Tanzania wants to evict Maasai for wildlife – but they’re fighting back

Community members are on a campaign to get international donors to defund their government and stop rights violations.

Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania – Joseph Oleshangay’s theory is that government officials in his country, Tanzania, see people from his community as less than human.

The 36-year-old human rights lawyer and member of the Indigenous Maasai group is one of several at the forefront of a long-running fight to stop the government in the political capital, Dodoma, from forcefully evicting Maasai from areas around national parks.

Officials say the evictions are to protect wildlife, but Maasai members have accused park rangers and security forces of intimidation and rights abuses, including killings, sexual assaults and livestock seizures.

Because the courts have not always ruled in favour of aggrieved Maasai, community members like Oleshangay have taken their complaints to the government’s big funders, from Germany to the European Union, urging them to withhold crucial funding and pressure the government to halt alleged violence.

“We go to the courts, we go to the media because we have few alternatives,” said Oleshangay, who works with Tanzania’s Legal and Human Rights Centre (LHRC). “But we also go to the people we think have a say. We tell them – we don’t have a problem with conservation, but when you give the government more money, it means you are financing the displacement of all these people. It has nothing to do with nature, it is all business.”