100,000 Maasai Face Eviction In Tanzania
The Tanzanian government has recently decided to crack down on human settlement in the Ngorongoro Conservation Area. This will result in 100,000 Maasai pastoralists being forcibly evicted from their homes.
The Indigenous Maasai have lived in the Ngorongoro area for hundreds of years. Illegally removing them from their lands threatens their culture and existence.
Tanzania’s Maasai Protest Evictions
Thousands of Maasai staged a protest, interrupting tourism in the Ngorongoro Conservation Area. They were protesting forced evictions from their land, the removal of their rights to vote in the upcoming election, and the curtailing of social services that denied them drinking water.
100,000 Maasai Denied Voting Rights
The Tanzanian government is denying 100,000 Maasai the right to vote, as a means for forcing them to leave the Ngorongoro Conservation Area. “This is a clear violation of our right to vote. Our way of life and our very freedom are under attack,” said Ezekiel Omelangi, a Maasai rights activist from Ngorongoro. This is another in a long list of tactics being used to "force the Maasai off of their ancestral land.
Amnesty International Calls for the End of Mass Arrests of Political Opponents
The Tanzanian government has continued it’s crackdown on opposition leaders.
On 11 August, Tanzanian police arrested and detained leading figures from Tanzania’s Party for Democracy and Progress, the main political opposition party known as Chama cha Demokrasia na Maendeleo (Chadema), including former presidential candidate Tundu Lissu and more than a hundred youth supporters, as well as five journalists for violating a ban on holding a youth conference.
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