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Let us start to
retaliate: Crack down on the Botswana governance and their
corporate stirrup holders wherever you find them. BOYCOTT
BOYCOTT BOYCOTT and CUT BOTSWANA BUSINESS AND GOVERNANCE OUT
FROM ANYTHING AND WHEREVER YOU FIND THEM ! - Until they stop this
ethnocide and genocide!
KICK BOTSWANA OFF
THE UN!
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BOTSWANA:
GOVERNMENT LAUNCHES CRACKDOWN ON BUSHMEN
22 August 2005
The Botswana
government has launched a massive crackdown on the Bushmen of the
central Kalahari aimed at destroying their way of life. The move
comes despite the resumption of the Bushmen's three-year court
case against the government for evicting them from their ancestral
lands in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve.
* The government has announced that it is putting guards around
the Central Kalahari Game Reserve to blockade the area and stop
Bushmen going in.
* More Bushmen have been arrested for hunting to feed their
families. Xhatshoe Xhose, Maiteko Digotlhong and Gothata
Digotlhong have been arrested so far this month.
* The wildlife department has barred the Bushmen's lawyers from
entering the reserve to consult with their clients, even though
the high court specifically asked them to do so.
* The radio authority has refused to renew licences to Bushmen in
the Reserve who were using community transmitters to contact each
other to ask for help in medical or other emergencies.
* Officials have gone so far as to stop the Bushmen's own
organisation, First People of the Kalahari, from talking to those
in the reserve.
* The government is on the point of changing the country's
constitution to remove any existing protection for the Bushmen.
* Selelo Tshiamo, one of several Bushmen severely tortured by
officials in June, died earlier this month. He had been repeatedly
beaten on the chest to the point where he coughed blood. His chest
pains increased in the following weeks until he finally succumbed
to his injuries.
All this amounts to the most serious assault on Bushman rights
since their eviction in 2002.
Recent investigations show that the Bushmen in the forced
relocation camps have started to die after contracting HIV/AIDS.
At least thirty-seven Bushmen have the infection in just one of
the camps. Drunkenness and prostitution are spiralling out of
control.
Journalist Sandy Gall witnessed Bushmen being evicted from their
land in 1998. He said today, 'The last hunting Bushmen in the
world are now on the edge of destruction, only international
support can save them. Unless ordinary people make their voices
heard it will be too late and our 21st century world will add the
Gana and Gwi Bushmen to the long list of indigenous peoples
destroyed by racism and greed. Have we learnt absolutely nothing?
Are we really going to allow yet another government to exterminate
its tribal peoples?'
SURVIVAL INTERNATIONAL PRESS RELEASE
View this press release here: http://www.survival-international.org/news.php?id=977
For more information contact Miriam Ross on (+44) (0)20 7687 8734
or email mr@survival-international.org
and see also http://www.koisanpeoples.org
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ECOTERRA Intl.
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