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Rising Insecurity Worries Residents
- Details
- Published on Tuesday, 17 July 2007 23:19
Fingers have been pointed at a vigilante group called Sungu Sungu, the provincial administration which supports it, and thugs whom they are all supposed to watch against. The local police would more often take the line of the provincial administration.
"We are against these vigilantes," a spokesperson of the Diocese's Catholic Justice and Peace Commission told CISA. "We call on the government to improve the security situation."
In Nairobi, Chemchemi ya Ukweli (CYU), the movement for active non-violence in Kenya, shared this view asked the government to do away with vigilantes and instead initiate community policing.
"The administration should take responsibility and introduce community policing," Br Dominic Kariuki CMM, CYU's Head of Programs told CISA.
Br Kariuki, who is also the chairman of the Justice and Peace Commission of the Religious Superiors' Conference (RSCK), said that the Kenya police already have a special team trained in community policing, which even recently toured South Africa and India to see how this is done.
Under such an arrangement, he said, civilian residents and police would complement each other in security matters.
The Sungu Sungu, who enjoy moral and public support by the provincial administration, are said to be funded by local business people.
In July 2004, police shot dead seven 'most wanted criminals' in the area, whose involvement in crime was later disputed after two of the supposedly dead 'thugs' resurfaced elsewhere to declare they were innocent and alive.
Towards the end of that month, a man who had earlier informed the police that his life was in danger was beheaded allegedly by a vigilante group, who also burnt his home and injured his brother. In 2003 a chief and his assistant were killed by criminals, and several suspects arrested by police.
