OXFORD'S SHAME Botswanan president faces protests over bushmen's fate.
Oxford University famously refused to give an honorary doctorate to its old alumna, Lady Thatcher. Last week its University College had no such qualms in giving an honorary fellowship to its former student President Mogae of Botswana.
Unfortunately the president's visit to Britain, as a guest of the Foreign Office, was dogged at every turn by protesters against a policy that has attracted worldwide condemnation. For the past seven years Botswana's government has been evicting the last remaining bushmen from their ancestral homeland in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve.
The president led round with him the government-appointed "headman" of the notorious resettlement camp at New Xade, outside the reserve, known to the bushmen as "the place of death". Any hope that this might help to disarm criticism was undermined by a message from Roy Sesana, the spokesman for the 100 or so "free bushmen" still managing to cling on in the reserve, who expressed the "wish that the honourable president will not forget to tell the British that some of our people were relocated forcibly against our choice and wishes". Mr Sesana was too polite to mention the tortures and killings that accompanied this "relocation".
Diamond-rich Botswana is the wealthiest country per capita in Africa, so President Mogae can rest confident in continuing support for his policies from the Foreign Office and the European Commission, which at one point threatened to suspend its XD714 million "wildlife and conservation management" scheme in Botswana unless evictions were stopped.
More recently Koos Richelle, the director-general of the commission's overseas aid division, assured Stephen Corry of Survival International that the resettled bushmen were entirely free to return home "provided they request a permit to do so". President Mogae last week put this rather more robustly when he told an Oxford protester there was no way the bushmen would be allowed to return home. The game reserve, he said, "is for animals, not people".
Unfortunately the president's visit to Britain, as a guest of the Foreign Office, was dogged at every turn by protesters against a policy that has attracted worldwide condemnation. For the past seven years Botswana's government has been evicting the last remaining bushmen from their ancestral homeland in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve.
The president led round with him the government-appointed "headman" of the notorious resettlement camp at New Xade, outside the reserve, known to the bushmen as "the place of death". Any hope that this might help to disarm criticism was undermined by a message from Roy Sesana, the spokesman for the 100 or so "free bushmen" still managing to cling on in the reserve, who expressed the "wish that the honourable president will not forget to tell the British that some of our people were relocated forcibly against our choice and wishes". Mr Sesana was too polite to mention the tortures and killings that accompanied this "relocation".
Diamond-rich Botswana is the wealthiest country per capita in Africa, so President Mogae can rest confident in continuing support for his policies from the Foreign Office and the European Commission, which at one point threatened to suspend its XD714 million "wildlife and conservation management" scheme in Botswana unless evictions were stopped.
More recently Koos Richelle, the director-general of the commission's overseas aid division, assured Stephen Corry of Survival International that the resettled bushmen were entirely free to return home "provided they request a permit to do so". President Mogae last week put this rather more robustly when he told an Oxford protester there was no way the bushmen would be allowed to return home. The game reserve, he said, "is for animals, not people".
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15 Juin 2003 à 13:37 dans
- English
