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Kenya: Crisis Renewed
AfricaFocus Bulletin
Mar 25, 2009 (090325)
(Reposted from sources cited below)
Editor's Note
"I am shaken. I am shocked. And that is, apparently, the intent.
For all of us to be shaken. For all of us to be shocked. For all of
us to hear the threat, heed the warning. The threat and the warning
implicit in last week's assassinations of Kingara Kamau and John
Paul Oulu of the Oscar Foundation." - L. Muthoni Wanyeki, Kenya
Human Rights Commission
This AfricaFocus Bulletin contains a report of the killing of two
human rights activists in Kenya early this month, and excerpts from
statements on the recent situation in Kenya, both from the March 6
special issue of Pambazuka News "Kenya: The bomb waiting to go off
... again," One is by L. Muthoni Wanyeki, executive director the
Kenya Human Rights Commission, and the other a press statement by
Philip Alston, the UN Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial,
Arbitrary, or Summary Executions.
Additional articles, including a more extensive systematic analysis
of the current situation in Kenya by Wanyeki, is available on the
Pambazuka website at http://www.pambazuka.org/en/issue/422
A March 13 open letter by Kenyan human rights organizations is
available at :http://allafrica.com/stories/200903130663.html
For a variety of current analytical reports on Kenya, including
statements from the Kenyan Council of Churches calling for new
elections and a survey on public views of corruption from
Transparency International Kenya, see
http://africafiles.org/kenya.asp and
http://africafiles.org/article.asp?ID=20394
A related report released in February by two London-based
organizations, "Kenya and Counter-Terrorism: A Time for Change,"
documents Kenya's collaboration with the United States in rendition
of some 150 people of 21 nationalities, seized near the Kenyan
border with Somalia during the Ethiopian invasion of Somalia. See
http://www.reprieve.org.uk/documents/KenyaandCounterTerrorism.pdf
or http://www.redress.org
For previous AfricaFocus Bulletins on Kenya, from 2008 and before,
with excerpts and links of reports during last year's crisis, and
links to relevant recent books, visit
http://www.africafocus.org/country/kenya.php
Update
On March 20, President Obama announced his intention to nominate
career diplomat and three-time U.S. ambassador in Africa Johnnie
Carson as the next U.S. assistant secretary of state for African
affairs. Among other posts, Carson was U.S. ambassador to Kenya
from 1999 to 2003.
See http://allafrica.com/stories/200903240015.html
For an earlier report, with additional background on Carson, see
http://www.africafocus.org/docs09/usa0903.php
See also the February article by correspondent Kevin Kelley in The
East African, at http://tinyurl.com/d85zg6
++++++++++++++++++++++end editor's note+++++++++++++++++++++++
Assassination of Kenya human rights defenders
Kenya National Commission for Human Rights and other Kenyan CSOs
March 5, 2009
Pambazuka News 422, March 6, 2009
Special issue on "Kenya: The bomb waiting to go off ... again"
http://www.pambazuka.org/en/issue/422
This evening, two leading human rights defenders, Mr. Oscar Kamau
King'ara and Mr. John Paul Oulu (also known as GPO), both of Oscar
Foundation, were executed in cold blood by a group of men in two
vehicles. The two were driving to meet Mr. Kamanda Mucheke of the
Kenya National Commission on Human Rights at his office.
Eyewitnesses have said that the assassins were policemen. In fact,
the minibus driver was in police uniform.
An eyewitness at the scene was also shot in the leg and was later
taken away from the scene by policemen. We are calling upon the
police to reveal the whereabouts of this man since he might be the
only one who can positively identify both the assassins and their
vehicles. Therefore, we fear for his life.
Oscar was a trained lawyer and a human rights advocate who was the
Chief Executive Officer of Oscar Foundation. He was a member of the
Law Society of Kenya.
Mr. GPO Oulu was a former student leader, and an educationist who
has worked for many human rights organizations, including the Youth
Agenda. He left the Youth Agenda recently to join the Oscar
Foundation as the Communications and Advocacy Officer.
Oscar Foundation is a registered charitable organization that
offers free legal services to the poor. Some of its major projects
include organizing caravans to offer free legal aid to the poor
around the country. They have a strong track record researching
corruption in the police force, the prisons, and police brutality
against the urban poor. The latest activity was researching and
documenting cases of enforced disappearances and extra-judicial
killings.
The Oscar Foundation has been a major source of information to
Parliament on atrocities playing out against the poor in the
country. On February 18, 2009, before Parliament debated the motion
on extra-Judicial killings, he presented Oscar Foundation's
findings on ongoing extra judicial killings to Hon. Peter Mwathi,
the motion's mover. Their last engagement with Parliament was a
presentation to the Kioni Committee investigating organized gangs
a couple of days ago.
We believe they were killed because of the sensitive information
they had shared with both the Prof. Philip Alston the UN Special
Rapporteur on Human Rights, and with the MPs.
Where we are in Kenya today is where the Jews were in Nazi Germany
shortly before the Holocaust. The Nazis stage-managed a smear
campaign that made the public hate the Jews and allow for their
extermination.
During the Emergency the colonial government hired collaborators to
commit atrocities which they blamed on the Mau Mau to give them a
bad name so that they could exterminate them.
We hold the Government Spokesman Dr. Alfred Mutua complicit in the
two murders for making wild allegations that the Oscar Foundation
was a civil society front for Mungiki, and they were going to deal
with it. What does he know about the assassinations? Was this what
he meant by dealing with the Oscar Foundation?
As we condole with the families of the deceased, we assure them,
and the nation that their deaths are not in vain.
Signed
Kenya National Commission for Human Rights and other Kenyan Civil
Society Organisations
Headed for the Grave
L. Muthoni Wanyeki
Pambazuka News 422, March 6, 2009
Special issue on "Kenya: The bomb waiting to go off ... again"
http://www.pambazuka.org/en/issue/422
L. Muthoni Wanyeki is the Executive Director of the Kenya Human
Rights Commission (KHRC)
I am shaken. I am shocked. And that is, apparently, the intent. For
all of us to be shaken. For all of us to be shocked. For all of us
to hear the threat, heed the warning. The threat and the warning
implicit in last week's assassinations of Kingara Kamau and John
Paul Oulu of the Oscar Foundation.
Let me be clear about this. I had questions about the Oscar
Foundation. Last year, it appeared to me to be one of human rights
organisations partisan to the Party of National Unity. I did not
understand when or why it had made the shift from children's rights
work to human rights work more generally. I had questions about the
methodology through which it arrived at its figures of
disappearances and extrajudicial executions of those supposedly
associated with the mungiki. I remember us all laughing when
Professor Philip Alston, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on
Extrajudicial Executions, questioned them as to the sources of
their funding - concerns apparently raised with him by the security
services. For, unlike many of us within the human rights movement,
the Oscar Foundation does not receive grants from the
bi/multilaterals or foundations.
But ... I found some of the ways they did their work innovative.
Such as running free mobile legal aid clinics in low-income areas
not just in urban areas, but also in rural areas. I knew too the
solid backgrounds of some of its staff. trusted that they - just as
the rest of us - had information worth sharing with the UN SR as to
the extent of disappearances and extrajudicial executions in Kenya.
And I certainly never imagined - not in my wildest dreams - that
their staff would pay the ultimate price for bringing that
information forward. Death.
I see now I should have read the signs, the writing on the wall. We
all must do so. For the build up was clear. Let me sketch the
outlines.
Reports, many reports, from both national and international human
rights organisations into the joint police/military operations
against the Sabaot Land Defence Force in mount Elgon. Denial,
denial, denial - increasingly angrily so. Finally, questions and
pressure from governments with whom our government has security
agreements and arrangements. Suddenly, a flurry of activity. A
public propaganda campaign - with a state sponsored documentary
focused on the atrocities and crimes committed by the SLDF being
aired, repeatedly, on almost all television channels over several
weeks. A parliamentary probe. A joint police/military
investigation. The verdict? Nothing's wrong. All the human rights
organisations pointing accusing fingers are wrong. And their
motivations are base. They don't care about the atrocities and
crimes committed by the SLDF.
They don't care about the people. They did it to raise money.
Somehow, the issue dies down.
But then comes the report of the Commission of Inquiry into the
Post Elections Violence (CIPEV). It is brutal in its treatment of
the failures of the state security agencies. It notes that the
Administration Police and the Kenya Police Force used such
extraordinary force that no less than a third of all deaths are
attributed to them. It notes that they also committed crimes
ranging from looting to rape. It issues a set of recommendations
for security sector reform, including the fast tracking of
investigations into and prosecutions of individual members of the
security services who committed rape.
The response? Preemptively, the institution of a supposed police
oversight body that is not worthy of the name. The creation of a
task force to investigate claims of sexual violence - from which
all women's organisations coopted into it quickly resign. Silence.
Then the announcement by the minister of Internal Security of
Kenya's supposed security architecture - a plethora of new laws and
policies supposedly addressing the CIPEV report's recommendations.
But not a word about either individual legal or collective
political accountability - which the CIPEV report had stressed.
Again, somehow, the issue dies down - helped in no small measure by
the clamour for individual accountability of politicians for the
violence through the Special Tribunal and the International
Criminal Court.
But then comes the report of the UN SR, which finds the Kenya
Police Force and the military in mount Elgon guilty of torture,
forced disappearances and systematic extrajudicial executions. The
response is predictable. Denial, denial, denial.
And more. The dis/misinformation and propaganda begins. The Vice
Chair and a staff member of the Kenya National Commission on Human
Rights are accused of being on the mungiki's payroll. The build up.
Matatu operators accuse human rights organisations of not caring
about citizens and businesses affected by the mungiki's extortion
and protection rackets. We are informed that the mungiki have
decided to demonstrate in favour of implementation of the UN SR's
recommendations. The media does not question this - despite the
fact that the mungiki's spokesperson denies that they are involved
and despite the fact that, strategically speaking, it would be
ludicrous for the mungiki to do so at this time. The demonstrations
supposedly happen. The supposed government spokesperson parrots the
claims, informing Kenya that the Oscar Foundation is raising money
for mungiki through the human rights organisations that support
mungiki. He blithely ignores the facts that: a) the mungiki make so
much money through their extortion and protection rackets that they
hardly need external assistance and b) the Oscar Foundation does
not receive external funding. Hours after his statement, the two
staff members of the Oscar Foundation are dead.
For the record, the human rights movement has consistently and
repeatedly called for the disarming and demobilisation of all armed
groups, criminal gangs and militia in this country as per Agenda
Item One of the mediation process. It has also said, however, that
disarmament and demobilisation will entail far more than a
heavy-handed security response. And it has said that even that
heavy-handed security response must be within the boundaries of the
Constitution and the law - not to mention the regional and
international human rights instruments we are party to.
If armed groups, criminal gangs and militia still exist in this
country, they do so because of their relationships - complex and
ever-changing with the political powers that be and the security
services that those political powers control. This is obvious. This
is why disarmament and demobilisation is so apparently difficult to
achieve. And this is why it is simply ludicrous to claim that they
exist because of the 'support' they get from the human rights
movement.
We are clearly in dangerous times. The Kenyatta and moi regimes
reserved assassinations for those among the political powers that
be. Human rights defenders and other intellectuals contended
instead with illegal detentions, torture, forced exile. In the
Kibaki/Odinga regime, the goalposts have shifted. Backwards. This
does not portend well. For any of us. For any of us.
To his credit, Odinga came out loud and clear following the
assassinations, calling for independent, external investigations.
We wait to see what Kibaki will do. And that will tell us whether
we're all headed to the grave.
UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial executions in Kenya
Press Statement
[Excerpts only. For full statement see link]
Pambazuka News 422, March 6, 2009
Special issue on "Kenya: The bomb waiting to go off ... again"
http://www.pambazuka.org/en/issue/422
Following his mission in Kenya over the period 16-25 February, UN
Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Arbitrary or Summary
Executions Philip Alston issued a press statement outlining his
findings. Drawing attention to the entrenched impunity of the
country's police force, Alston questions the complete absence of an
accountability mechanism around police killings and the force's
broad reluctance to engage with detailed and comprehensive civil
society concerns. The rapporteur likewise underlines the concerted
efforts to block his access to records around security force
activities, and need for independent investigation around events in
Mt Elgon.
Alston also argues the lack of any form of witness protection
programme to be a key factor in the persistence of a culture of
impunity, and states that the government must move to providing
adequate reparations for families left unable to meet their needs
through the deaths of husbands and fathers.
I conducted a fact-finding mission to Kenya from 16 to 25 February
2009. The aim of my visit was to investigate allegations of
unlawful killings, and I focused on three issues of critical
importance to the people of Kenya: killings by the police; violence
in the Mt Elgon district; and killings in the context of the
post-election violence.
Let me begin by expressing my gratitude to the Kenyan government
for having invited me to the country. This willingness to cooperate
with the international community in its human rights endeavours is
admirable and Kenya deserves full credit.
The biggest challenge for me has been to ascertain the facts in
relation to each issue. In terms of post-election violence, the
Waki Commission report has made my task much easier. In relation to
police killings and Mt Elgon I have engaged in a painstaking and
careful process of gathering information. There are, of course,
competing accounts of what happened, along with various official
denials that any human rights violations have occurred. My work
began several months ago as I analysed all of the available
government, parliamentary, police, and civil society reports on
issues related to unlawful killings.
Upon arrival in Kenya I held meetings in Nairobi, Rift Valley
Province (Nakuru, Eldoret, and Kiambaa), Western Province (Bungoma
and Mt Elgon), Nyanza Province (Kisumu), and Central Province
(Nyeri). I met with government officials at all levels, including
the prime minister, various ministers and assistant ministers,
several permanent secretaries, the chief justice, the chief of
general staff, the police commissioner and the heads of the
Administration Police (AP), the General Service Unit (GSU) and the
Criminal Investigations Department (CID), as well as provincial and
district commissioners, police and NSIS [National Security
Intelligence Service] officers in the various provinces and
districts.
I also met with a wide range of members of parliament, members of
the diplomatic and donor communities, and the UN country team. In
addition, my team and I interviewed well over 100 witnesses and
victims on an individual basis. They included victims of militia
and gang violence, criminal violence, and police and military
violence.
Before announcing my preliminary findings I wish to address several
important preliminary issues relating to my mission.
It has already been suggested by some officials that I have been
unduly influenced by human rights groups and other civil society
organisations. But the breadth and diversity of my information
sources belie this allegation. I would add that the quality of
reporting and analysis by the leading human rights groups in this
country is extremely high by international standards, and I have
benefited from the comprehensiveness and professionalism of their
work.
Undoubtedly the greatest obstacle to my efforts to obtain detailed
information from all sources and perspectives has been the failure
by the police in particular to provide me with virtually any of the
information I have assiduously sought. I will return to this
problem below. Closely linked to this refusal to provide
information is the argument, put to me by the police commissioner
in particular, that allegations of human rights abuses by the
police or the military should only be investigated if the relevant
information meets the standards that would be required to secure a
conviction in a court of law.
This is a fundamental misconception of the nature of human rights
reporting. It is also a convenient one since it would render it all
but impossible for anyone without the resources of government at
their disposal to meet such an artificial threshold and thus
trigger the responsibility of government to investigate. In fact,
the task of a human rights investigation is to obtain credible and
well-founded information which is sufficient to give rise to an
obligation on the part of the government to undertake its own
comprehensive, impartial, and effective investigation of all such
allegations. Human rights reports are not required to demonstrate
as a prosecutor must, or judge as a court would. But that does not
mean that their contents can be ignored by the police or other
relevant government agencies.
Another important preliminary issue concerns the atrocities
committed by militias, armed criminals and organised crime gangs in
Kenya.
There is no doubt in my mind that such criminal groups have
committed the gravest of offences and have terrorised the citizens
of Kenya. This knowledge was reinforced in my many meetings with
the victims of such criminal groups. But the existence of
criminality does not explain or excuse killings by government
forces. All governments have to deal with criminals, and it is one
of the central duties of a government to protect its citizens from
such persons. But a democratic government operating under the rule
of law does not respond to terror with more terror. Surely we have
moved beyond the point where it needs to be stated that the proper
response to criminality is not to shoot a suspect in the back of
the head and dump the body in a forest, but to investigate, arrest,
and try the suspect in accordance with law.
[for details, including a section on killings by police, police
death squads, lack of accountability for police killings, the
broader context, violence in Mt. Elgon district, post-election
violence, witness protection, and preliminary recommendations, see
Alston's full report at
http://www.pambazuka.org/en/issue/422]
AfricaFocus Bulletin is an independent electronic publication
providing reposted commentary and analysis on African issues, with
a particular focus on U.S. and international policies. AfricaFocus
Bulletin is edited by William Minter.
AfricaFocus Bulletin can be reached at africafocus@igc.org. Please
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