On Friday, video footage emerged of Indigenous Maasai people running and scrambling for cover from gunfire in the United Republic of Tanzania. The videos reveal chaos as the Maasai try to escape state security forces, and photos released in the aftermath of the incident show bloody injuries and bullet wounds. In Loliondo, in northern Tanzania, the Maasai are being violently evicted from their land as part of an effort to create a game reserve. Maasai leaders have been arrested, dozens of community members have been shot or wounded, and hundreds have fled to Kenya for safety and medical attention. Others are determined to remain in their homeland. “I won’t go until the last point of our life,” said a Maasai leader who asked for anonymity because they fear retaliation. “I can’t run out of home my grandparents’ lands [sic].”
According to a new report from Project Expedite Justice, a non-profit focused on international human rights, the forced removal of the Maasai in Tanzania is part of a growing, global trend known as fortress conservation which often includes violently clearing Indigenous peoples from their homelands in order to create “protected areas”—lands dedicated to conserving nature. The report focuses on Tanzania, Nepal, India, Uganda, Cameroon, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and the Republic of Congo and identifies human rights abuses carried out in the name of conservation.
“Policies that conservation organizations are using are not considering the fact that Indigenous peoples were the first people to actually practice conservation,” said Trésor
— source grist.org | Joseph Lee | Jun 15, 2022