Man is born with certain inalienable rights that every government needs to uphold and respect.

Therefore, while the idea of protecting the Mau Forest Complex is timely and noble, it must be done in a manner that prevents the creation of IDP camps.

But the approach to the exercise, which kicked off last week is dehumanising, barbaric and archaic.

The Government needs to return to the drawing board and come up with a better way to evict its people.

{Koech Gilbert, Mombasa}

The callous eviction of residents from the Mau is being done with total disregard to their rights as citizens.

Fresh IDP camps have now sprung up in Kiptagich and several other areas. The settlers are also going hungry despite having crops in their farms.

While not disputing the fact the environment has to be saved, a more humane approach ought to be used in removing these wananchi from the forest.

{Dominic Too, Ainamoi}

The Government is either cold-hearted and callous towards its own people or it underestimated the humanitarian crisis that was likely to unfold in the Mau.

Or it may be that some politicians are out to create the impression the Government never planned for the evictions.

I find it difficult to believe the Government can savage its own people. Going by the sentiments of the chairperson of The Mau Task Force, the ministries of Water, Internal Security and Special Programmes ought to have been on the ground complementing the eviction exercise. But they are conspicuously missing in action.

It now appears the exercise has been reduced to a political ping-pong battle, but is this ‘political sabotage’ likely to affect the country more than the individuals targeted?

A section of Rift Valley MPs believe that Prime Minister Raila Odinga is out to create a humanitarian crisis to gain a global platform at the Copenhagen climate change talks. Hence the barrage of condemnation and vitriol levelled against him.

But I do not think the PM is so naÔve as to connive to drive illegal settlers from the forest and risk losing such a vital voting bloc.

Rumours abound that some Rift Valley MPs are out to use the eviction exercise and make it appear like the worst humanitarian crisis ever witnessed.

In fact, in their own words, the IDP crisis will pale in comparison. But it is pretentious to raise the issue of compensation for a people who acquired forest land illegally. Illegal settlers have, over time, been evicted from Mt Kenya, Mt Elgon and Embobut in Marakwet without compensation.

The thinking now seems to be that since the Government is buying land for displaced persons, it must also buy land for the Mau evictees.

But what these politicians are not telling us is that they are the same people who allowed ‘their people’ into the forest to act as a smoke screen to perpetuate their own selfish interests.

Compensating them will be akin to legitimising a wrong. This must not happen because, in the words of Nikki Giovanni, "once you institutionalise a problem, then you do not intend to solve it."

{Tome Francis, Bumula}