Late last week Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Luis Moreno Ocampo, received an envelope containing the names of a dozen top suspects of crimes against humanity in Kenya. The alleged crimes against humanity occurred following the disputed 2008 Kenyan presidential election and the list is rumored to implicate some of Kenya’s most senior officials. Former U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan presented Ocampo the list in his capacity as head of the African Union led peace negotiations in Kenya. The list is a product of the Waki Commission which was set up as a part of the peace-brokering deal that ended post-election violence through a power sharing agreement between the two main electoral rivals; the Party of National Unity and the Orange Democratic Movement headed by Mwai Kibaki and Raila Odinga respectively. The Waki Commission was charged with investigating the post-election violence in order to present its findings either to a Kenyan tribunal or the I.C.C. Kenya has so far failed to establish a tribunal per its agreement with the A.U. and the I.C.C., and Annan’s move this week allows the I.C.C. to take further action, possibly including the indictment and prosecution of senior Kenyan officials at The Hague.
Ocampo has pledged to reveal the names of the suspects by next week and Kenyan government ministers have met the news nervously:
He said Kenyans know the reason why there was post-election violence but PNU politicians had made it as though some personalities were responsible for it.
“The simple reason why there was violence after the election is because there was rigging but some people had made it as though some individuals were the masterminds,” Mr Ruto said.
Mr Ruto read malice in push for a local tribunal saying it targeted ending the careers of some potential presidential candidates.
But the evidence gathered by the Waki report is both harrowing and damning, including dozens of tales of the most gruesome kinds of violence perpetrated in part due to ethnic and political motives. The 2008 Kenyan election was between incumbent President Mwai Kibaki of the P.N.U., an ethnic Kikuyu, and Raila Odinga of the O.D.M., who is an ethnic Luo. Much of the post election violence occurred along these ethnic and political lines Heart-breaking atrocities were committed by both sides. Here is an account from the Waki Commission Report of violence allegedly perpetrated by Odinga supporters:
On 1 January 2008, 36 years old Elizabeth W. and her husband were attacked in their house in Eldama Ravine by a group of Kalenjin, some of whom she knew. She was gang raped while her husband was being hacked to death and her shop looted. Following is an extract of her testimony:
On 1 January 2008 we were still fearful. We didn’t open our business. I worked at the Eldama Ravine shopping centre at Mama Faith’s Shop. We owned the shop. It was just next to my house – they are joined together. But I stayed at home that day because I was scared. We left the shop locked up. At about 3pm that day, people came to my home. At the time there was only my husband and me at home. My children had gone to visit their grandparents in Nyandarua. There were more than ten people who came. They were all men. They were dressed in coats and they had smeared mud on their faces so you could not recognize them. The mud was different colors on their faces – white back and red in spots — patches all over their faces. They were armed. They had arrows, pangas and rungus. The first I knew they were there was when I heard talking and noises outside. They were speaking in Kalenjin. They said “we have come to finish you”. The door was not locked so they just came inside. My husband and I were in the sitting room. We were sitting down but stood up when the men came in. When they came in I started pleading with them because of what I had heard them saying outside. I told them why were they doing this when we had lived with them. They ordered me to shut up and said that the Kikuyu had migrated to the area and taken up their (the Kalenjin’s) property. They said I should keep quiet or they were going to kill me. So I just kept quiet then.
That is when they started attacking my husband. They were cutting him with pangas and piercing him with arrows. They were struggling with my husband and trying to get him to the ground. The men were crowding on him – it might have been most of them attacking my husband. I was scared. They cut my husband on the neck with a panga and that made him fall to the ground. It was a serious blow. After that they were cutting every part of his body.
After my husband was cut, but before he died, one of the men came towards me and asked me what I wanted to be done to me. I asked them not to kill me. One said we need to know what she is like, now that she never talks to us. There was another group of men who were looting my shop. I could see them from the door – it was still open. They were going past carrying property from my shop, such as sugar, cooking fat and other goods.
I was wearing trousers with buttons at the waist. The men tore at my trousers trying to get them open and the buttons came off. There were about four of them there doing this to me at that time. They lifted me up and put me on the ground. They were arguing among themselves who was going to be first. Then one said that if I escaped from the knife and arrows, I would die of AIDS. Some of them held my legs and some held my hands while they raped me. When this was happening my husband and I were both still in the sitting room, but by now I was not watching my husband but pleading my own case. The last time I had looked, it was like he was dead. He wasn’t moving.
One man raped me and then the second one and the third. They put their penises in my vagina. It was either the second or the third man who said they were not able to get in me properly so they cut me. I think it was the panga they were carrying that they used. They cut my vagina. When I had my children, the Doctor told me I had a narrow opening. Both my children were born by caesarean. They continued raping me. It was when the fourth man was raping me that I went unconscious…I next remember – and it is vague – that a Kalenjin friend of ours called Joseph was there and he was pleading with the men. He was asking them for him to be allowed to take the body of my husband and take me to hospital. The men started quarrelling with him and told him that he was in partnership with us. They threatened to kill him.[…]
And here are some accounts from the Waki Commission Report of widespread forced circumcisions allegedly perpetrated by Kibaki supporters:
A married Luo woman with two children, originally from Huruma estate in Nairobi but displaced to an IDP camp testified in camera as follows:
“…I heard many people outside saying that “even here there are some ODM people we want to circumcise”. ….’they were many and were making a lot of noise. They pushed the door saying that ‘Kihii-kikuyu for uncircumcised man’ you are the ones troubling us……I saw my husband lying… down. They opened his zip, lifted his penis and cut it with a panga…. I managed to slip away and one alerted them and they said it is okay I would go away and that it is my husband they wanted to teach a lesson and circumcise.” As a result of this attack her husband died due to the injuries sustained during this hideous incident. In explaining the extent to which some victims suffered in the hands of such gangs, a woman, whose testimony has been referred to previously in camera that, “I found that his [my brother’s] penis had been cut and placed on his mouth, his testis were chopped off and placed on his hand. I found that blood was still pouring out of his body and he was kicking as he was dying…..the following day, another workmate of mine informed me that his [my brother’s] head had been chopped of and that dogs were eating his private parts. My brother was clobbered before he was mutilated. The people who did that to him were using spiked clubs. They had fixed nails on the club and as they hit his face, the nails would pluck flesh from his body”.
These incidents were in many cases at least tacitly supported by now Ministers in the Kenyan government. For example:
August 2007, ODM held a meeting which the witness attended in Eldama Ravine Town during which Raila Odinga, William Ruto, Otieno Kajwang, Martin Shikuku and Najib Balala spoke in favour of majimbo. A witness claimed that one of the speakers asked the Tugen community to remove all “madoadoa” from Rift Valley and “to be committed in voting so as to remove Kibaki from power and Kikuyus from Rift Valley.”
“Majimbo” is a Swahili term for ‘regional ethnic rule’ and “madoadoa” is an ethnic slur meaning ‘blot or stain’ and is used here referring to Kikuyus.
There are examples of complicity from the PNU as well as the ODM and the sealed list in the hands of the I.C.C.’s Chief Prosecutor surely reflects that. The evidence could amount to crimes against humanity charges for a number of top Kenyan officials. Some in the Kenyan government have speculated drastic changes to come in the Kenyan political landscape as a result of the impending prosecutions. We should have a better idea early next week just how drastic it will be.
