Global IssuesRIGHTS: Kenya Cannot Fail to Prosecute Extra-Judicial Killings
When stock is taken of the Kenyan coalition government’s first year in office no marks will be awarded to its handling of extra-judicial killings in the country. Human rights activists claim that the police have murdered about 500 people in the past 16 months.
The government, constituted after a mediation process between President Mwai Kibaki and Prime Minister Raila Odinga’s parties following a disputed presidential poll in December 2007, has dithered on its pledge that it would address the killings.
The gunning down of two human rights activists on Mar. 5 has escalated fears among human rights campaigners that unknown persons, suspected to be the police, are targeting them.
'We have been threatened. One of our officers has had to leave the country after the two murders,' Njonjo Mue, in charge of campaigns and advocacy at the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights (KNCHR), a state body, told IPS.
The slain activists, Oscar King’ara and Paul Oulu of the Oscar Foundation, which offers free legal aid to poor communities, had documented evidence of police complicity in the murder of young 'under-employed' men. Last year they authored a publication, The Veil of Impunity: Executions and Disappearances, Who is Guilty that revealed that 8,000 young people from Central Kenya, Nairobi and part of the Rift Valley had disappeared or had been executed since 2002. It also documented the existence of mass graves in forests across the country.
Similar revelations are contained in a KNCHR study, The Cry of Blood: Report on Extra-Judicial Killings and Disappearances. The findings of the reports resonate with Philip Alston, a United Nations Special Rapporteur on extra judicial killings whose February mission to Kenya also pointed to 'widespread police executions'.
Investigations into the killings have divided government. Prime Minister Odinga has called for an independent probe while government spokesperson, Alfred Mutua, has shrugged off criticism. The internal security minister, George Saitoti, has insisted that the police are 'well able' to conduct investigations much to the disappointment of civic groups.
'By insisting that the police investigate themselves - yet it is they who have been widely accused of assassinations and extra judicial killings - is to confirm how cynical the government is and how deep impunity runs,' Cyprian Nyamwamu who speaks for a grouping of reform organisations told IPS.
The umbrella body, the National Civil Society Congress, now wants the International Criminal Court (ICC) to step in. 'The extent and enormity of extra judicial killings in Kenya qualify for the offences of genocide under the Rome Statute. The ICC has a mandate to investigate the killings,' Harun Ndubi, the body’s spokesperson on extra judicial killings said. The Statute refers to the treaty that established the ICC to investigate and prosecute individuals who commit genocide and other serious crimes.
On April 8, Nairobi-based human rights lawyer, Paul Muite, wrote to the ICC chief prosecutor Moreno Ocampo urging him to act against President Kibaki over the killings. He also wants Saitoti, the internal security minister and police commissioner, Major General Hussein Ali, to be indicted.
The drive to involve the ICC has gained momentum following the government’s failure to set up a local tribunal to probe post-election violence that claimed 1,500 lives and displaced over 300,000 people. In February a bill to establish the tribunal was overwhelmingly rejected by parliament on fears that it would be vulnerable to political manipulation. The defeat has been lauded by those who believe that an ICC-led probe would signal a new beginning in arresting the culture of impunity.
Human Rights Watch (HRW) however still favours a local tribunal and maintains that sovereign countries have a responsibility to guarantee the rule of law. 'It may be that the ICC will have to step in because the Kenyan government is unable or unwilling to see justice done, but that would be a dereliction of duty by Kenya's leaders,' Ben Rawlence, the Kenya Researcher for HRW told IPS.
'Since our priority is preventing more killings, we need something that can operate more quickly than the ICC traditionally has. A special tribunal here in Kenya could be mobilised with proper political will much more quickly,' HRW executive director, Kenneth Roth, reiterated during a visit to Kenya in March. 'Kenya cannot simply choose to abdicate its responsibility as a state and fail to prosecute those who caused death and destruction last year.'
And there’s support for the HRW position from the KNCHR. 'There is some healing that takes place when [victims] see perpetrators in the dock as opposed to when the perpetrators are put on flights to go for trial miles away,' Mue observed.
Human rights watchers will be keeping an eye on developments in parliament that is expected to enact a law setting up a local tribunal by May 1.
© Inter Press Service (2009) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service