About 4,000 victims of Thursday’s demolitions on the controversial East African Portland Cement Company land in Athi River have denied claims by police that the evictions were effected to flash out criminals.
The Ndama Mavoko Welfare Society members said they are law abiding squatters who pay taxes.
“Being poor is not criminal,” group’s chairman Paul Wambua said. He said 18 groups had been affected.
Wambua said they occupied the land after the EAPCC exhausted minerals used to produce cement and other products on since it belonged to their ancestors .
“This is our ancestral land which we’ve ocuppied for more than 30 years. The colonial government allocated it to the cement company to extract minerals, which it has already exhausted. For all those years, we have been rearing livestock on it as EAPCC does its mining,” Wambua told reporters on Saturday in Athi River.
He said the squatters do not have problems with the company but “some tycoons from Nairobi who have invaded the same land”.
“These tycoons have severally attacked our people, demolished houses and other structures on the land in attempt to evict them,” he said.
“On Wednesday, we were in court over the same land but surprisingly, when we got to the land on Thursday, we found them demolishing houses under police guard.
