Tit for Tat

The big news in Kenya last week started with the supposed Mungiki demonstrations on Thursday: a day of protest called by the activist Oscar Foundation to protest the government's rejection of the recent report of the UN Special Rapporteur on Extra-Judicial Killings, Philip Alston. Alston reported that Kenyan police death squads had deliberately killed hundreds of suspected 'Mungiki' and Sabaot Land Defence Forces last year. Businesses, and especially matatu operators, are very fearful of the Mungiki – the secret Kikuyu militia, with powerful connections to some Kikuyu politicians, which extorts money from them in many parts of central and western Kenya. So whether or not the demonstrations were hijacked by Mungiki, transport across the southern Rift and central Kenya was disrupted for most of the day; matatus refused to operate; fires were lit by demonstrators to stop traffic; and trucks were used by protestors to block roads...

...And ended with the murder of two Oscar Foundation leaders who had supplied evidence to Alston's investigation, shot dead in broad daylight while stuck in traffic in central Nairobi, just half an hour after a government minister had accused their organisation of fundraising for the Mungiki.

It's interesting to see how this has been reported in Europe and Kenya. The two have been described neutrally in the European and North American media as "human rights investigators" or "human rights activists", killed for protesting against EJE's of suspected Mungiki by the Kenyan police. Both daily Kenyan papers and TV news have likewise stressed the impunity of the double murder, and widely reported the resulting international criticism. But the Daily Nation (the slightly more conservative of the two main Kenyan print dailies) described the Oscar Foundation bluntly as "an NGO with links to the Mungiki". And most people I've spoken to are broadly critical of both Philip Alston's report, and of the Oscar Foundation’s support for it. There is enormous fear and hatred of Mungiki and Sabaot Defence Forces amongst many Kenyans(as well as some loyalty amongst communities supposedly 'protected' by them). A common refrain from opposing communities, as in all situations of ethnic conflict (Sri Lanka?) seems to be to ask why the international community was silent while Mungiki were murdering and extorting their way through central Kenya, and Sabaot Defence Force members were killing people in Mount Elgon (although in fact they weren't silent at all).

Is the Oscar Foundation a Mungiki front? So far the government hasn't produced a shred of evidence to support this allegation. What is probably true is that they're not simply the non-partisan human rights organisation they've been portrayed in the Western media. Their leaflets, circulating in Nakuru earlier this week (translation below) were only in Kikuyu language, addressed at mobilising a single ethnic community. They weren't explicitly inciting violence, and their legal advocacy and human rights documentation work seems credible, according to other human rights organisations.

So they're more community rights activists than human rights activists - advocating for a community which already has powerful political patronage. That doesn't make their murder any less appalling, or any less indicative of the near-total impunity of the Kenyan government's security apparatus. But its causes and consequences are about ethnic politics, not simply a Manichean struggle between brutal state repression and the human rights community, as it's being depicted in the European media.
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OUR GOD, OUR GOD! WHY HAVE YOU FORSAKEN US?

People of Njamba Njithi [a youth group], are you just going to sit and watch as we get wiped off? Let’s come together and protest against the government killings led by the illegitimate killer squad Kwekwe and Police Commissioner Ali.

Now we have said “enough is enough!” Michuki and those killers should tell the people in accordance to what he said that "we will only be hearing of burials of our children". This disease is with the other one and now we are tired of seeing orphans and widows.

We now are urging President Kibaki to fire Police Commissioner Ali, Ministers Michuki and Saitoti, Attorney General Wako and all murderers within his government as per the UN Special Rappoteur’s recommendation.

On 5th March 2009, Oscar Foundation, a human rights organization in conjunction with parents and friends of the missing children will demonstrate with the aim of demanding for 6542 bodies of missing people and 1721 that have been killed. The demonstrations will take place throughout the nation. You are urged to come out dressed in black as a sign of mourning.