California academics support Botswana Bushmen in land dispute Tuesday January 21, 2003
LOS ANGELES (AP) — A group of California university researchers and human rights advocates has joined an international campaign supporting the San Bushmen of Botswana, who are fighting eviction from their ancestral lands in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve. The Botswana government has been relocating the Bushmen from the reserve, which contains some of the richest diamond deposits in Africa. Supporters say the removals amount to a forced expulsion of one of Africa’s oldest indigenous peoples. UC Berkeley professor and anthropologist Dr. James Suzman, who has spent years living with Bushmen communities, called the evictions a humanitarian crisis unfolding out of sight of the world’s media. (Copyright 2003 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.) |