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Maasai tribesmen arrested
16/05/2008 10:14 - (SA)
Nairobi - Kenyan Maasai tribesmen were arrested on Thursday after entering two private ranges in the Rift Valley province, claiming ancestral land and grazing rights for their livestock, police said.
Hundreds of Maasais destroyed a five-kilometre electric fence in Laikipia district before police stepped in, arresting a number of herdsmen and detaining their animals, a police official said.
"We will never vacate this place, we will live and die here," said a Maasai spokesperson.
The two ranges sit in a disputed region that was occupied by Maasai herdsmen from pre-colonial times through until the 1970s, when the country's founding president Jomo Kenyatta, a Kikuyu, allocated land to his tribesmen and white ranchers.
Maasai herdsmen have begun moving back into the Laikipia area following a devastating drought in the late 1990s that claimed at least 10 million heads of cattle, goat, sheep and camels.
Police have also battled the Maasais on the streets of Nairobi.
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