Indian President's passionate plea against assimilating tribes & Bushman beaten by Botswana's paramilitary police
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- Published on Friday, 17 January 2014 08:00
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Indian President’s passionate plea against assimilating tribes
The President warned that 'so-called development' must not be allowed to destroy the Jarawa tribe © Salomé/Survival
In a strongly worded speech the President of India, Pranab Mukherjee, said this week at the inauguration of the ‘Andaman & Nicobar Tribal Research and Training Institute’ (ANTRI) that attempts to assimilate tribes into the mainstream had failed and were wrong.
The President told the gathering in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands that ‘the overwhelming view today is that assimilation has failed’ as it has led to the complete disappearance of whole peoples. This is felt particularly in the Andamans where Boa Sr, the last of the Bo tribe, died four years ago. The knowledge and language of her people died with her.
Boa Sr was the last member of the Bo tribe. © Alok Das/Survival
Mukherjee called for the Jarawa tribe in the Andaman Islands to be protected ‘in their own ways, in their own environment and in their own circumstances’, adding that he was against disturbing them in any way for ‘so-called development’.
He emphasized the importance of tribal peoples themselves having ‘total involvement’ in the policies that affect them, stating that thrusting our own views on them would be ‘disastrous’.
The President also challenged the derogatory notion that tribal peoples, such as the Jarawa, are living in the past – a view that often leads to them being called backward or primitive. He said ‘they are not living as they did a few centuries ago, they have also changed in their own way’.
These statements echo the message of the Proud not Primitive campaign which calls for mainstreaming policies and language to be abandoned in India and for tribes such as the Jarawa to be able to make their own choices about how they live on their own land.
Read this online: http://www.survivalinternational.org/news/9904
Bushman beaten by Botswana’s paramilitary police
Mogolodi Moeti was attacked by paramilitary police 'as an example to others' defending the Bushmen's rights. © Survival
A Bushman from the Central Kalahari Game Reserve (CKGR) in Botswana has been held at gunpoint and beaten by members of Botswana’s paramilitary police (SSG).
Mogolodi Moeti, a long-standing defender of the Bushmen’s rights, was confronted by several members of the SSG and a park guard at his home in a government resettlement camp, New Xade.
Moeti was beaten with the butt of a gun and his house was searched for illegal bush meat. Finding nothing, the officers then drove Moeti away and returned him later the same day with no charge.
The case has been filed with local police, who are investigating.
The incident is the latest in a long history of violence against the Bushmen by police and government officials, including shootings against Bushmen attempting to carry water into the reserve for their families.
In three waves of forced evictions in 1997, 2002 and 2005, the Bushmen were driven from their ancestral land in the reserve by government trucks and dumped in camps they later described as ‘places of death’.
Despite a 2006 High Court ruling upholding the Bushmen’s rights to return home and to apply for hunting permits, the majority have been refused entry to settle in the reserve, and no hunting licenses have been issued.
A recent BBC report found alcoholism and AIDS in the destitute camps that have been occupied by many of the Bushmen for over a decade.
Moeti’s attackers told him he was being made an example of to dissuade others from attempting to return to their homeland.
‘This is why we have barred your lawyer (the Bushmen’s British barrister Gordon Bennett) so we can do whatever we like to you’, an SSG told Moeti.
Survival is calling for an international boycott of tourism to Botswana in protest against the government’s treatment of the Bushmen.
Join the boycott here.
Read this online: http://www.survivalinternational.org/news/9903
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