Tag Archives: Ngorongoro

Tanzania is using murder charges to get nomadic Maasai off their homelands

Violence accompanies plans to expand a wildlife reserve at the expense of traditional grazing lands

By OpenDemocracy 50.50  Published 7-8-2022 by openDemocracy

A Maasai family near Lake Natron, Tanzania. Photo: Alex Berger/flickr/CC

Lemoloo Jr*, a Maasai activist in northern Tanzania, says he is running out of hope.

In the last month, 33 people in his community have been arrested, and 25 are now facing murder charges over the death of a police officer on 10 June.

Since the start of June, Maasai people have been protesting against government security forces sent to remove them from Loliondo in Ngorongoro district, northern Tanzania. The ancestral home and grazing lands of the Maasai, a nomadic pastoralist people, start in Kenya and stretch into this area, but the government wants to extend the nearby Ngorongoro Conservation Area and turn 1,500 square kilometres of the land into a game reserve. Continue reading

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