) following violent forced evictions that took place in 2017. The International Working Group for Indigenous Affairs (IWGIA) wrote that “forced and illegal evictions of Maasai pastoralists and serious human rights violations are right now happening in Tanzania.
Houses were burned down and livestock lost. Maasai people were harassed, threatened, and forced to pay fines. The Maasai faced shortages of food and water. After being evicted the Maasai were forced to sleep outside, with no shelter.
The Citizen reported that 19 people were arrested, and 11 others were seriously wounded by rangers accused of using live bullets. More than 5,800 homes were damaged, leaving 20,000 Maasai homeless.
The Tanzanian government ignored the court injunction
The September 2018 injunction prohibited the Tanzanian government from evicting villagers, seizing their livestock, destroying property, or harassing the Maasai living in the four villages of Ololosokwan, Oloirien, Kirtalo, and Arash.
The Tanzanian government ignored the injunction on several occasions. In June 2022, police and military used live bullets to clear the Maasai from their land in the name of conservation.
Evicted from the Serengeti. Threatened with eviction from Loliondo
The Maasai’s struggle over their land goes back many decades. Many of the Maasai who are today facing violence and eviction were either themselves evicted from the Serengeti National Park when it was created in 1959 by British colonial officials or have family members who were evicted back then.
In a statement put out earlier this year, Fiore Longo of Survival International says that,
This violence that we see in Tanzania is the reality of conservation in Africa and Asia: daily violations of the human rights of Indigenous Peoples and local communities so that the ‘rich’ can hunt and go on safari. These abuses are systemic and are built into the dominant model of conservation based on racism and colonialism. The theory is that humans – especially non-whites – in Protected Areas are a threat to the environment. But Indigenous Peoples have been living there for generations: these territories are now important nature conservation areas precisely because the original inhabitants took such good care of their land and wildlife. We can no longer turn a blind eye to human rights abuses committed in the name of ‘conservation.’ This model of conservation is deeply inhumane and ineffective and must be changed now.
In 1992, the Tanzanian government did a deal with Brigadier Mohamed Abdul Rahim Al Ali, deputy minister of defence of the United Arab Emirates under which Otterlo Business Corporation received hunting rights on an area of 400,000 hectares in Loliondo and Sale divisions of Ngorongorongo District. The land is to the east of the Serengeti National Park.
Otterlo Business Corporation organises hunting for the Dubai royal family.
The Maasai communities living there were not consulted about the 1992 deal with Otterlo Business Corporation, despite the fact they have lived for generations on this land. For years, Otterlo Business Corporation has been lobbying to turn 150,000 hectares of land that is important dry season grazing land for the Maasai’s livestock into a protected area.
In June 2022, the Tanzanian government demarcated this area of land. Dozens of Maasai were seriously injured, several were arrested, and thousands were evicted. Since the violent evictions, the Maasai have been unable to graze their livestock in what is now the “Pololeti Game Controlled Area”.
The East African Court of Justice’s judgment
A team of lawyers from the Pan African Lawyers Union represented the villagers. A press release from the Pan African Lawyers Union sums up the findings in the East African Court of Justice’s judgment as follows:
- Positively, the Court asserts that it has jurisdiction over the matter; that the case is admissible (including on having being filed within time, and that there is NO requirement to exhaust local remedies by going to Courts of the Respondent State that deal with land matters).
- Also positively, the Court accepts the principle that there is village land separate from Serengeti National Park (SNP). The Court does NOT say that the government has the right to evict the villagers from the 1,500 km2 of village land. It just says that the Applicants have NOT proven that the 2017 evictions took place on village land and not in SNP.
- The Court contends that the witnesses’ testimony contradicted each other and was generally insufficient.
- The Court knocks out the detailed Report of the Expert Witness who testified on behalf of the Applicants, on the basis that he was a Kenyan national, and did not possess a Work Permit to undertake work in Tanzania.
- On the above two bases, the Court determines that there was insufficient evidence from the Applicants to demonstrate that they were evicted from village land, and not from the Serengeti National Park (SNP).
Intimidation and threats
Since the legal case started, witnesses have faced intimidation and threats. The Oakland Institute reports that an expert surveyor witness “suddenly abandoned the case after sustained harassment from the government”.
Villagers brought in another surveyor from Kenya who submitted a report of satellite imagery showing that the burned Maasai bomas (homesteads) were outside of the Serengeti National Park. The Court rejected the evidence because the surveyor, “failed to abide by the necessary statutory requirements to carry out survey work in Tanzania as a non-citizen”, the Oakland Institute writes.
Anuradha Mittal, Oakland Institute Executive Director, comments,
That the ruling focuses on this technicality instead of the findings of the survey, indicates that the court failed in its duties and succumbed to pressure from the Tanzanian government.
In fact, as Susanna Nordlund, who has been writing in detail about the Maasai for many years, points out Tanzania National Parks (TANAPA) produced a map in 2017 that clearly shows that most of the bomas were illegally burned on village land.
Nordlund provides several pieces of additional evidence that the burning took place outside the National Park.
Anuradha Mittal comments that,
The failure of the East African Court of Justice to hold the Tanzanian government accountable for blatantly abusing human rights of the Maasai in Loliondo is a travesty for all Indigenous communities on the continent.
And the Oakland Institute quotes a Maasai community leader saying that, “Again it seems the government is happy for injustices done to our people. . . We have been very much disappointed.”
PHOTO Credit: Elderly Maasai man wounded in the June 2022 military attack on protesters. © Survival
This article illustrates the usual program of wealthy nations to force the required percentage of conservation area into locations with small populations or populations of presumed lack of international importance. Instead, let’s try this – Depopulate the Great Lakes watershed by removing any trace of settler effects. Then depopulate the Rhine River valley and then the Nile lowlands and delta. That hurts, doesn’t it!