AFRICANEWS

Kenya

Attacks against Marakwet state planned: report

Human rights

The Kenya Human Rights Commission has just come out with a report that says a massacre against the Marakwet in Northern Kenya several months ago was the ruling party's attempt to gain back political ground that it has been losing since 1992.

The infamous March 12 massacre against the Marakwet people of Northern Kenya, in which a large group of Pokots armed with sophisticated firearms invaded several Marakwet villages and killed more than 50 people, is part of the ruling Kenya African National Union (KANU) elite's grand political scheme to cling to power and sustain its hold in the Rift Valley Province ahead of the 2002 general elections, a report by the Kenya Human Rights Commission has said.

Raiding Democracy: the Slaughter of the Marakwet in Kerio Valley, based on a fact-finding mission to Kerio Valley in Rift Valley Province, concludes that the raid conducted at 6 a.m. on March 12 this year was not an act of cattle-rustling but a premeditated and well-organised massacre of, among others, innocent children, women, and the elderly.

"The massacre occurred at dawn when the majority of the babies were asleep, pupils were on their way to school, women were out to fetch water or preparing their children for school, and the old people could not escape," concludes the report.

The document says that the escalation of state-condoned or inspired cattle rustling and banditry since 1992 has occurred against the background of a mounting challenge to KANU's electoral monopoly in Kenya's marginal districts in the face of the coming election in 2002. For years Marakwet and Pokot districts had supported KANU, but that has changed in recent years.

The last general elections of 1997 - the genesis of the March massacre - saw the downward spiral of Kenyan President Daniel arap Moi's popularity, says the report. In those elections President Moi garnered 658 votes in Othaya, the constituency of his most formidable challenger, Mwai Kibaki of the Democratic Party (DP).

What was remarkable was not Kibaki's 4,619 votes in Marakwet, but the popularity of former KANU firebrand, Fred Cheserek, who scored a highly impressive 6,079 votes as the DP parliamentary candidate in Marakwet East constituency. "KANU leadership did not take this infiltration of the opposition into its turf kindly and grew increasingly suspicious and resentful of Marakwet politics," says the report.

On his tour to Marakwet immediately after the 1997 elections, Moi is said to have set up the stage for massacre. "How could you give Kibaki 6,000 votes when I only got 600 votes in Othaya?" a confidential source disclosed to KHRC.

The pogrom comes on the heels of this political development and prior to the crucial general elections in 2002. This and other violence, says the report, "is widely perceived as KANU's pre-emptive step aimed at humiliating and intimidating these maverick communities into returning to the party in order to enjoy a moratorium on raiding."

The KHRC's report presents evidence on how the raid was premeditated and orchestrated. For instance, prior to the massacre, Leah Marko, a teacher and a Tugen (Moi's tribe) married to a Marakwet, told one public meeting that she had firsthand information of the looming attack. She had received a letter from her father warning her to leave her home at Kakimoi village before "the moon rises high in the sky," because some people would burn houses and kill people there.

Leah took the letter to the area chief who read its content to the people in a public rally. Sometime before the massacre, Leah's brothers, anxious that she was taking her father's warning lightly, travelled to another area, Kapsowar where Leah's sister lived and sent her to tell Leah to take heed and move away from the village quickly. The day before the invasion, Leah travelled to a neighbouring town and withdrew some money from her bank account to relocate her children.

Unfortunately, this never happened. The Pokot invaded her village in the morning of her departure. Leah and her sons, Kimutai Marko, 10, and eight-year-old Kiprotich Marko were killed. Someone who perhaps knew Leah gorged out her eyes, fearing that if his image would remain in her eyes, it would be used as evidence against him.

Sources from the Office of the Assistant Chief, Kisoka Sub-location, Murkutwo, in Marakwet disclose that Leah and her two sons are among the 48 people killed during the massacre. Fourteen more people were discovered later.

KHRC accuses the local security and administration for not taking step to stop the looming tragedy. "Had the local security officers and administration given Leah's disclosure the seriousness it deserved, this might have averted the tragedy and saved lives," says the report.

Further, an article in the daily East African Standard of March 20 reported that Marsden Madoka, Minister of State in Charge of Internal Security, had revealed that the names of the bandits who carried out the massacre had been handed over to the government and promised to charge them in a court of law.

Until now, no raider or those who administered oaths has been arrested. Indeed, the local administration in Baringo District, where Moi comes from, has subverted efforts to arrest the raiders and oath administrators. A case in point is that of Simon Linganyang, an Assistant Chief and Wilson Komopus, a Councillor, who were charged in court with conspiring to defeat the course of justice in Kolowa Division, Baringo district. There, they secretly alerted Ngoriate Kiptalam - who administered an oath to Pokot raiders who carried out the massacre - to escape.

According to Marakwet elders, the massacre, the worst in their memory, has traumatised and terrified the villagers. Fearing prospects of further attacks by the Pokots, women, children and the elderly have left their homes and have sought refuge in caves and forests in the rugged Lagam escarpment, while others have fled to the neighbouring districts.

A tour of the area is reminiscent of Christian Rome after its plunder by the Vandals: deserted homes and schools, and uncultivated farms on the Marakwet side of Kerio Valley, according to the report. "Over ten years of unabated raids have led destruction of homes, left firms desolate and driven people to seek refuge on the steep hillsides and in caves for safety," says Susan Owiro, a researcher at KHRC.

"This state of affairs has led to closure of schools where all the 39 schools in Marakwet East have closed down," she says. "The only school operating in Kerio Valley is the Kerio Valley Secondary School that is strategically situated next to the GSU camp." The General Service Unit (GSU) is a paramilitary force from which President Moi's bodyguards is recruited from.

The Marakwets feel that they have lost more in terms of education and development than the Pokots because of their relative modernisation. "We educate our children - the Pokot don't," said Tara Kimwole, a villager in Chesongoch. "Now we have been forced to close our schools. Teachers have run away, and books and other teaching materials have been destroyed by fire. We do not know what will now happen to our children."

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