DAR ES SALAAM (Xinhua) -- Authorities in Tanzania on Thursday denied media reports that they were planning to evict 40, 000 Maasai pastoralists from Loliondo district in the north of the country and turn their ancestral land into a reserve for the royal family of Dubai to hunt big game.
The UK Guardian newspaper reported this week that Tanzanian authorities have ordered 40,000 Maasai pastoralists to vacate their ancestral land by the end of 2014 in order to turn it into a big game hunting block for the Dubai-based royal family.
"The article was aimed at mudslinging the country in the eyes of the international community," Lazaro Nyalandu, Tanzanian minister for Natural Resources and Tourism, told a news conference in the political capital Dodoma.
The minister further described the report as malicious, misleading and unfortunate.
According to the article, the government of Tanzania was ready to offer compensation to the evictees to the tune of 600,000 U.S. dollars to be used for socioeconomic development projects but the pastoralists refused the offer.
Nyalandu said after the article was published he received several emails from across the world condemning Tanzania for its decision to evict the pastoralists from Loliondo.
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