Muigwithania 2.0

The Kenyan government should immediately stop forced returns of internally displaced people and ensure that all returns are safe and voluntary, Human Rights Watch said today.On May 5, the Kenyan government launched Operation “Rudi Nyumbani” (Return Home), aimed at returning thousands of men, women, and children to their homes, which they fled in the violent aftermath of the December 2007 elections. However, on May 8, the provincial commissioner for Rift Valley province announced that all displaced persons camps in the province would be closed within three weeks. Since the announcement, there have been mounting reports of forced returns and inadequate services once people reach their homes.

“How can you have a voluntary return program with a deadline?” said Georgette Gagnon, Africa director at Human Rights Watch. “Internally displaced people have the right to return voluntarily, when they feel safe, not when it suits the government.”More than 250,000 people were newly displaced by the post-election violence in January and February 2008, and more than 100,000 were still in camps as of May 8. Many people fear that their home areas remain unsafe and that adequate reconciliation between hostile communities has not taken place. In the past weeks, there have been attacks on returning persons in Trans-Nzoia and Molo districts. Moreover, many people are being forced to return to areas where there is no food or shelter and the government has not provided any services.

In Trans-Nzoia district, in the northern Rift Valley, international nongovernmental organizations described to Human Rights Watch how police officers forcefully emptied camps in the Kitale area and ordered displaced people to leave. For instance, on May 13 in Kitale town, aid workers witnessed armed police dismantling occupied tents and the district commissioner beating a woman who refused to return home.

This account is just one of many incidents in which displaced persons have been driven out of camps in recent weeks without food or shelter. Many have gone back to the camps or simply set up informal camps closer to their home areas because their homes are still not safe. A man was killed by hostile neighbours in Patwaka when he returned two weeks ago. A group of 145 people who were moved from Explosion camp to Kitwamba on May 13 returned to Explosion because there was no food. According to the Nairobi-based National Internally Displaced Persons Network of Kenya (IDP Network), residents in Kuresoi complained that they had no shelter and no food upon reaching the places where their homes used to be; some went back to the camps on foot. Newspapers have reported at least two people were killed in Molo district by hostile neighbors unhappy at their return.

The UN’s Guiding Principles on Internally Displaced Persons state that “Internally displaced persons have the right to be protected against forcible return to or resettlement in any place where their life, safety, liberty and/or health would be at risk.” The Guiding Principles reflect international humanitarian law as well as human rights law, and provide a consolidated set of international standards governing the treatment of the internally displaced. Kenya has ratified the Great Lakes Pact which incorporates the Guiding Principles.

Forcefully returning displaced persons is not only a violation of the rights of those who had already been forced to flee their homes, but it also risks fuelling further conflict in an already volatile environment. The situation of internally displaced persons in Kenya is complex and requires a much broader examination and response. Many of the recently displaced people, as well as many others, were previously displaced from their homes and were never compensated for the losses they suffered during previous rounds of violence as far back as 1992.

“Returning people to unsafe or contested areas in a hurry will only lead to an illusion of peace, and in the long run it may make matters worse,” said Gagnon. “With the National Dialogue and Reconciliation and the new coalition government, Kenya has an opportunity to right historical injustices and address the problem of displacement in its totality.”

Even before the 2007 election, Kenya had a massive number of displaced persons due to decades of land disputes and conflict. In 2006, the IDP Network estimated that the total number of displaced persons in Kenya was between 250,000 and 365,000.

Successive governments have failed to solve the underlying causes of the displacement: disputes over land ownership and allocation as well as political violence fuelled by the political manipulation of ethnic tensions and communal mistrust.

Human Rights Watch called for the government to address the short-term concerns of security and assistance by engaging internally displaced persons in discussion about the return and resettlement process. The government should keep the camps open until such time as internally displaced persons feel safe to return. In the meantime, the government should continue to meet its obligations to provide people with security, assistance, and basic services such as health and education.

A durable solution to Kenya’s endemic problem of violence and displacement will only be realised when the government seriously addresses the long-running disputes over land rights, corruption, and unequal land ownership.

 Kenya’s newly formed coalition government is divided over how to deal with thousands of people arrested in connection with the post-election violence which was sparked by the country’s disputed presidential poll. Divisions have emerged among ministers allied to Prime Minister Raila Odinga’s Orange Democratic Party (ODM) and President Mwai Kibaki’s Party of National Unity (PNU) over the issue of amnesty.

    Ministers in the premier’s party are calling for amnesty, an appeal rejected by their counterparts in the president’s party. “ODM called for protests and PNU ordered police to shoot at the youths to quell the protests. The police were as guilty as anyone,” said Agriculture Minister William Ruto.

    ”This is a matter that decides whether our country is under the rule of law or the rule of the jungle. There is due process to be followed before the youths are released,” said Justice Minister Martha Karua.Thousands of people are still being held by the police in connection with violence in December and January that killed over 1,000 people and displaced hundreds of thousands. Many of those arrested were from the Kalenjin ethnic group in the Rift Valley or from the western city of Kisumu, who were supporters of opposition leader Raila Odinga, now the prime minister.

 Several of the lawmakers from these areas are calling for amnesty for those being held, a call that was echoed by the premier during his visit to the Rift Valley.  Foreign Affairs Minister Moses Wetangula said on Wednesday the issue whether to forgive those who committed crimes after the Dec.27 elections will be discussed in the cabinet on Thursday.  And his Information counterpart Samuel Porghisio downplayed rifts among ministers over the handling of the post-election violence suspects.  ”What we have witnessed is individual opinion of some MPs. Amnesty was never an issue of agreement or disagreement during the(Kofi) Annan-led talks,” he said. Energy Assistant Minister Charles Keter said most of those arrested were engaged in political protests against what they perceived as a stolen election. “We (MPs) are their products. This is the time we should pardon each other; we will not stop agitating for their release,” said Keter. “These people were fighting for their rights. I feel that if we have a coalition government which is trying to reconcile Kenyans, they should be given amnesty,” he said.

 But key figures in President Kibaki’s party have rejected calls for amnesty, saying those responsible for serious crimes should be brought to justice.”Thorough investigations should be conducted and those who killed should be charged with murder. Those who set houses ablaze should face arson charges,” said Dick Wathika, an assistant minister for public works. Those who support amnesty argue that the arrests inexplicably targeted communities supporting Odinga, while supporters of the president who committed crimes in towns like Naivasha and Nakuru received less attention from the police. “We have people who were murdered in Naivasha. The people who murdered them were seen by the police and the police never arrested a single one of them. Human heads were used to block roads in Naivasha and the police saw it and they never arrested a single person holding a human head,” said Prof. Ayiecho Olweny, education assistant minister.  Supporters of amnesty also argue that most of those arrested are young people who likely had little role in organizing crimes. Some members of the president’s party including human rights officials agree.

    ”These are basically youth who are used by other people, so my thinking is that we need to have a structured amnesty program, nota blanket amnesty,” said Lee Kinjanjui, a legislator.

    Hassan Omar Hassan of the Kenya National Commission for Human Rights said the Amnesty debate has become politicized.  ”What is happening from both sides is that the debate has taken an ethnic dimension, it has taken a partisan position, it has taken grounding within the framework of personalities,” he said. “We cannot politicize matters of great national importance to that point. And I think it will not do any Kenyan any good if that were the trend this discussion were to take.” As divisions persist, analysts said the fate of the post-election violence suspects remain in the hands of the cabinet which is expected to discuss the issue by the end of the day.

The colonial heritage also found expression in an administrative tradition where territorial control was paramount of all priorities. Stemming from this, interior boundaries defined exclusive territories, both in the form of nature reserves (forest, national parks) and “ethnic reserves”, which often took on the aspect of administrative bodies. The result was a sectorization which certain repercussions on the distribution of the different communities which populate the country. This situation has become a source of inter-ethnic tension. And it is particularly portentous in the Chebyuk area of the Mount Elgon district where an IRD researcher has been conducting a long-term study on the origins of the conflict over access to arable land which opposes the Kalenjin language communities (Sabaots, Ndorobos and Soy), and whose emergence is closely linked to identity affirmation.

The fertile, well watered Chebyuk region on the southern slopes of Mount Elgon, about 2000 m high, was until 2006 home of a population of 35 000 over a 10 km2 surface area. Following primary forest clearance which had begun in the 1970s, crops of maize, cabbage, onion and potatoes, for export to Kenya’s large towns and cities, developed steadily. Since that time, the geographic area has represented an agricultural front for families coming mainly from the Sabaot community, settled on either side of the frontier between Kenya and Uganda. To meet people’s demand for farming plots, in the 1970s a committee of elders, co-opted by government authorities, organized a first land distribution operation. However, from the mid 1980s, rivalries rose up over ownership of this expanse of land.

Pressure from the Sabaot community led to the settlement and clearance of a more extensive zone than the legally delimited area. In 1989, complaints about the misappropriation of these land allocations prompted a government decision to reorganize the attribution of the farming plots. It was a time when tensions came to a head and houses were burned down. Tensions broke out with rival land claims which were arbitrated by a politico-administrative class which persisted in maintaining a a system of partiality.

The 1989 land reform therefore provided for the redistribution of all land in the localities of Emia and Chebyuk. It was organized in three phases, each corresponding to a particular area of Chebyuk: the lists of beneficiaries of phases 1 and 2 were finalized in 2004; the one for phase 3 was made official in 2006, marking the end of what was a 30-year-long land redistribution programme (see Map). It was subsequent to this final reorganization that the conflict rose to the surface, ending in a form of spatial segregation that rent asunder the apparent unity of the Sabaot community. Towards the end of 2006, clashes between the Sabaot and Ndorobos, a new ethnic identity that had gradually emerged from among those of the Sabaot group who had been cast aside, resulted in the displacement of 60 000 people and the death of 200 others. The region’s inhabitants assimilated with the Ndorobos then took refuge on the high moorland expanses of Chepkitale and in the forest reserve area at the boundary of the Trans Nzoia district. Others, assimilated with the Soy, went over to the plains not far from the Ugandan border (Cheptais), the main town of the district (Kapsokwony) or the neighbouring district of Trans Nzoia.

More recently, the violent stresses associated with the December 2007 elections, expressed locally by rival factions’ taking up of arms, played a role in the magnifying the conflict. Those long battles for land nevertheless find their origin more in the history of State schemes for regulating access to land ownership, rooted in practices of political favouritism and authoritarian methods employed to implement land redistribution operations. Land appropriation battles in the Mount Elgon region stem in the end from repeated episodes of land allocations and evictions which gave rise to frustrations that are now boiling up into ethnic territorial claims

According to the East African standard things in Central Kenya might be looking good for Raila Odinga.

There is soul searching in Central Province with disappointment targeting President Kibaki and elderly politicians who have surrounded him over the years.With the anger and rebellion that for now is being expressed only in hushed tones, the idea of a generational transfer of power initially associated with followers of the outlawed Mungiki sect, is getting a new life and going mainstream.

Anchoring these is the feeling that the General Election last year left the region hugely isolated from the rest of Kenya, in what some upcoming leaders blame on the old guard. They accuse them of using the community to fight the battles of just 100 or so rich people.

Sources told The Sunday Standard that the clamour by some leaders to have the Government negotiate with Mungiki instead of killing its followers is inspired largely by two issues:One, old leaders are trying to catch up with, if not all the same hijack and control the idea of a leadership change.There is also the fear that the youth in this region could soon rally behind Prime Minister Raila Odinga who called for an end to the killing of Mungiki members and advocated for negotiations.Interviews with various sources familiar with the simmering dissent in the region revealed that people here, especially the young, are beginning to take a new look at Raila, especially after he agreed to share power with President Kibaki, then going with him to the camps for the displaced in the Rift Valley.

According to the resident “experts on Kikuyus” Raila Odinga could run away with votes from poor Kikuyus and the children of the Mau Mau because people are resentful of kibaki . It is always amazing how people will spin almost any story to their advantage .The only problem with spin is that its just spin. So lets get the facts straight.Mungiki is what can be considered  an ultra nationalist organization(and i dont mean kenyan Nationalism).Mungiki is founded on returning kikuyu people back to their basic beliefs and roots. How Raila  can fit into this supreme goal i don’t know. Mungiki is for kikuyu supremacy .If a polite moderate like Kibaki trashed  the MOU with Raila . What  will the faceless  shadows that control Mungiki do .

On a side note

The grand Coalition is like the Treaty of Versailles.Everyone thought it solved all the problems and settled things I don’t need to tell you what happened later.What has the coalition settled  apart from sharing out seats  none of the underlying historic issues real or imagined  have been resolved .Everybody is smiling as we sweep the dirt under the carpet .