Under the guise of fighting “climate change,” United Nations and World Bank “carbon” programs in Africa are leading to massive land grabs, the forced relocation of indigenous people at gunpoint, and even what some critics are calling “cultural genocide.” Now, a coalition of activist organizations is demanding an end to the controversial UN-linked plots that are devastating communities while endangering indigenous peoples and cultures already at risk of extinction. Criticism surrounding the ongoing promotion of “carbon credits” is also escalating worldwide from across the political spectrum.
The latest accusations of terror and brutality perpetrated against innocent civilians to supposedly battle “global warming” — on “pause” for 18 years and counting, according to undisputed temperature data — come from Kenya. While the UN-linked forced evictions are not new, they are accelerating. Just last year, the UN also unveiled a massive eugenics program for the East African nation aimed at slashing the population. Whether the ruthless carbon-dioxide machinations by the UN and the World Bank are related remains unclear.
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The victims in the most recent abuses are the Sengwer communities in Kenya’s Embobut forest and Cherangany Hills. According to reports by the Forest Peoples Programme, a U.K.-based non-profit organization that supports the rights of forest dwellers, more than one thousand Sengwer homes were torched by World Bank-funded authorities earlier this year as the Kenyan government works to evict some 15,000 members from their ancestral lands. Inaccurately referring to the indigenous peoples as “squatters,” officials claim the effort is aimed at promoting “sustainability.”
“We saw dozens of houses burning as we moved through Sengwer community lands,” the forest peoples’ organization said in a statement about the atrocities. “We saw well over a hundred homes either burning or that had been burnt, and the area was eerily empty of people. People have run away out of fear…. When their homes are burnt, blankets, food and cooking utensils are also burnt, so children and the elderly are exposed to the cold and go hungry.”
The group also interviewed some of the locals whose communities were being razed to the ground by the World Bank-funded Kenyan Forest Service. “All school uniforms, cooking pans, water containers, cups were burnt,” a 25-year-old Sengwer widow with four small children said as her home was still burning. “The children are very upset because we have lost everything. The children and elderly people will end up getting pneumonia because we don’t have anything to cover ourselves at night.” She also said there was no consultation with locals or compensation for the seizure of property.
In a letter denouncing what a coalition of more than 65 global non-profit groups referred to as “genocide,” a spokesman for the Sengwer, Yator Kiptum, blasted as a “disaster” the property destruction, brutalization, and forced evictions. “The government of Kenya is forcing us into extinction,” he was quoted as saying. The letter also points out that the schemes are a violation of Kenyan law, the constitution, international human rights agreements, and various court orders.
Also this year, the group Survival International, a charity that works with tribal peoples around the world, documented similar government atrocities in Kenya’s Mau forest. There, rampaging government officials backed by globalist outfits have been persecuting and forcibly evicting members of the Ogiek, described as one of Africa’s last remaining hunter-gather tribes. The tribes may disappear entirely if measures are not taken to restrain authorities and their “carbon” scams. Reports suggest that people involved in resisting the forced Ogiek evictions are being targeted by authorities for extrajudicial execution, too.
Apparently, Kenyan politicians and their cronies are also getting wealthy on the land-grab schemes — at the expense of the poor indigenous peoples whose communities are being burned to the ground. Beyond local corruption, though, the scope of the problem reaches deep into the UN, the World Bank, the global establishment, and various international “climate” schemes.
In fact, the evictions underway in Kenya are “a direct result” of a World Bank plot and are “effectively funded by the World Bank,” according to a formal Sengwer complaint filed with the infamous global organization. Much of the program in question, meanwhile, stems from the UN’s “Reducing Emissions From Deforestation and Forest Degradation,” or REDD for short. Under that global scheme, the purchase of “carbon credits” — supposedly aimed at reducing CO2 emissions to stop “global warming” — are linked to the amount of carbon contained in forests. Despite being absurdly demonized by UN as “pollution,” CO2 is exhaled by humans and described by scientists as the “gas of life.”
“The devastating plight of Kenya’s indigenous peoples is symptomatic of the flawed approach to conservation on the part of international agencies,” explained journalist Nafeez Ahmed in an explosive article for the U.K. Guardian this month about the Kenyan land grabs. “In practice, REDD schemes largely allow those companies to accelerate pollution while purchasing land and resources in the developing world at bargain prices.” Land, apparently, that has been ethnically cleansed of all its previous native inhabitants.
The brutalization of Kenyans and the massive land grabs began accelerating in 2007, when the Kenyan Forest Service began a deeply controversial partnership with the World Bank to implement a so-called “Natural Resource Management” project. Since then, activists report that Sengwer homes have been under virtual non-stop attack by authorities aiming to uproot the indigenous peoples. Once the joint World Bank-Kenyan government plot was approved without any input from the Sengwer, the communities suddenly learned that their centuries-old ancestral homelands were inside a “forest reserve” and subject to destruction and seizure.
In a statement, the World Bank attempted to distance itself from the atrocities, saying it was not involved and that it was “concerned” about the reports. “The World Bank stands ready to assist the Government of Kenya with its development advice drawing on its local and global project experiences, and to share best practices in resettlement in line with its safeguard policies,” the statement said. “These seek to improve or restore the living standards of people affected by involuntary resettlement.” The bank also claimed it was investigating.
Among critics, though, the semi-denial prompted a furious backlash. “The cause and effect is perfectly clear; the Bank in its highly controversial role as both carbon credit financier and broker is aiding and abetting the forced relocation of an entire Indigenous People through its Natural Resource Management Plan (NRMP) which includes REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation),” noted the No REDD in Africa Network (NRAN), an alliance of 66 human-rights organizations that opposes the UN plot.
Most disturbing about the World Bank response, the network said, was the outfit’s offer to help the Kenyan government in matters of “involuntary” resettlement. “The World Bank is both admitting its complicity in the forced relocation of the Sengwer People as well as offering to collude with the Kenyan government to cover-up cultural genocide,” the alliance explained, adding that the Sengwer were now “facing complete annihilation under the guise of ‘conservation’ under REDD.”
The No REDD network also named the developments “carbon colonialism.” The organization also argued that the UN scheme was “emerging as a new form of colonialism, economic subjugation and a driver of land grabs so massive that they may constitute a continent grab.”
The letter, signed by over 300 human-rights activists and over five-dozen international organizations, also offered a list of demands to Kenyan authorities, planetary entities involved in the schemes, and more. “We demand that governments, companies, carbon traders, the World Bank and the United Nations including UN-REDD, UNEP, UNDP [United Nations Development Programme] and others immediately cancel these harmful REDD and other carbon offset schemes,” they concluded.
Even international officials involved in the UN’s REDD machinations expressed outrage over the developments. “The carbon markets, when up and running, need to support the forest stewardship of the people who live there, and not provide national governments with yet another tool to dispossess their citizens from the natural resources they have cared for and depended on for generations,” former chair of UN REDD negotiations Tony La Viña told The Guardian.
As The New American has reported, the atrocities in Kenya are hardly the first time that Western “carbon offset” scams by the UN, the European Union, and other international entities have come under fire for brutalizing people and destroying entire communities in Third World nations. In Uganda, for example, tens of thousands of innocent farmers had their villages burned to the ground so international institutions could plant “carbon-credit” trees on the land. Reports of children murdered and brutal beatings also grabbed headlines. Dozens of Honduran murders in 2011 were also linked to UN-backed land grabs and “carbon” schemes.
Other gargantuan land grabs backed by multiple globalist outfits are taking place worldwide, some, ironically, under the guise of protecting the rights of indigenous peoples under UN treaties. In Brazil, for example, whole towns were recently evicted at gunpoint by federal troops wearing UN logos using the easily debunked pretext of “returning” land to a handful of Indians who had never even lived in the area.
With accusations of cultural genocide in Kenya now in the headlines of major Western media outlets, outrage is growing quickly against peddlers of “carbon offset” scams — the UN, the World Bank, the EU, European governments, corrupt Third World politicians, and various other international outfits. However, even as the theories underpinning the climate alarmism crumble, it has become clear that without a massive outcry, the atrocities and land grabs around the globe will continue under virtually any pretext.
Alex Newman, a foreign correspondent for The New American, is currently based in Europe. He can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @ALEXNEWMAN_JOU.
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