Kenya: Makokha's Memos - On the Disappeared And the Dead

Source from:  The Nation (Nairobi) 27 October 2007 10/29/2007

The Nation Media Group's newest baby, the Daily Metro, has been going on about "the disappeared" most of this week in a way that warrants attention. The newspaper has published pictures and tales of young men who left home in the company of people believed to be police officers and either disappeared or turned up dead. It is instructive to observe how police deal with these mysterious deaths: Casual handling of the crime scene, and no investigations opened. Yet, in the past few months alone, the people turning up dead run into hundreds. As a phenomenon, disappearance is fast becoming the new face of human rights abuse in Kenya. So worrying is it that the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights has began putting together a list of people who have disappeared. A new report by the Oscar Foundation, Youth State Repression: The Killing Fields, claims that between August 2002 and August, this year, 8,040 young people have been executed or tortured, and another 4,070 who have fallen off the face of the earth. Only this month, the report says, Oscar Foundation discovered secret burial sites in Ngong Forest where young people who had perhaps been secretly executed had been buried. The report suggests that most of the deaths might have occurred when officers attempted to extract confessions from suspects. There is great fear that rogue law enforcement officers are using extra-judicial executions to silence suspects and take part in crime through conspiracy or direct activity. The police have been awfully silent on enquiries about people who were arrested during the Mungiki troubles and never turned up at police stations or in mortuaries. Oscar Foundation says it noted a dramatic rise in police killings between 2006 and 2007, with an average monthly count of 40, up from less than 10 in the previous three years. Last year, nine out of 10 Kenyans who were shot dead were victims of the police. Those killed were either robbery suspects or innocent victims of trigger-happy police officers. It is important that as Kenya examines these issues, it does so without losing sight of the fact that the majority of police officers put themselves in the line of danger to protect life and property. However great the sacrifices that the men and women who protect this land make, it needs to be made crystal clear that they must offer that protection and security within the law. In the past, perhaps, political leaders and the Government have created the impression that the police need not be accountable in any way to the public they protect and serve. It is a gross misunderstanding; and it must be changed. The much-talked-about civilian oversight authority that would monitor police work has been very long in coming. The current police complaints section is run by officers, whose commitment to the protection of human rights and ability to be independent even where complaints touch on their colleagues. Kenya is waiting so see robust and decisive action on these reports - from the political leadership and from the police force itself. Good-bye and good riddance As the ninth parliament was sent packing this week, it occurred to me that even the most malicious critic would have to admire the Kibaki administration: It walked in with an overwhelming parliamentary majority, a morally incapable opposition and an ambitious legislative agenda. It systematically invited the loss of its parliamentary majority and teetered on the brink of instability throughout the five years. Yet it got more Bills turned into law than any other government before it. When you hear about 67 Bills being passed, 64 were Government-sponsored and the other three private members'. Proposals to create laws that had been impossible before, such as anti-corruption legislation, the Tobacco Act and the Political Parties Act are a reality. With the exception of completing the constitution review, it was a stellar performance even for a government that spends so much time and energy shooting itself in the foot. Former Members of Parliament who plan to cut out this piece and use it in the campaigns had better pause. No-one believes that MPs in their individual capacities, except Mr Muriuki Karue (Constituency Development Fund Act), Ms Njoki Ndungu (Sexual Offences Act) and Dr Julia Ojiambo (Supplies Management Act), did any work without being whipped. The way the game is organised is that everyone does the work and President Kibaki's administration takes the credit. For the 90 per cent of MPs opinion polls say have no chance of coming back, adieu! You were great targets. Envoy lost diplomatic cool in public explosion It is not often that the good old US of A gets a telling off from people it considers a bunch of beggars. So when Labour minister Newton Kulundu said what many people know to be true - that citizens of the United States and the United Kingdom are the commonest culprits in instances of human trafficking - the American ambassador to Kenya dropped his diplomatic guard. Mr Michael Ranneberger might have played the diplomat and let those remarks slide. But no. He is an American, and he has to defend America at all times. So he stood up, referred to the minister's comments as ludicrous, and in a typical display of American polish and politeness, twice refused to shake Dr Kulundu's proffered hand. If some of us had dozed off during the entire show, we were suddenly jolted back to the present. Although Dr Kulundu is known to fly off the handle sometimes, he was spot on this time round: "The US and UK governments are the greatest violators of human rights, transparency and human rights. These two governments have perfected the art of double-speak by asking Kenya and other countries to uphold these tenets... to me, they are preaching water, but drinking wine. As it were, Transparency International gives the US an unflattering rating on corruption, and the human rights watchdog is outright critical of its human rights record - and that is not only because of the people it is holding in Guantanamo Bay. Instead of the ambassador taking all that in his stride and letting it go, he awakened the whole country to the contradiction that the US likes to lecture everyone about human rights while finding ways to justify its own crimes. Little wonder that Mr Ranneberger will not be sending a protest note to the ministry of Foreign Affairs. Come next year, organised religion in Kenya must begin to ask where their guidance and messages for this year's elections came from. It is not possible that the same God they worship would speak to his people and cause so much confusion about the country's future. There are bishops who are being guided by the spirit to bless one candidate, while others are being led to anoint another and even more to endorse yet another. The sheikhs and the imams are having problems of their own. Lobbying MP's starting early this time People with an agenda are already engaging candidates in this year's election with a view to extracting commitments before the elections. It is a clever way of leveraging votes. Two most notable ones have come to my attention. A coalition of more than 40 private and public sectors as well as faith-based and lobby groups have developed accountability contracts which outline certain commitments political leaders must make that will define them as good leaders. The Movement for Political Accountability is not the first attempt at election pacts with leaders. After the 2002 General Election, Unicef obtained signatures from newly elected MPs committing to supporting children's rights. So far, six public forums have been held across the country in an attempt to get Kenyans to put pressure on candidates to sign the contracts. This year, Unicef is also seeking commitments from politicians before they become Waheshimiwa. The agenda is to deepen the quality of education as a child rights issue, and decrease child mortality in Kenya. As it were, Kenya's child survival rates are comparable to Eritrea's. Enditem