KENYA: Nobel laureate Wangari Maathai's coffin taken to Nairobi's Uruhu Park for tree planting ceremony

Record ID: 361138

  • Title: KENYA: Nobel laureate Wangari Maathai's coffin taken to Nairobi's Uruhu Park for tree planting ceremony
  • Date: 9th October 2011
  • Summary: NAIROBI, KENYA (OCTOBER 08, 2011) (REUTERS) WIDE OF HEARSE CARRYING WANGARI MAATHAI'S BODY LEAVING MORTUARY VARIOUS OF HEARSE DRIVING SLOWLY ALONG ROAD ACCOMPANIED BY SECURITY PERSONNEL MEMBERS OF MAATHAI'S FAMILY FOLLOWING HEARSE HEARSE DRIVING PAST CAMERA TRACKING SHOT OF HEARSE
  • Embargoed: 24th October 2011 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Kenya, Kenya
  • Country: Kenya
  • Topics: Politics,People
  • Reuters ID: LVA94P0LQ9IC0D43NT3N50XCT3JI
  • Story Text: The body of Wangari Maathai, who won the Nobel Peace Prize for her campaigns to save Kenyan forests, left a mortuary on Saturday (October 8) for the site where Kenyans had gathered to to pay their last respects.
    Kenyan security forces escorted the hearse to Freedom Corner in Uruhu Park, where members of Maathai's family planted a Olea Africana (African Wild Olive), indigenous tree, at a ceremony to honour her life.
    The location chosen for the tree-planting ceremony was significant because it was there that Maathai was beaten during a protest against the planned construction of a sixty-storey building in the park. The project was later abandoned.
    Maathai founded the Green Belt Movement in 1977 to plant trees to prevent environmental and social conditions deteriorating and hurting poor people, especially women, living in rural Kenya.
    Her movement expanded in the 1980s and 1990s to embrace wider campaigns for social, economic and political change, setting her on a collision course with the government of then-president, Daniel arap Moi.
    Maathai was whipped, tear-gassed and threatened with death for her devotion to Africa's forests and her desire to end the corruption that often spells their destruction.
    In 1999, Maathai was again beaten and whipped by guards during a protest against the sale of public land in Karura Forest.
    The forest in Nairobi covers more than 1,000 hectares and is home to wildlife such as duiker antelopes and civets, as well as caves used by Mau Mau fighters in their struggle against British rule.
    Maathai won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2004. She was the first African woman to receive the award.
    Maathai was born in the central highlands of Kenya on April 1, 1940. She earned a master's degree in the United States before becoming the first woman in Kenya to receive a doctorate for veterinary medicine and be appointed a professor.
  • Copyright Holder: REUTERS
  • Copyright Notice: (c) Copyright Thomson Reuters 2011. Open For Restrictions - http://about.reuters.com/fulllegal.asp
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