Two dead and more than 40 injured in a clash in Tanzania between Maasai and police

Tensions between the Government of Tanzania and the Maasai over the ownership and use of the ancestral lands of the latter have intensified in the last week and, for the moment, have left two dead and a trail of wounded in the Ngorongoro district, in the northern Tanzania.

The first confirmed fatality is a police officer who lost his life last Friday, during a confrontation between the security forces and the local Maasai community, which was protesting against the forced displacement of more than 70,000 people from this minority.

The NGO Survival has also warned that there is a second deceased, in this case a Maasai, run over by a police car on Saturday.

31 people have also been injured by bullets and another 13 with machetes.

This Monday, the situation is still far from calming down, according to the activists who are in contact with the communities.

“More than 300 people, including children, are gathering in the bush for fear of being shot at in their homes.

The police are shooting at houses, beating and arresting anyone who gets in their way,” Fiore Longo, a member of the global movement for tribal peoples Survival International, posted Monday morning on his Twitter account.

In a telephone conversation with this medium, the researcher assures that in her organization she has also counted 19 detainees whose whereabouts are unknown, specifically 10 members of the community and nine political leaders.

“They are looking for and arresting those who made the videos [posted on social networks over the weekend],

The Maasai of Loliondo, a region in the north of the country, have been opposing the Tanzanian authorities for several years, accusing them of wanting to expel them from part of their habitat to turn it into an area reserved for safaris and private hunting.

This latest episode of violence began on June 8, when dozens of police vehicles and more than 700 police, army and government rangers arrived in Loliondo, Survival said in a statement released Monday.

The Government has denied these accusations, and affirms that its intention is to protect from human activity some 1,500 square kilometers of an area near the Serengeti National Park, the usual scene of tourist safaris, but that the Maasai community will still have an extension of other 2,500 kilometers of land to graze their flocks.

"No eviction is planned in Loliondo," the Prime Minister, Kassim Majaliwa, reiterated last Friday in Parliament.

This is the reality of #conservation in Africa & Asia: soldiers fire live ammunition at Maasai people protesting the theft of their ancestral land to make way for trophy hunting & conservation areas.@GermanyTanzania @FZS_Frankfurt @ZacGoldsmith

@trussliz @FCDOGovUK pic.twitter. com/LxsNa3TMxd

— Survival International (@Survival) June 12, 2022

The announcement of the law enforcement officer's death came through a video statement made Saturday afternoon by the regional prefect of the city of Arusha, John Mongella.

He assured that the official was killed when the agents went to install the posts to close the new restricted use area.

"It is very unfortunate that a policeman was killed by arrows fired by a group of people who wanted to block the installation of the beacons and who even wanted to attack those who were carrying out these operations," he said.

Since last Friday, dozens of photos and videos spread on social networks have shown how the Maasai herdsmen opposed this operation and, with their sticks raised, protested vigorously.

In the images, however, it is also possible to distinguish how the protesters dispersed while shots were fired.

According to community activists, police fired live ammunition and tear gas, including at women.

under orders of @SuluhuSamia military operation to forcibly evict Maasai of #Loliondo begins.

Many injuries reported.

Donor countries must speak up against gross violation of the #humanrights of the Maasai @UN4Indigenous @USAIDDRG @usembassytz pic.twitter.com/cwPpstlnEK

— Brian Keane (@Brian_J_Keane) June 10, 2022

The lawyer and human rights activist Joseph Moses Oleshangay was the one who confirmed, already on Saturday afternoon on Twitter, that around 40 people were seriously injured.

He also reported the disappearance of a man in his 80s and in a telephone conversation with this newspaper he assured that there are two deaths in this violent outbreak: “Two fatal cases have been reported, one of a Maasai and the other of a policeman.

However, the Government has [only] confirmed the death of a police officer with an arrow”, were his words.

For his part, the president of the Coalition of Human Rights Defenders of Tanzania, Onesmo Olengurumwa, referred to “several people injured and without medication” and “eight officials from the constituency” whose fate is unknown.

This activist asked the president of Tanzania, Samia Suluhu Hassan, to intervene.

However, the government spokesman, John Mongela, denied that there were any injuries in hospitals.

“If someone has been injured, he should come for treatment,” he stated.

He also believed that the images on social networks "were being spread by people with bad intentions."

Meanwhile, on those same social networks, those who support the affected communities affirm that the injured cannot go to local health centers for fear of being arrested.

The most serious, at least 26 of them, according to the data consulted by this newspaper, have been transferred to the Olaalaimutia, Posumoru and Bomet hospitals, and to the Ololosokwan dispensary, which are all in the Narok county of the neighboring country: Kenya. .

A confrontation that comes long

Security forces remain deployed in the region and have been forcing many families from their homes since early June, when the Tanzanian authorities announced their intention to launch a wildlife reserve as soon as possible.

"The testimonies and sources on the ground inform us that at the moment, the military are shooting at the Maasai (to expel them from their homes)," Longo denounced last Friday in statements to the EFE agency.

From the Oakland Institute they explain that the presence of that police force indicates that the Government has advanced in its plans to change the status of the

Loliondo

, which would cause the mass eviction of the Maasai. who live in legally registered villages within the zone.

“Despite previous pauses, the Tanzanian government is blindly moving forward with plans to evict herders from their land to clear the way for trophy hunting,” CEO Anuradha Mittal said.

"International mobilization on these events is imperative to help stop this disastrous and illegal measure," she stressed.

The Otterlo Business Company (OBC), based in the United Arab Emirates, has shown on several occasions its interest in creating and managing a new wildlife reserve with more than 1,500 square kilometers in Loliondo with the aim of organizing hunting safaris.

For this reason, in 2009, thousands of Maasai families were evicted from the region.

However, local communities stopped those plans in 2018, when, after taking this case to the East African Court of Justice (EACJ), judges prohibited the Tanzanian government from displacing people living there until they issued their final verdict.

The Loliondo area is 125 kilometers north of the famous Ngorongoro Game Reserve, where the government wants to curb population growth.

But Maasai communities and their herds have also lived in this region since time immemorial, competing for territory with wild animals.

The Government maintains that it has offered the residents of the Ngorongoro Crater a voluntary relocation programme.

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