We'll appeal ruling upholding Maasai eviction — rights groups

Rights groups plan to appeal the East African Court of Justice decision upholding Tanzania's plan to evict the Maasai living near Serengeti National Park.

They made the announcement at a press conference on Monday at the Kenya Human Rights Commission. They will appeal to the court itself. 

They also want immediate and unconditional release of 24 Maasai elders arrested in June by police during a protest.

Maasai herders had petitioned to stop the Tanzanian government from evicting them from 1,500 square kilometres bordering Serengeti National Park. They have lived on the land for generations.

The EACJ ruled the Maasai failed to show they had been evicted from their village land and not from Serengeti Park itself. 

The court also found that witnesses who alleged violent evictions failed to give evidence proving injury or loss.

“Apart from the testimonies, how else did the court expect the community to demonstrate they were evicted from their village lands?" asked David Malombe, executive director of the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights.

"What other proof of ownership did the court require beyond the erected beacons?” he asked.

The court in 2018 issued an interim order halting evictions.

KHCR accused the Tanzanian government of disobeying the orders and proceeding with the "inhumane evictions.

“The community was evicted from their land in 2017, after which a heavy military presence was deployed in the area to prevent accessibility,” he said.

The rights organisations accused international communities of pushing for the evictions against consideration of the human rights of the indigenous people.

The organisations include the Kenya Land Alliance, Maasai Unity Agenda, Tanzanian Maasai Refugees in Kenya, Manyoito Pastoralist Integrated Development Organisation, (MPIDO) and Kenya Human Rights Commission.

“International conservation organisations, which have always portrayed indigenous communities as a threat to conservation, encouraged the evictions of the Maasai from their lands,” Taiko Lemaiyan, Tanzania crisis coordinator of the Maasai Unity Agenda, said. 

“The Maasai were violently evicted and their homes razed in Loliondo by the government in 2017. The court found that testimonies about violent evictions relied on hearsay. It chose to turn a blind eye to the illegal arrests, shootings, and displacement suffered by the applicants including women and children,” he said.

He further said a geo-spatial expert — merely on the basis that he was a Kenyan and had not sought a work permit to undertake surveys in Tanzania, which, he said is not the true position — was stopped from giving expert testimony.

“In fact, the community was forced to hire another expert after the previous Tanzanian expert whom they had contracted eventually dropped out following continuous intimidation from the state machinery,” Lemaiyan said.

Anne Samante, MPIDO acting executive director, said the decision by the East African Court of Justice sets a dangerous precedent by sanitising state impunity.

She said it sends a message that governments can trample on human rights without being held accountable.

“The court’s failure to hold the Tanzania government accountable for gross violations not only throws its integrity into question," Samante said.

"But it is also a travesty for all indigenous communities, especially the more than 30,000 families who have lost their loved ones, property including land, homes and livestock,” she said.

Samante added, "These families are still reeling from physical and psychological wounds inflicted on them by the very government that is supposed to protect them."

The team said the court decision to postpone judgment on the matter several times raises serious questions about the integrity of the court, she said.

Blatant abuse of human rights cannot be justified in the name of conservation and to benefit safari companies that run hunting expeditions, Samante said.

This is an outright contravention of the text and spirit of local legislation,” she said.

Since its withdrawal from the African Court on Human and People’s Rights in 2019, a human rights crisis has been building in Tanzania, the rights groups said.

This situation consequently threatens the country’s stability and democracy, rights groups said.

Reports by Amnesty International indicate Tanzania has had the highest number of cases filed against it and judgments against it by the African Court. By September 2019, 28 decisions out of the 70 decisions issued by the court involved Tanzania, it said.

(Edited by V. Graham)