We are a tortured society where human rights are violated

 By Billow Kerrow

This week, the Independent Medico-Legal Unit, a civil society organisation, published a shocking report of a survey on the prevalence of torture in the country, conducted over in May and June.

Nearly two-thirds (61 per cent) of Kenyans believe torture is common in the country. And 63 per cent blame the security forces, as the main culprits while 42 per cent believe no action would be taken even if they report the matter. While we have heard all that before, more interestingly, nearly half of the Kenyans (48 per cent) say it is driven by poverty.

When you are poor, your rights are readily trampled upon because you cannot afford legal action against the culprits. Consequently, the perpetrators are bound to repeat the same inhuman and degrading treatment against their fellow citizens with impunity.

Invariably, when the culprits like the security forces are accused of torture, their bosses deny such behavior and go out of their way to protect the officers involved. And where justice and good governance is hard to come by often, as in our beloved country, the basic rights of the poor are violated at will.

But for the forgotten people of Northern Kenya, the same poverty and inaction by the Government is torturing them to death, slowly but surely, through unmitigated extreme hunger and thirst.

Nearly four million Kenyans in that region live a torturous life daily; where lack of basic necessities such as water exposes children and animals to a slow, painful death. They live a degrading life where a mother can die while suckling her twin children, and the latter are oblivious of her death. A life where such deaths are mere statistics for a regime that turns a blind eye to its officers who routinely loot donated emergency relief food.

Our Government continues to torture the families of eight Kenyans illegally renditioned to Uganda nearly a year ago to face trial over the Kampala bombing. In September last year, the High Court ruled that the renditions were illegal and that the Government could not invoke terrorism to justify the rendition.

Though the renditions and torture of the Kenyans was roundly condemned by Parliament, Judiciary and the Minister for Justice and Constitutional Affairs among others, the forces of impunity in Government continue to defy calls for their repatriation back home where they can be tried if necessary.

Yet, when major fraud and money laundering suspects are wanted in New Jersey where this Government stands to recover nearly one billion shillings, the same forces insist on due process of extradition.

There is no torture in New Jersey but the grand larceny could have contributed to the deprivation and the torturous death in northern Kenya.

And if you survived the hunger pangs in Turkana, you probably won’t escape the torture and death through bandit attacks by the foreign militia who invade the country at will. Even when the famine abates, the tortured residents of that forgotten region live in constant fear of attacks that leave a trail of death and hundreds maimed each year.

As usual, the Government pledges more security in a futile action that yields nothing. If they were rich or were ‘politically correct’ the forces of impunity would have built 32 police stations for them as they did in Rift Valley ‘hot spots’.

 

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Members of Parliament Najib Balala (Mvita) and Amina Abdallah (Nominated), had a torturous week too when some nondescript UN consultant accused them of financing Al Shabaab. Regrettably, the UN has lately become a US mouthpiece for war, and terror rumours. Rather than reduce conflict and poverty in Somalia as mandated, it was busy sponsoring bogus experts sitting in Nairobi hotels writing fanciful fiction about a mosque in the poorest neighbourhood while millions starve in Somalia. Shame on you!

 

 

The writer is a former MP  for Mandera Central and political economist