KENYA: Maathai Held At Forest
The Nation (Nairobi)
August 19, 2001
By Carol Kinuthia and Patrick Mathangani
Green Belt coordinator Prof Wangari Maathai was held by police for several hours on Friday evening after touring the Meru side of Mt Kenya Forest where wanton destruction of trees is going on.
Prof Maathai had ventured into the Onturiri Forest in Meru Central District after being denied access by forest officials supervising the logging and transportation of beams.
She was detained at Timau Police Station for three hours after she refused to sign a statement prepared by the police claiming she had uttered words against District Commissioner C. Okello.
Riot police in full gear guarded the gate as late as 11 pm when Prof Maathai was finally released after hours of interrogation by the local police chief, Mr Richard Nyaparo. The police boss claimed in the statement that Prof Maathai had said she would "enter the forest whether the DC likes it or not."
The local forester, Mr Fred Were, said the forest was being cleared "to settle squatters".
There lies a huge pile of beacons which are being used to demarcate a large expanse of the cleared forest.
A contingent of riot police confronted Prof Maathai as she was about to leave the forest. They barricaded the road and stopped her vehicle, after which Mr Nyaparo accused her of uprooting the beacons.
Mr Were arrived later and helped police to search her vehicle but no beacons were found in it.
Prof Maathai was then ordered to drive to the police station and return a power saw she had confiscated from a Mr Wang'ondu during an earlier visit.
After being detained for three hours at the police station, Prof Maathai was released and ordered to report back on Wednesday.
Mr Wang'ondu boasted, in front of the officers and the forester, that one of the sawmills mounted on a tractor was his. He even invited journalists to his sawmill in Nanyuki town.
The visit by Prof Maathai had been precipitated by grievances by 1,000 squatters living at the Nyayo Settlement Scheme, about 50 kilometres away, that the government planned to evict them from their homes and settle them in Onturiri Forest. Government officials claim that the area the squatters are living in is too cold for human habitation. They intend to move the squatters and plant trees in the inhabited area, but they have first to clear Onturiri Forest to pave way for the squatters' settlement.
But Prof Maathai questioned the wisdom of the whole programme, saying that the squatters' living land had probably been earmarked for grabbing by private developers.
The squatters told journalists that they had been living on the land, where they had built a school and installed piped water, for the last 16 years.
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