Stand with the Maasai - a sad cry from Ngorongoro

[Madikizela]

We are elders of the Maasai from Tanzania, one of Africa’s oldest tribes. The government has just announced that it plans to kick thousands of our families off our lands so that wealthy tourists can use them to shoot lions and leopards. The evictions are to begin immediately.

Last year, when word first leaked about this plan, almost one million Avaaz members rallied to our aid. Your attention and the storm it created forced the government to deny the plan, and set them back months. But the President has waited for international attention to die down, and now he’s revived his plan to take our land. We need your help again, urgently.

President Kikwete may not care about us, but he has shown he’ll respond to global media and public pressure -- to all of you! We may only have hours. Please stand with us to protect our land, our people and our world’s most majestic animals and tell everyone, before it is too late. This is our last hope.

-- The Maasai community of Ngorongoro District:bounce:

 

[Kyodowe]

Soo sad for this!!!!! ...We are not sure of where are we heading too, but we will reach there.

 

[BAK]

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[TD="class: contentheading, width: 100%"]Activists say plans to split Loliondo a brazen attempt to snatch local land [/TD]
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[TD="class: createdate"] Friday, 05 April 2013 20:53 [/TD]
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By Bernard James
The Citizen Reporter
Dar es Salaam.
Thirteen civil and land rights organisations have strongly opposed government's plan to reduce the size of the Loliondo Game Controlled Area.
The organisations, which met in Arusha yesterday, want the government to immediately shelve what they term as a "plan to grab land belonging to villages and handing it over to an investor under the guise of public interest."

They insist that the entire Loliondo Game Controlled Area is within legal village boundaries in the Loliondo and Sale divisions.

Two weeks ago, Natural Resources and Tourism minister Khamisi Khagasheki said in a public statement that his ministry intended to reduce the size of the area from the current 4,000 to 1,500 square kilometres.

The reason for the major change, he said, was to solve a long existing dispute in the area, to rescue the ecology of Serengeti National Park, Ngorongoro Conservation Area and Loliondo Game Controlled Area.

The minister said the decision was also meant to protect wildlife-breeding sites, wildlife migratory corridors and water sources -- all being done for national interest.

He also said in the statement that the residents of the area could establish a wildlife management area in the remaining areas left to the villages.

But the organisations say government's claims that it was giving 2,500 square kilometres to villages was "a lie in a broad-daylight" and a clever way of grabbing the villagers' land.

"The truth is that Loliondo Game Controlled Area, estimated to cover a total of 4,000 square kilometres, is within legally recognised villages and that the government is grabbing 1,500 square kilometres from the land falling within village boundaries," says Mr Onesmo Ole Ngurumwa, coordinator of Tanzania Human Rights Defenders Coalition.

They argued that the rationale put forth by the government -- rescuing the ecology -- was nothing but a justification to forcefully accommodate Ortello Business Corporation (OBC), the company that was in 1992 granted hunting permit in the area.

The organisations opposed to the plan include Pastoralists' Indigenous NGOs Forum (Pingos Forum), Tanzania Land Alliance (Tala), HakiArdhi, Legal and Human Rights Centre (LHRC), Tanzania Human Rights Defenders Coalition, Tanzania Gender Network Programme (TGNP) and Tanzania Natural Resource Forum (TNRF).

Others are Community Research and Development Services (Cords), Ujamaa Community Resource Team (CRT), Pastoralists Women Council (PWC), Ngorongoro NGOs Network (Ngonet), Tanzania Pastoralists Community Forum (TPCF) and Oseremi.

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[KennedyMmari]

Avaaz - Stand with the Maasai