Watu 26 wauawa Burundi Leo!

DEALDY ATTACK IN BURUNDI


By ELOGE WILLY KANEZA
Associated Press

Archive Photo

   BUJUMBURA, Burundi (AP) - Twenty-six people were killed and seven others wounded in an attack in a rural area of Burundi, the country's security minister said Saturday, calling it the work of a "terrorist group" he did not identify.

   Speaking at the scene, Alain Guillaume Bunyoni told reporters that 24 people were killed in their homes Friday night and two others died of their wounds at a local hospital.

   He gave no further details about the attack in the Ruhagarika community of the rural northwestern province of Cibitoke.

   The attack came shortly before Burundians vote May 17 in a controversial referendum that could extend the president's term. It was not immediately clear if the attack was related.

   One survivor told The Associated Press the attackers came around 10 p.m. local time and "attacked households and set fire on houses." Some victims were hacked with machetes and others were shot or burned alive, she said.

   Her husband and two children were killed, she said. She spoke on condition of anonymity, citing safety concerns.

   This East African country has seen deadly political violence since early 2015 when President Pierre Nkurunziza successfully pursued a disputed third term. An estimated 1,200 people died.

   Now Burundians are being asked to vote on a proposal to extend the president's term from five years to seven, which would allow Nkurunziza to rule for another 14 years when his current term expires in 2020.

   Campaigns ahead of the referendum have been marred by hate speech, with one ruling party official sent to prison after he called for those who oppose the referendum to be drowned.

   The United States earlier this month denounced "violence, intimidation, and harassment" against those thought to oppose the referendum and expressed concern about the "non-transparent process" of changing the constitution.

   Human Rights Watch has noted "widespread impunity" for authorities and their allies, including the ruling party's youth wing, as they try to swing the vote in the president's favor.

   Many in Burundi, a poor country that still relies heavily on foreign aid, worry that a new round of bloodshed will follow the referendum no matter its results.

   Already more than 400,000 people have fled the country since the political unrest began in April 2015, according to the United Nations.

   Nkurunziza, a former rebel leader, rose to power in 2005 following the end of Burundi's civil war that killed about 300,000 people. He was re-elected unopposed in 2010 after the opposition boycotted. He said he was eligible for a third term in 2015 because lawmakers, not the general population, chose him for his first term.


   Follow Africa news at https://twitter.com/AP-Africa

 

WaMasai Wafukuzwa Kwenye Ardhi yao Kwa Ajili ya Watalli

Tanzania's Maasai evicted in favor of tourism, group says

Maasai Women

By RODNEY MUHUMUZA
Associated Press

   KAMPALA, Uganda (AP) - Tens of thousands of Tanzania's ethnic Maasai people are homeless after the government burned their houses to keep the savannah open for tourism benefiting two foreign safari companies, a U.S.-based policy think tank charged Thursday.

   Villagers in northern Tanzania's Loliondo area, near the Ngorongoro Crater tourism hotspot, have been evicted in the past year and denied access to vital grazing and watering holes, said the new report by the Oakland Institute, a California think tank that researches environmental and social issues.

   "As tourism becomes one of the fastest-growing sectors within the Tanzanian economy, safari and game park schemes are wreaking havoc on the lives and livelihoods of the Maasai," said Oakland Institute's Anuradha Mittal. "But this is not just about a specific company - it is a reality that is all too familiar to indigenous communities around the world."

   Allegations of wrongdoing have persisted in recent years against Tanzania Conservation Limited, an affiliate of U.S.-based Thomson Safaris, and Ortello, a group that organizes hunting trips for the royal family of the United Arab Emirates.

   Young Maasai herders are so afraid of authorities that they "flee when they see a vehicle approach," thinking it might carry representatives of foreign safari companies, the Oakland Institute report said.

   Responding to the findings, Thomson Safaris said the "awful allegations of abuse are simply untrue." The company invested in Tanzania "in good faith," director Rick Thomson said in an email Thursday.

   Concern for the Maasai has been raised at home and abroad by rights groups such as Minority Rights Group International and Survival International, which has warned that the alleged land grabs "could spell the end of the Maasai."

   The Maasai, hundreds of thousands of cattle herders who inhabit the savannah in southern Kenya and parts of neighboring northern Tanzania, need land to graze their animals and maintain their pastoralist lifestyle. But the land bordering Tanzania's famous Serengeti National Park is also a wildlife corridor popular with tourists.

   The east African nation's government depends substantially on tourism revenue to finance its budget.

   The government has prioritized safari groups at the expense of indigenous communities, said Hellen Kijo-Bisimba, head of the Tanzania Legal and Human Rights Centre.

   "The government has been reviewing boundaries and subsequently evicting communities in the name of conservation," she told The Associated Press. "In my understanding the conservation should have been made to benefit people, and if people are affected then it calls for worries. The Maasai community (is) indeed suffering."

   A court in the regional capital, Arusha, ruled against Loliondo's Maasai in 2015 when it decided that Thomson Safaris legally purchased 10,000 acres of a disputed 12,617 acres in 2006. The Maasai appealed and the case is pending.

   Thomson, of Thomson Safaris, said in Thursday's email that "witnessing" the wildlife in Tanzania was a passion.

   "But what made Tanzania so alluring was not just the wildlife, but the people," he said. "When people return from a safari with us, they say how magnificent the wildlife was, but that what was so extraordinary were the people they met."

   Tanzania's Tourism Permanent Secretary Gaudence Milanzi denied the Maasai are being targeted, saying the government is working to improve their welfare by embracing modern methods of livestock keeping.

   "There is no single group of people, say Maasai, who are intimidated, arrested, beaten or forced out of their land," Milanzi said.

   ---

   Associated Press writer Sylivester Domasa in Dodoma, Tanzania contributed.