In late November, hundreds of heavily armed policemen forcibly evicted 300 Samburu families from ancestral lands that former president Daniel Arap Moi had purchased in a land-grab typical of his administration. Police chose a Friday “market day” for their attack, when the men were away and only women, elders, and children were in their homes.  Fanning out across the 17,000- acre Eland Downs Ranch, police burned the Samburu families’ homes to the ground, along with all their possessions.  

In response to the abuse of Samburu people by Kenyan police that was documented by Cultural Survival, a Kenyan organization has initiated trainings for police who are sent to Samburu East district. Michael Tiampati, national coordinator of the Pastoralists Development Network of Kenya, reports that many of the police officers “ are ignorant because of stereotypes…They are transferred to this area and they want to convert pastoralists to suit their imagined ‘civilised’ society.

According to a report issued by the Samburu Women for Education & Environment Development Organization (SWEEDO), Kenya’s new constitution “is a clean break with the past and provides several avenues for the pursuit and strengthening of Indigenous peoples’ personal and collective rights.” 

In a historic constitutional referendum on 4th August, 2010, sixty-eight percent of Kenyans who turned out to vote supported the proposed new constitution.

In the last two weeks, there have been further incidents of police brutality against the Samburu people of northern Kenya. Following Cultural Survival’s investigation and publication of our report, police have not inflicted more military-style assaults on entire Samburu villages like those of 2009 and January of this year.  But we are receiving reports of apparently random beatings meted out on Samburu men.