Botswana's war on its indigenous population, the Bushmen of the Kalahari, has reached a new pitch, writes LEWIS EVANS. No longer content to arrest and intimidate them as they engage in subsistence hunting on their own land, the state has begun to shoot them from aircraft. These illegal, genocidal acts must stop!
At the 'United for Wildlife' conference in Botswana, backed by princes Charles and William, Indigenous organizations from around the world are calling on world leaders to recognize tribal peoples' right to hunt for subsistence.
As we celebrate 'World Wildlife Day' today, there's little for nature's best defenders to be glad of, says human rights lawyer Gordon Bennett. Indigenous Peoples around the world are routinely attacked, starved and cut off from the lands and wildlife they have protected for millennia under a flawed and brutal model of 'conservation'.
Thirty years after diamonds were first discovered in Botswana's Kalahari desert, the Bushmen have been evicted, and the first diamonds have gone on sale. Happy Valentines!
Ten years after promises of 'no mining' in Botswana's Central Kalahari Game Reserve, a $5 billion diamond mine opens a few miles from a Bushman village. Elsewhere in the Reserve, fracking is under way. And President Ian Khama, a director of Conservation International, denounces the Bushmen as 'poachers' and evicts them from their land.
A Bushman from the Central Kalahari travelled 5,000 miles from his home in Botswana today to tell the Prince of Wales, ‘We're not poachers - we hunt to survive. Persuade Botswana to change its policies, or the Bushmen will soon be finished.'
Botswana's President Khama has banned all hunting - even for Bushmen who hunt to feed their families, who now face acute hunger. But an exception is being made for trophy hunters paying up to $8,000 to hunt giraffes and zebras.
The anti-poaching conference in London today was disrupted by protests at the Botswana delegation - who call the indigenous Bushmen of the Kalahari 'poachers' and are forcing them into death camps.
Representatives of the Basarwa or Bushman peoples of Botswana will make 2014 the year to step up their fight to end structural oppression of their communities. Joanna Eede reports ...
Botswanan police are refusing to allow Kalahari Bushmen to return to their ancestral homelands, despite their having won a landmark high court case allowing them to do so, writes Clive Dennis
Janine Roberts describes how De Beers cons the world into paying so much for its cheap, plentiful diamonds and turns a blind eye to the eradication of the oldest culture on the planet.
