Kenyan Government Continues Persecution of Sengwer tribe With European Union Backing

Originally posted on anti-aggressionleague.com on November 29, 2017

Source: Forest Peoples Programme

More than 22 times now, our community has been forcefully evicted from our ancestral land in Embobut forest, Cherangany Hills, by the Kenya Forest Service (KFS), a government agency that is supposed to be responsible for the protection of forests in the country.

The Sengwer have been forced from their homeland since the time of British colonialism. Now they are persecuted under a different kind of colonialism: one that uses corrupt African governments, who receive financial and PR support from European NGOs, to steal land and other resources from indigenous populations under the pretext of conservation and 'sustainable development'. In this case, the Kenyan government, through the Kenyan Forest Service, has continued the genocidal campaign against the Sengwer: burning their houses, killing their livestock, and destroying their culture. The Sengwer that have been forced from Embobut forest live in squalor, often on the side of roads with no means to provide for themselves, leading to a rise in diseases and higher mortality rates. The World Bank partly supported the government land grab of Embobut forest by funding the Natural Resource and Management Project from 2007 until 2013. Now the EU is spearheading a water tower project on the same land that the Sengwer community was forced out of in 2013.