International travel fairs targeted over Botswana boycott - News from Survival

Details: Published on Friday, 07 February 2014 14:10; Written by editor

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International travel fairs targeted over Botswana boycott

Protestors handed out leaflets to visitors of the Adventure Travel Show in London.© Survival International

Protestors have targeted Botswana tourism to the Adventure Travel Show in London and the Fitur travel fair in Madrid, to highlight Botswana’s persecution of Africa’s last hunting Bushmen.

Supporters of tribal rights organization Survival International handed hundreds of flyers to visitors and tourism industry professionals, urging them to stay away from Botswana until the Bushmen are allowed to live freely on their ancestral land in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve (CKGR). The Botswana Tourism Organization had stands at both events.

Botswana is using violence, torture and intimidation to stop the Bushmen from hunting and to drive them off their land in the CKGR, while attracting tourists to the country with contrived images of Bushmen hunters.

The most recent victim of such abuse was held at gunpoint and beaten by members of Botswana’s paramilitary police (SSG).

Protestors handed out leaflets at the Fitur travel fair in Madrid and called on visitors to support Survival’s tourism boycott. © Survival

Bushman Mogolodi Moeti told Botswana’s Sunday Standard newspaper, ‘While they (SSG) were assaulting me they told me that even the President was aware of what was happening; that they were busy beating me up. They told me that even if they kill me no charges would be laid against them because what they were doing to me was an order from the government.’

The majority of Bushmen are forced to apply for restrictive entry permits to access the CKGR in a system which has been likened to the hated Pass Laws under apartheid South Africa, and the Bushmen’s British lawyer has been banned from entering the country.

Since Survival launched its tourism boycott in September 2013, nearly 7,000 travellers have pledged not to visit Botswana until the Bushmen are allowed to live freely on their land, and three tourism companies have joined the boycott.

Bushman Mogolodi Moeti is the latest victim of the Botswana government's appalling persecution of the Bushmen. He was dragged outside his house and assaulted by paramilitary police to 'dissuade others from attempting to return to the CKGR'. © Survival

Survival’s Director Stephen Corry said today, ‘Botswana continues to flog luxury tours to the CKGR using the image of ’exotic’ Bushmen wearing skins and the promise of a chance to ‘experience the traditional way of life of Kalahari hunter-gatherers’. In reality, Africa’s last hunting Bushmen are being starved, tortured, beaten and intimidated off their land, and the government is doing everything possible to stamp out that very way of life it uses to sell exclusive holidays. Clearly only those Bushmen that generate income for President Khama’s investments in the tourism industry are allowed the freedom to ‘sleep in grass huts’.’

Note to editors:
- The harassment of the Bushmen was labelled ‘ethnic cleansing’ by renowned BBC journalist John Simpson and was recently denounced by veteran ANC activist and former Robben Island prisoner Michael Dingake, who said the Bushmen were treated as ‘sub-humans’.
- Download images of the protests:

Protestors handed out leaflets to visitors of the Adventure Travel Show in London.
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Credit: © Survival International Protestors handed out leaflets to visitors of the Adventure Travel Show in London.
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Credit: © Survival International In Madrid protestors handed out leaflets at the Fitur travel fair.
Download hi-res image
Credit: © Survival In Madrid protestors handed out leaflets at the Fitur travel fair.
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Credit: © Survival Protestors called on visitors at the Fitur travel fair in Madrid to support Survival’s tourism boycott
Download hi-res image
Credit: © Survival

Read this online: http://www.survivalinternational.org/news/9933

Peru approves gas project, spells disaster for uncontacted tribes

Uncontacted Nanti could be decimated by plans to detonate thousands of explosive charges and allow hundreds of workers to flood onto their land. © Anon

Peru has approved the highly controversial expansion of the Camisea gas project onto the land of uncontacted Amazon tribes – despite international outrage, the resignation of three ministers, and condemnation by the United Nations and international human rights organizations.

Peru’s Ministry of Culture, tasked with protecting the country’s indigenous population, has approved plans by oil and gas giants Pluspetrol (Argentina), Hunt Oil (US) and Repsol (Spain) to detonate thousands of explosive charges, drill exploratory wells and allow hundreds of workers to flood into the Nahua-Nanti Reserve, located just 100km from Machu Picchu.

The expansion could decimate the uncontacted tribes living in the reserve, as any contact between gas workers and the Indians is likely to result in the spread of diseases or epidemics to which the Indians lack immunity.

Pluspetrol itself recognizes the devastating impact the expansion could have. In its ‘Anthropological Contingency Plan’ the company states that any diseases transmitted by workers could cause ‘prolonged periods of illness, massive deaths, and, in the best cases, long periods of recovery.’

Protests were held around the world against the plans to expand the Camisea gas project in Peru's Amazon rainforest. © Survival

When oil giant Shell first started explorations in the area, it led to the death of nearly half the Nahua tribe. One Nahua man recounted, ‘Many, many people died. People dying everywhere, like fish after a stream has been poisoned. People left to rot along stream banks, in the woods, in their houses. That terrible illness!’

The project violates Peruvian and international laws which require the consent of any projects carried out on tribal peoples’ land.

Last year, protests were held around the world to stop the expansion of Camisea, and more than 131,000 Survival supporters have sent a message to Peru’s President Humala demanding a halt to the oil and gas work on uncontacted tribes’ land. Today, Survival handed the list of the thousands of petition signatures to the Peruvian embassy in London.

As a result of the high profile campaign by tribal rights organization Survival International, local organizations AIDESEP, FENAMAD, COMARU and ORAU, and others, to stop the expansion, seismic testing has been averted from riverways and the location of one well was moved from the land of an isolated tribe.

Survival’s Director Stephen Corry said today, ‘Thirty years ago workers prospecting for the Camisea deposit penetrated deep into the territory of the Nahua people – and soon after, half the tribe were wiped out by flu and similar diseases. Has the Peruvian government really learnt nothing from history, that it is prepared to risk this happening again for the sake of a few more gas wells?’

Note to editors:

Read this online: http://www.survivalinternational.org/news/9935

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