‘Kenyan government forcing us into extinction’: evictions of Sengwer tribe escalate

A Kenyan government campaign against one of the few hunter-gatherer tribes left in east Africa has escalated, as evictions spread throughout their ancestral home.

 The Sengwer have cared for the Cherangany Hills of western Kenya for centuries, but the government is forcing them from their homes in the name of safeguarding urban water supplies and protecting the forest.

The government is violating international human rights agreements, and the country’s own constitution and court rulings. A High Court judge ordered last week that anyone defying court rulings against the evictions should be arrested, but the police then moved in to assist the Kenyan Forest Service with the evictions.

The Kenyan Forest Service is a forest guard unit funded by the World Bank and the Finnish Government, and had been torching Sengwer homes for ten days.

Furthermore, as Sengwer spokesman Yator Kiptum emphasizes, Embobut is the communal land of the Sengwer, as the government itself has recognized in the past. ‘Sengwer are neither squatters nor internally displaced persons, but an indigenous community living within their ancestral lands and territories, and Embobut forest is part of it.’