By Shadrack Kavilu for Gáldu

The Minority Rights Group International (MRG) has called on the police and the judicial authorities to conduct a full and impartial investigation into the incident.

James Rana, 38, an Ogiek land rights activist was brutally attacked by assailants at his home in Ngongogeri.

According to the Ogiek people’s Development Programme (OPDP), a local Non Governmental Organization working to secure the rights of the community, six people broke into Mr. Rana´s home and attacked him with machetes, knives and other tools, causing serious injuries to his head, hands and legs.

Photo: A group of Ogiek elders chanting. Credit: Shadrack Kavilu

OPDP said a similar attack occurred earlier this month, where a group of people attacked and abused Rosaline Kuresoi, 34, a local land and minority women rights activist on her way home from Njoro market.

Both Rana and Kuresoi are protesting attempts by land speculators to forcibly take over Ogiek land in Ngongogeri. They accuse local government officials of siding with the speculators.

"The specific targeting of minority rights activists in this way is extremely troubling, especially given their marginalized and vulnerable position in Kenyan society," says Lucy Claridge, MRG´s Head of Law.

Daniel Kobei, the OPDP executive director, expressed "shock that police have recorded statements in both cases but up to now no arrests have been made."

"These targeted attacks are aimed at keeping Ogiek activists silent from protesting land grabbing. We shall not retaliate with violence but will never tire from pressing for what rightfully belongs to us, no matter the coercion they level at us," said Kobei.

The Mau Complex, one of the main water catchment areas in Kenya and home to an estimated 15,000 Ogiek families, is often punctuated by inter-ethnic clashes between the Ogiek, who are the indigenous owners of the land, and neighbouring majority communities.

In 2009, Ogiek families were almost evicted by the government from the Mau Complex without due consultation under the guise of protecting the environment.

The Ogiek maintain that the forest is most at risk from large-scale logging rather than from their own sustainable and traditional practices.

"For many years, the Ogiek have suffered displacement or been threatened with eviction from their ancestral lands, and action is urgently needed to protect their livelihoods and indeed their survival as an indigenous community. Any attempt to hamper such activism should be seriously condemned," Claridge added.

Both the Ogieks from the Mau forest and those in Chepkitale on the slopes of Mt Elgon face eviction threats from government.

In 2000 the government gazetted the ancestral land of the Chepkitale Ogieks as a game reserve and since then the community has been living in fear of forcible eviction.

Last year the government issued an eviction notice requiring the community to vacate the Chepkitale game reserve, but the eviction is yet to be effected since the government has not completed sub dividing land for relocation

Early this year, the Ogiek people of Chepkitale accused some government officials of attempting to forcibly evict them from their ancestral land.