Amnesty International has hailed Tanzania for dropping murder and conspiracy to murder charges against the 24 members of the Maasai community who were detained over the death of a police officer during protests against government plans to evict them from ancestral land.
The charges were brought after a police officer was killed during protests against the government’s plans to forcibly evict the Maasai from their ancestral homeland. The Maasai have long been marginalised and discriminated against by the government, and the eviction plan sparked international outcry.
Amnesty International welcomes the dropping of the charges against the Maasai, and calls on the government to respect their rights and protect their land.
The decision by Tanzania’s Director of Public Prosecution to drop charges of murder and conspiracy to murder against 24 members of the Maasai, including 10 leaders, has been welcomed by Amnesty International.
The individuals were arrested following a protest against the proposed eviction of the Maasai people from their ancestral lands in the name of ‘conservation’.
Muleya Mwananyanda, Amnesty International’s Regional Director for East and Southern Africa, said: “Dropping these charges against members of the Maasai people is unequivocally the right decision. They should never have been arrested in the first place. Their only ‘crime’ was exercising their right to protest while security forces tried to seize land from them in the name of ‘ conservation.
The government of Tanzania must immediately put an end to their security operations in Loliondo and surrounding areas. The seizure of traditional pastoral lands from the Indigenous Maasai people must stop, and all lands must be returned to their rightful owners.
Furthermore, the government must take steps to protect the right to protest and freedom of assembly. These steps are essential to ensuring the safety and well-being of the Maasai people and other Indigenous peoples in Tanzania.
The Tanzanian authorities have come under fire from human rights groups for their treatment of the Indigenous Maasai people. The Maasai have a long history of living as nomadic pastoralists in the region, and their way of life has come into conflict with the government’s attempts to settle them into sedentary communities. In recent years, the authorities have seized large tracts of traditional Maasai land in the name of conservation, forcing the displaced people into crowded and often squalid settlements.
The Maasai people have protested the government’s actions for many years, but their protests have often been met with violence and repression. In July 2019, the government began a forcible eviction of over 10,000 Maasai from their ancestral lands in the Loliondo region of Tanzania.
The Maasai have accused the government of trying to force them out of their traditional homeland in order to make way for wealthy foreign investors and the government has always denied these allegations, but the evidence seems to suggest that the Maasai are being displaced in order to make room for rich safari tourists.
The displacement of the Maasai people by the Tanzanian government is a travesty. It is clear that the government is not interested in protecting the rights of its citizens, but is instead focused on exploiting their land for commercial gain.
The Maasai have been pushed out of their ancestral homeland and into ever shrinking reserves, where they are forced to live in poverty and insecurity. This is not only a violation of their human rights, but also an ecological disaster, as the Maasai are some of the best stewards of the land in Tanzania.