Why we say “Genocide”

[Below is a letter to the organization, GenocideWatch, which Dr. Stephen Katz wrote last month. I corresponded with him and asked if I could post it on the Save Samburu blog. He revised it slightly to clarify and emphasize his point that the government should remember that tourism are what bring money into Kenya. Since he wrote this, the Kenyan government has excitedly announced its plans to drill for oil in Samburu territory. I fear that tourism and oil will be on a collision course.

Roxanne]

 
Dear Genocide Watch, 

 

I am a professor in Canada who has worked in East Africa in the past, particularly with the Samburu people of Kenya.  The Samburu are a peaceful pastoralist group who manage, with their brilliant ecological skills, to subsist on a cattle economy in the dry regions of the Rift Valley in northern Kenya.  Samburu guides are also invaluable resources to Kenyan tourist enterprises. Indeed, the Samburu have innovated ways of life that are models of how wildlife preservation and human habitation can and should co-exist in Kenya. 

During the past year there have been several life-threatening developments that have occurred in Samburu country:

a) A persistent and serious drought, which means no rain for pasture, which means no milk production for cows and no food for the Samburu, and about which little assistance has been provided. 

b) Massive and violent cattle raids carried out by Borana and Somali raiders, who have automatic weapons and have been hauling away Samburu cattle by the thousands in trucks into Somalia (presumably to be sold to middle-eastern buyers).  This would be the equivalent of a terrorist group coming into a typical N. American community and stealing all the money, food, medicines and valuables and leaving the residents to die. 

c) The complete collapse of state or police protection of the Samburu and, with each attack, increasing evidence that some of the police and those in authority are actually colluding with the raiders or possibly benefiting from the raids.  Medical response to the Samburu have been non-existent, both in terms of treating those wounded in the attacks and those dying of malnutrition.  Children have been abducted and killed deliberately by the raiders to terrorize the Samburu.

All this adds up to genocide in the opinion of the observers in Kenya, my colleagues and the reports by the Samburu themselves.  They are being systematically killed off and possibly caught in the web of international politics between Kenya, Somalia and the Western world.  Some of us have worked to contribute money and contact members of both the Kenyan and Canadian governments, but the more international voices that can be heard to oppose the destruction of the Samburu, the better. 

And to all those tourists who are interested in visiting or returning to Kenya, please remember that the vitality, beauty and uniqueness of the game reserves and traditional cultures which give you such pleasure and vision are largely based on the economies, ecologies and arts of life of Kenyan pastoralists, like the Samburu.  Your tourist dollars should be going to a state that maintains and celebrates such peoples, rather than looks the other way as they are being destroyed. 

Dr. Stephen Katz, Trent University, Canada.