Both the recently Alternative Nobel Prize winning First People of the Kalahari (FPK) and international human rights group, Survival International, said in separate press releases that dozens of San people are being forcibly removed from their ancestral lands in the CKGR since October 7.
Botswana is a state party to the 1948 Genocide Convention and the 1998 Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court as well as several other international human rights and humanitarian treaties.
It is ironic that the government of Botswana, hitherto widely perceived as a shining example for democracy and tolerance in our southern African sub region, continues with this merciless persecution of a most defenceless member of its population.
This intentional expulsion of Gana and Gwi Bushmen from their ancestral lands as a State policy is part of a systematic campaign bearing hallmarks of crimes against humanity as defined under international human rights law. We are calling upon the government of President Festus Mogae to cease forthwith such maltreatment and to return all those so removed.
NSHR also calls upon the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights as well as the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights to send special rapporteurs on the human rights and fundamental freedoms of indigenous peoples to investigate the CKGR mass expulsions.
Phil ya Nangoloh
Windhoek
NAMIBIA
