Commentaries
WATERING THE TREE OF FREEDOM WITH THE BLOOD OF MARTYRS
- Details
- Published on Wednesday, 03 October 2007 02:49
SPEAKER
HON. JAMES MAGARA (Member of Parliament) Kenya.
Relatives and friends of the late Father John Kaiser, members of the clergy, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen, it is my great pleasure to share with you this solemn moment of remembering and honoring the soul of our departed hero.
The late Catholic Father John Kaiser needs no introduction among most Kenyans. For many years he served in the catholic diocese of Trans Mara and Kisii districts. He served his flock with distinction and unrivalled dedication. With time as Kenya became increasingly notorious in abusing human rights, the need for his services grew and both his spiritual and physical energies were stretched to the limit. Thousands of victims of state sponsored terrorism found refuge in his parish. He fought for the end of early child marriages among the Maasai. His most publicized case was a Maasai lady who had allegedly been raped by a cabinet minister when she was a minor. He therefore became an enemy of the state and its representatives at the local level.
Many are the times when he was warned for the stand he took for championing the rights of his people. He occasionally confided to his immediate boss, Catholic bishop Collin Davies and his lawyer Hon. Paul Muite about these threats.
STATE TERRORISM IN PERSPECTIVE
ENOOSUPUKIA
In 1992, residents of Enoosupukia were given a two-week’s notice to vacate their lands. They were informed that they were living in a government area and a water catchments area. A few weeks later ethnic clashes erupted forcing 7000 families out of their homes and into refugee camps at Maela, three kilometers away.
Today, nine years later, more than 1000 families are still living in Maela awaiting repatriation. The displaced were counted in 1994 and assured of resettlement but nothing has been done since then. They live a very difficult life, there is no enough food, water or clothes. Young people live like street children. Sleeping on shop verandas. Most people live in one-roomed houses. The victims tell of horrific losses of human lives, properties and land. The sick cannot afford medical fees. Women and children are the most affected group. Men have lost their wives due to poverty.
Father John Kaiser made a moving presentation at the Akiwumi Commission about the plight of his people. He is quoted to have laid the problem right at the feet of the state. This did not augur well with a regime that had come to regard him as a pariah. The death of Father John Kaiser is closely intertwined with state terrorism in Kenya and in spite of the FBI report that apparently seemed to give the Kenya government a clean bill of health, the court of public opinion in Kenya still holds the government responsible for Kaiser’s demise.
Gucha-Trans Mara Border
Two years after the Akiwumi Commission of Inquiry on Ethnic Clashes, wound up its work, details of the findings are yet to be released – even after President Moi makes incessant pleas for calm in clash-torn areas. Kisii- Trans Mara border has been the latest battle zone. Chaired by retired Court of Appeal Judge Akilano Akiwumi, the Commission heard views from more than 300 witnesses.
A single blow to the head sent 14-year old Tom Onchieku crashing onto a heap of maize he had been harvesting. Terrified and bleeding, he cried for mercy but the gang leader would hear none of it. Clad in traditional war attire and heavily armed, the attackers mutilated the schoolboy’s body with sharp weapons. They then sliced off his tongue and private parts in a ritual orgy. The renewed Maasai-Kisii ethnic clashes had just claimed yet another victim. That was February 17, 2001. Two months later, 15 people were killed, others were maimed and properties were destroyed.
The Kisii-Trans Mara border fights first erupted in 1991 as Kenyans prepared for the first multi-party elections. The two communities had lived peacefully together for decades. The Kisiis with little land to till, have always leased land on the Trans Mara side. There have been incidents of stock thefts and attacks on farmers but these have never led to clashes of this magnitude.
In 1991-92, the two communities fought as did several others in the country – the run-up to the polls. The clashes were sparked by cattle rustling and land lease disagreements. Politics however was blamed. Calm returned after the 1992 elections and was only shattered a few months to the 1997 elections. The violence was more brutal. Armed Maasais and Kisiis butchered one another. Even the dreaded General Service Unit could not contain the mayhem. Some officers were killed.
A judicial commission formed by President Moi to inquire into tribal clashes in Kenya since 1991 has yet to publicise its findings, two years after it wound up business. A common vein in all these was incitement by local politicians. During the commission’s hearings, politics was top on the list of blame. Witnesses told the commission how Maasais attacked and disarmed three police officers pursuing stolen cattle from the Kisii side, and how armed Kisiis shot and killed a GSU official. Despite the shoot-on-sight orders by the government, sporadic killings and destruction of property continued.
Fights have continued in spite of high-powered government delegations, including the President. This has lead to nagging questions especially why the clashes always start when General Election nears. Incidentally, the fights intensified after two provincial commissioners, two cabinet ministers and several other leaders met at Ramacha market along the border to pacify the warring communities.
The Government maintains that the Gucha-Trans Mara border clashes are caused by conflict over grazing lands and cattle rustling. The Maasai are said to have just had a ‘generation ritual’ that requires that young men steal the cattle from their neighbours. Another reason given is that the Maasai who had leased their lands to the Kisii want it back. The Kisii have not obliged, so cattle must be raided either way as the conflict prevails.
The local people knew very well that outsiders fuelled the crisis. As the history of the recent Kenyan so-called ethnic clashes attest, they are neither caused by the ethnic groups concerned, nor can they brought to an end by the ethnic groups assumed to be in conflict. Clandestine armed groups, operating at the behest of the state to achieve some political goal, continue to fan ethnic clashes. The Gusii-Maasai clash is a classical case of state terror unleashed on the people under the guise of ethnic conflict.
The Kisii people have been persecuted because of their political stand. The senior most politician in Kisii land, Hon. Simeon Nyachae abandoned the ruling party. This action angered the top brass of the ruling regime, such that a whole community has heard to be politically disciplined to deter dissent and to serve as a lesson to other potential dissenters. This has been a recurrent political strategy of the morally bankrupt regime of President Daniel Arap Moi.
The same story is repeated among the Marakwets. The government has continued to arm the Pokots in spite of continued politically instigated Pokot raids on the Marakwets. The Marakwets have had to be disciplined for giving many votes to the opposition while belonging to the President’s ethnic and political stronghold of the Kalenjin fraternity.
The death of Father John Kaiser should be seen from this perspective. His insistence on fighting for the rights of those the state deemed unfit in their political grand design, went against the grain of the most palatable theory schemed by the ruling elites. Common view prevalent in Kenya is that Father Kaiser’s voice had to be brought to silence lest it encourages mushrooming of other such dissenting voices. This bore credence viewed from a long line of mysterious deaths of prominent leaders opposed to the injustice of the Moi administration, such as Anglican Archbishop Kipsang Arap Muge, Cabinet Minister Robert Ouko, my late brother Hon. Enock Magara and the late Hon. George Kapten.
Most if not all the ‘ethnic clashes’ in the Molo, Enoosupukia, Gucha-Trans Mara and Likoni-Kwale areas are widely believed to have been a state-sponsored phenomenon. They were intended to intimidate and derail advocates of political pluralism and now members of political opposition, from their cause towards General Elections.
In all these cases hundreds of innocent Kenyans lost their lives as some became permanently maimed, property worth millions was destroyed, the local economy was virtually devastated, and hundred of thousands were displaced and rendered refugees in their own country. All these were done at the altar of party and power politics within an oppressive and exploitative political establishment.
THE WAY FORWARD
No country in the world can register meaningful development in an environment of violence or social mistrust. The deterioration of security where Government appears to have lost its moral authority to protect both the lives of its people and property is a worrying phenomenon.
The rising poverty levels and poor economic performance of the Kenyan economy calls for peaceful co-existence between communities. Ethnic animosity has brought endless civil wars in Sierra Leone, Somalia, Rwanda, Burundi and Sudan to mention but a few.
Kenya is heading towards a significant political bridge, the Moi succession. Ethnic clashes that have rocked the country since 1991, have resulted in the most open dislocation of the country’s political and economic principles since independence. If this downward slide is not checked, it can lead to a civil strife of unprecedented magnitude.
The death of father John Kaiser begs the common good will of the Kenyan people and the international community to rededicate our efforts in making sure that no other soul perishes in such grisly circumstances. It is a pity that with all our immense human and material resources in the 21st century, we apparently continue to witness forces of darkness reversing the most cherished achievements and values of mankind.
The blood of father John Kaiser should not go in vain. Like the blood of other Kenyan heroes before him, it should keep the flame of the war against injustice and bad governance in Kenya alive. There is none other more important tribute to pay to our departed hero than to fulfill his most cherished visions. That every Kenyan big or small shall have equal treatment at the seat of justice and that those who commit crimes against humanity must be brought to bear the full force of the law irrespective of their social status.
May his soul rest in peace.
