In May 2023, a Maasai delegation travelled to Europe seeing international support to help stop the violent evictions and human rights abuses against the Maasai in Tanzania. They visited Germany, Austria, and the EU headquarters in Brussels to raise their concerns.
Following that meeting in Brussels, three Members of Parliament from the Greens/European Free Alliance group decided to visit Tanzania to investigate the human rights abuses against the Maasai.
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The MEPs, Michèle Rivasi, Claude Gruffat, and Pierrette Herzberger-Fofana had planned to travel to Tanzania on 4 September 2023. On the day before they should have left, the Tanzanian government, through its ambassador to the EU, said it had decided to “defer this visit to a later date”.
The MEPs described this as “an incomprehensible decision that calls into question all the work done in cooperation with the Tanzanian government, NGOs and EU representatives”.
“The problems for the Maasai began with the two Germans”
The Maasai have lived for generations in the Serengeti ecosystem in Tanzania. They have preserved wildlife and biodiversity. But they were evicted from what is now the Serengeti National Park by the German wildlife conservationist (and Nazi) Bernhard Grzimek.
In the late 1950s Grzimek and his son Michael flew over the Serengeti in a plane painted in black and white stripes, like a zebra.
“The problems for the Maasai began with the two Germans,” Moses Oleshangay, a Maasai elder who lives in the Ngorongoro Conservation Area told Andrea Böhm, a journalist with the German newspaper Die Zeit.
Grzimek decided that the Serengeti was a wilderness and that no one should live there. That included the Maasai, whose home it was.
Today the Maasai are being subjected to violent evictions from their territory in Loliondo to make way for luxury safari hunting operations run by a company called Otterlo Business Corporation. The company organises hunting for Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, vice president, prime minister, minister of defence of the United Arab Emirates, and the ruler of Dubai.
And in Ngorongoro Conservation Area, the Tanzanian government has restricted the availability of social services such as health care and repairing schools. “The government is running a brutal campaign against Maasai in Tanzania,” Survival International states.
This brutal campaign is taking place with the support of conservation NGOs like the Frankfurt Zoological Society, and European funding. Grzimek ran the Frankfurt Zoological Society for decades. Its address is Bernhard-Grzimek-Allee 1.
In April 2023, with violent repression of the Maasai ongoing, Germany contributed €6 million to a conservation project in Tanzania, titled, “Mitigation of Human-Wildlife Conflict”.
At the launch of the project, the German Embassy happily announced that,
“Germany is Tanzania’s most longstanding partner in biodiversity conservation and is proud to lay the foundation today for yet another important project.”
In July 2023, three Ngorongoro Conservation Area Authority rangers attacked 15-year-old Joshua Kirtila Patoro while he was watching over cattle near his village in Ngorongoro.
On 5 September 2023, the Oakland Institute released a video of testimony from Joshua Kirtila Patoro and his mother.
Warning - this video includes disturbing images:
On August 2023, Amnesty International put out a statement against the crackdown on the Maasai. Since 16 August 2023, 39 Maasai have been arrested. Their whereabouts is unknown. They were arrested following a Maasai community meeting to address the government’s use of media to persuade them to leave the Ngorongoro Conservation Area.
On 21 August 2023, the police and Ngorongoro Conservation Area Authority rangers arrested Ngorongoro MP Emmanuel Lekishon Shangai at his home in Karatu. He was taken to Karatu Police Station to be interrogated about his calls for accountability for the security operation in Ngorongoro. He has since been moved to an unknown location.
Amnesty International Regional Director for East and Southern Africa Tigere Chagutah said:
“Tanzanian authorities must end this new wave of arrests and detentions, which constitute renewed repression against the Maasai Indigenous Community that is standing up for their rights to their ancestral lands and essential services such as schools, health facilities and water projects in Ngorongoro.
“We call on the government to immediately disclose the whereabouts of the 40 arrested community members, grant them access to their lawyers, and due process, including being promptly brought before court to challenge the legality of their detention.”
Here is the press release put out by the three MEPs after they were denied entry to Tanzania.
Three Greens/EFA MEPS denied entry to the Tanzanian territory.
The MEPs Michèle Rivasi, Claude Gruffat and Peirrette Herzberger-Fofana were due to travel to Tanzania on Monday 4 September as part of an independent observation mission following civil society alerts on expulsions suffered by members of the Masai indigenous community and the arbitrary arrests and detentions of which they are alleged to be victims. After months of preparation and while all the details of this mission were settled, the Tanzanian government through its ambassador to the EU said it had decided to “defer this visit to a later date”, 24 hours before the delegation should have left. An incomprehensible decision that calls into question all the work done in cooperation with the Tanzanian government, NGOs and EU representatives.
Michèle Rivasi, co-chair of the EELV delegation and MEP referring indigenous peoples and local communities in the European Parliament’s development committee, said:
“This mission stems from a round table that I organised in the European Parliament last May to gather the testimonies of the Masai and the arguments of the Tanzanian government. Olivier de Schutter, UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights, also gave us the honour of his presence. The debate was rich, sometimes heated, but led to a promise from Tanzanian government representatives: the possibility for us, MEPs, to carry out an independent observation mission in Tanzania, with all the free circulation that this would require.”
Pierrette Herzberger-Fofana, MEP die Grünen, Vice-President of the development committee added:
“This promise was not fulfilled, as we were ordered not to travel to Tanzania by the country’s representatives 24 hours before we left. This is the third observation mission to Tanzania aborted by the government, following attempts by Mr Francesco Cali, UN Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, in December 2022 and then by UNESCO World Heritage in August 2023. This decision is unacceptable to us in view of our willingness to have the views of all stakeholders on the ground, starting with the representatives of the Tanzanian Government.”
Michèle Rivasi and Claude Gruffat, EELV MEPs concluded:
“We expect a clear message from the Tanzanian government to complete this observation mission within a respectable timeframe. Its success will depend on the involvement and good faith of all stakeholders. NGOs and Masai representatives can count on our commitment to highlight the respect for the rights of the Masai people in their ancestral lands, territories and natural resources. We must ensure that international and national obligations to protect freedom of peaceful assembly, prior, free and informed consent and non-discrimination are respected.
Michèle Rivasi, Claude Gruffat& Pierrette Herzberger-Fofana
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I clicked "like", but how can I "like" this story of fortress conservation and appropriation by foreigners for their own pleasures? Tanzania needs sanctions, not approval!
I clicked "like", but how can I "like" this story of fortress conservation and appropriation by foreigners for their own pleasures? Tanzania needs sanctions, not approval!
https://phys.org/news/2023-09-carbon-bogus-solutions-rich-world.html
https://www.cser.ac.uk/resources/how-reduce-africas-undue-exposure-climate-risks/