National park rangers accused of murders, raping women

The Benet community in Kween district has taken its grievances to the streets demanding an end to the brutality of the rangers of Mt. Elgon National Park, who they say have made their lives a nightmare.

The death of a 27-year-old youth on the morning of October 14, 2020, shot dead along with another youth now nursing gunshot wounds, has reignited the decades-long bitter conflict between Benet, a minority community in Kween district, and the Uganda Wildlife Authority (UWA).

The deceased, Moses Kapekete, and survivor, Fred Chelimo, 27, were shot by a UWA ranger after he found them grazing their livestock in the Mt. Elgon National Park.

Kapekete died instantly after a bullet from the ranger's rifle tore his stomach open and damaged his intestines. His colleague Chelimo survived with a huge bullet wound on the upper part of the left leg, where a bullet entered through, before lodging in his pelvis.

The victims are all members of the Benet community, also referred to as Ndorobos, an indigenous community that historically occupied the steep mountain ridges, but were rendered landless in 1937 by colonial administration when their ancestral land was gazetted as Mt Elgon Forest Reserve and later Mt. Elgon National Park.

The October 14 shooting provoked the angry Benet community into holding protests. When New Vision visited this remote, hard-to-reach part of the countryside, characterised by steep mountain ridges, the Benet community was in its eighth day of protest, holding processions along the narrow footpaths, waving placards condemning the extrajudicial killings they are suffering every day at the hands of UWA rangers.

The community is demanding the implementation of the April 11, 2016, presidential directive.

They claim that Museveni directed the Office of the Prime Minister to resettle the minority community that for generations has struggled to reclaim their ancestral land, illegitimately grabbed from them by the colonialists in 1937, when the area was gazetted as a forest reserve.

The community is also demanding that the perpetrators be brought to book.

"The systemic killings and maiming of our kinsmen in cold blood by UWA rangers must be brought to an end and culprits deservingly punished," Wilson Kapkol, an elder angrily charged.

Daniel Masai, 26, who was in the company of Kapekete and Chelimo, but escaped being shot, says on a fateful morning, the three of them set out to graze their livestock in the narrow grazing ground that the community was allocated on the edge of Mt. Elgon National Park.

While there, the trio got engaged in an animated conversation as the livestock grazed. The herd strayed, crossing the thin boundary line separating that place from the national park as the animals were attracted to the overgrown grass inside the park.

A UWA ranger nearby spotted the livestock inside the park, but left the animals and instead went after the herds' minders.

"We were standing as we conversed only to hear a gunshot and the next thing I saw was Kapekete falling to the ground, his belly ripped open by the bullet," Masai narrates.

"I heard the sound of a gunshot and dived into the nearby bush then rolled away from the sight of their armed ranger, that is how I narrowly escaped death," Masai narrated.

He said his colleague, Chelimo, on hearing the gunshot he run very fast in a zigzag manner. "It was then that a bullet hit him in the upper part of his left leg, instantly rendering him indisposed," Masai said.

He said he crawled till he reached a safe place and rushed back to inform the victims' families of what had happened. Wilson Kapkol, 62, who was part of the rescue party explained that it took them over six hours to rescue the lone survivor and retrieve the body of the deceased.

"There was no way we could reach the victims without contacting UWA outpost authorities so as not to risk being shot too," Kapkol narrate.

He said the UWA local authorities allowed them in at about 4:00 pm yet the shooting had taken place at about 9:00 am. New Vision was not able to reach Chelimo, reportedly a member of the families that live in caves on one of the steep mountain ridges.

"As a community, we are stuck. The patient requires surgery to remove a bullet that physicians at Kapchorwa Hospital said is lodged in the victim's pelvic. We have since brought him back home as we look for resources," Kapkol sadly observes.

VICTIMS GIVE HARROWING ACCOUNTS

According to the community, the October 14 shooting was not an isolated incident. The community accuses the UWA rangers of committing abuses, including numerous murders and raping of women over the years.

Violet Chemtai, 50, said women and girls have had their fair share of their woes ranging from defilement, rape, and caning.

"The moorland where we have lived for generations is perennially bare because it is now overpopulated, which explains why we cannot stop crossing into the national park to collect firewood," Chemtai said.

Chemtai, who has taken the lead in documenting cases of sexual molestation against women and girl children in the five villages of Kapkwata, Kapsege, Piswa, Mulungwa and Kwait constituting moorland, said on average 20 teenage girls and women are defiled and raped respectively in each of the villages annually.

Chemtai observes that victims of rape are considerably emotionally disturbed.

"The majority have quietly confided in me, narrating painful experiences of forced sexual orgies with rangers," she said adding that many victims of rape and defilement have suffered severe effects ranging from conception to contracting sexually transmitted disease (STDs).

"I have lost count of women that have come to me with issues of conception as a result of rape or contracting STDs, mostly gonorrhea," she said. To make matters worse, many end up being beaten by their husbands who never listen to their predicament but accuse them of being promiscuous. "Many have quietly used traditional herbs to abort, dying in the process. Some have kept the pregnancies and bore children without alerting their spouses, for fear of wrecking their marriages," she said.

Violet Cheruto, 30, a mother of four and expectant, narrates that she and three other women were recently returning after collecting firewood in the park when two rangers suddenly emerged from a thicket and intercepted them. She said one of the rangers grabbed her by her hand and dragged her a few meters away, into a thick bush. The ranger then wrestled her to the ground.

"My tormentor who had already reached for my undergarments as I helplessly groaned in pain on the ground, abandoned the idea of raping me when he realised I had started bleeding," the young mother narrated. She said although she later received treatment and the bleeding is no longer frequent, the problem persisted.

Rose Chelangat, 50, a widow and mother of 8 children is another victim of attempted rape still recuperating from the bleeding. She said two months ago rangers confiscated three of her cattle, which they found in the park. As a practice, the owner of cattle found marauding in the park pays a fine of sh50,000 per cow.

Chelangat said it took her three days to raise sh150,000 in order to get back her animals. When she reached the UWA outpost on a fateful morning, the place was deserted, but she spotted her animals tied to the trees around. She called out several times before she got a response from a ranger inside a mama yingiya pole (round grass-thatched hut made out of mud and wattle).

The ranger invited her in, but she had refused. After she had paid the fine for the three animals the ranger pretended to escort her through the wilderness. "It happened quick and fast... the ranger grabbed me, hoisted me high up, then flung me hard onto the ground," narrated the widow with tears in her eyes. The widow said she fought back, overpowering the ranger. Janet Chebet, 36, a mother fi ve, narrated the brutality she was subjected to last month together with four other women. She was bedridden for two weeks.

On a fateful morning, they went to the forest to collect the dry logs for firewood when they were intercepted by the rangers. The rangers reportedly subjected them to a thorough beating.

Samson Cheptor, 56, said the rangers have imposed hefty fines for livestock that strays in the park. "You can imagine, even when the animal is not confiscated, the rangers look for it in the community and take it away with them. They only return it after the owner pays the fine," he revealed.

TRESPASSING FINE

For each cow found in the park, the owner is fined sh50,000 for the first three days.

"The fine goes up to sh100,000 per cow should the owner of the cattle fail to collect it in the first three days and risks forfeiting the animal to the ranger," Cheptor said.

"The question is what crime did the Benet community do to have to pay the heavy price as has been the case for the last 69 years? When shall we get liberty?" he asked.

In an interview with New Vision, the Kwosir sub-county chairperson, Patrick Chebet, said local leaders have tried to intervene, but relevant authorities and UWA have merely ignored them.

Efforts to speak to the relevant area authorities were fruitless. Simoowu Ndiwu, 66, a Benet elder told New Vision that they last set their eyes on the Kween district chairperson and area MPs when they were looking for votes during the 2016 general elections.

"We are asking President Yoweri Museveni to consider the idea of granting moorland a district status since Kween district local authority has neglected them," Ndiwu says.

Serawon now walks using crutches

Alex Serawon, 45, one of those who escaped death now walks with the aid of crutches. He has fresh memories of his ordeal that transpired five years ago.

He recalls, taking a herd of his livestock to graze in the community grazing ground one afternoon. He said the herd crossed into the park to eat some healthy grass.

However, little did he know that an armed ranger was in the vicinity monitoring his movements. "He shot at me. The bullet entered my body through the back of my right leg knee joint, tearing it," he narrates.

He recalled how sympathisers carried him from the scene where the ranger who shot him had left him bleeding profusely. He was rushed to Kapchorwa Hospital.

After a week, he was referred to Mbale Hospital and later to a private orthopedic hospital in Kumi district, where the lower injured part of the leg was amputated.

"The physicians in all these hospitals had told me on examining the X-ray scan that the lower part of the leg had to be amputated because the bullet tore the entire knee joint," he sadly narrates. Once the breadwinner for a family of 10, Serawon is now incapacitated.