Botswana: Bushmen Arrested For Hunting

Botswana: Bushmen Arrested For Hunting Despite Court Judgment

Twenty-one Gana and Gwi Bushmen have been arrested by Botswana police
for hunting on their ancestral land in the Central Kalahari Game
Reserve in Botswana. The men were arrested during June and early July
and were due to appear in court last week.

Last December the High Court of Botswana ruled that the Bushmen had
the right to live inside the reserve and that the government had
acted against the law in 2002 when it refused to issue them with
hunting permits and then evicted them from their lands.

Justice Phumaphi said in his ruling, "the simultaneous stoppage of
the supply of food rations and the issuing of SGLs [hunting licences]
[was] tantamount to condemning the remaining residents of the CKGR to
death by starvation."

Since the judgment, the government has continued to insist that the
Gana and Gwi do not have the right to hunt within the reserve. It has
also refused to let the Bushmen use the water borehole on their land
or to bring their few goats back into the game reserve.

Of the approximately 700 people evicted from their land in 2002, more
than a hundred have since returned home. Hundreds more remain afraid
to do so.

Survival International spokesperson, Jonathan Mazower, said today,
"Why is the Botswana government still determined to keep the Bushmen
out of their ancestral land, in spite of its own court's ruling and
in spite of the continuing damage this is doing to the country's
reputation? Why is it adding fuel to the fire by arresting men trying
to feed their families? We can only hope that this time they won't be
beaten and tortured as they have in the past."

ENDS

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