Cops raze homes: 4 000 homeless
2006-01-27 21:12
Naivasha - Kenyan police have burnt down the homes of some 4 000 people in a forest community during a long-running tussle between landless squatters and the government, say officials and witnesses on Friday.
Police razed more than 300 grass-thatched huts in Eburru forest, near Naivasha in the central Rift Valley, 90km northwest of the capital, late on Thursday, leaving nothing, but smouldering ruins in a latest bid to rid the area of squatters.
They said authorities said the forest dwellers were an environmental danger.
An evictee Charles Mbuthia said: "The police made sure that we did not go back by burning anything resembling a house", adding that several people who had resisted orders to leave had been injured by police, but the group would not move unless offered another place to live.
Alternative land
He said: "We are ready to die here and we won't shift unless we are shown alternative land where we can settle", complaining that he and his colleagues in the three makeshift villages targeted had been left penniless by the destruction.
Naivasha district officer Kaunda Maikara said the authorities had been forced to act because the squatters were defying legal government orders to vacate the 4 860-hectare forest, which was considered a key water catchment basin for the region.
He said: "We shall not stop the exercise until we get rid of all those residing in the forest as they have caused wanton destruction to a water catchment area."
Govt ordered to halt evictions
He maintained that police had given the squatters time to remove their personal items before destroying the homes.
Last month, a court ordered the government to halt such evictions after as many as 50 000 people were violently thrown out of another forest further south, drawing howls of complaint from the human rights groups.
Maikara didn't say why authorities had opted to defy the order.
Earlier this month, Kenyan Nobel Peace laureate Wangari Maathai implicitly called for the eviction of tens of thousands of squatters from the country's forests after she blamed the drought disaster - threatening millions with famine on illegal logging and destruction and degradation of trees.
- AFP