Philip Ochieng', writing in yesterday's Sunday Nation is right that tribes are blameless for the violence that was visited on Kenya in 2007 and 2008 (Ocampo, do not fall for this trick by the elite). The past week has been hilarious: members of PNU have come out strongly to defend their 'people' against the bias they claim that the ICC prosecutor is displaying by asking for minutes of security meetings held before, during and after the violence that took place after the disputed 2007 general elections. Rift Valley MPs of ODM have joined the chorus by asking, nay demanding, that ODM provide minutes of its meetings when the Pentagon called for mass action. As Mr. Ochieng' notes, these men and women seek to hoodwink the ICC prosecutor into believing that the violence was a communal matter rather than an individual one. It is time that well-meaning Kenyans came out strongly against the tactics of the elite and informed Luis Moreno-Ocampo that Kenyans would not have committed these horrendous crimes if they had not been urged, encouraged or paid by their political masters. If the concept of command responsibility were to be applied to Kenyans in positions of authority, it does not matter whether they were Kikuyu, Luo or Kalenjin - they must all face the full brunt of the law.
Kenya is undergoing fundamental changes and the likes of Isaac Kiprono Ruto (ODM, Chepalungu) and Ephraim Mwangi Maina (Safina, Mathira) are the wrong people to offer solutions to what ails us. In December 2007, Kenyans voted and made choices that they hoped would make their lives better. They had been bombarded by messages of change and hope by wily politicians. They had been bribed in imaginative ways and if it was not for the hapless handling of the elections by the discredited Electoral Commission of Kenya, things wold have gone on as much as before. But, the spectre of uniformed and plain-clothes security agents acting as the political agents of one party to the detriment of another proved to be the tinder set against the kindling of the Kenyan public's anger. Images of aggrieved politicians urging their 'supporters' to engage in 'mass action' to protest against the blatant thievery of the elections was fuel to the fire. Stories continue to emerge of politicians and businessmen funding marauding youths to perpetuate the violence. The Waki Commission heard harrowing tales of women systematically raped as other members of their families were slaughtered by the marauding mobs of security officers and other militias in the pay of politicians. Hundreds of thousands of Kenyans were driven from their homes at the urging of political players in their districts. Now we have the elite in these political parties seeking to shift the blame for the mayhem from themselves to their ethnic communities, attempting to create alibis for their actions where none exist.
The Director-General of the National Security and Intelligence Service is on the record as having warned the government that there would be violence if the results of the presidential election was disputed. Indeed, in the run up to the elections, an assistant minister was arrested for ferrying weapons to his constituency. To date, he has never been charged with an offence and is free to walk among us. How many cabinet members were involved in the arming of militia in their constituencies and did the NSIS know of this? Who knew, when did they now and what did they do about it? Prof. George Saitoti (PNU, Kajiado North), the Minister for Internal Security and Provincial Administration, is set to publish rules for the recording of testimony to be given by senior members of the security services and the provincial administration. Given that he has expressed an interest in the presidency, will he publish the rules in such a manner that only his political rivals are implicated or is he interested in the truth?
There is no way that the process of investigating the atrocities that were committed in 2007 and 2008 will not bring to light the culpability of senior politicians and senior government officials in the mayhem. That many of the officers in charge of security at that time come from 'one particular community', it is only reasonable to assume that they will face the brunt of Senor Ocampo's attention. It is also reasonable to assume that many of the politicians in the Rift Valley who called for 'mass action' may also be implicated during the investigations. However, the cost to these individuals will be political first and legal second. While some or all of them may escape indictment or even trial and conviction at The Hague, they will have suffered irreparable political damage. It is this that is exercising the likes of Ruto and Maina to fight the perception that only certain members of their respective communities are being 'targetted' by the ICC. Mutula Kilonzo (ODM-K, Mbooni) has suggested that some of the perpetrators, perhaps all, should be tried in Kenya, but as the acquittal of the policeman videoed shooting unarmed people in Kisumu shows it is not possible to get a fair trial in Kenya. The Hague remains, as it always has, our best and only option.
Regardless of the impact of Mr. Ocampo's investigation on the 2012 general elections, it is imperative that his investigators go where the evidence takes them. We must break with our dark history if we are to achieve anything as a nation. The work done by such organisations as the Kenya Human Rights Commission, the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights and other similar NGOs must be supplemented and complemented by the testimonies of Kenyans who witnessed what was going on. No one can lay claim to being a true Kenyan if he sits idly by while the investigators are in town. It is time we showed Ruto and Maina that individual responsibility comes first before communal responsibility; that individuals who exercised command responsibility will be targetted, investigated, indicted, tried and God-willing, convicted for their crimes against humanity.
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