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Where Sungusungu have a field day
- Details
- Published on Monday, 04 June 2007 02:07
Since the beginning of the year, almost 20 people have been killed in Kisii, Nyamira and Gucha districts on suspicion of either shielding known criminals, being related to the suspects or even being suspected to be criminals.
Relatives of the murdered suspects blame the members of the dreaded vigilante group, Sungusungu, for the ruthless killings carried out mostly at night.But unconfirmed reports indicate that criminals who often gang up to eliminate members of the Sungusungu groups carry out these killings. Relatives give chilling accounts of how they watched helplessly as their kinsmen were frogmarched to death dens by the groups.
Villagers interviewed by The Sunday Standard disclosed that they knew the members of the vigilantes but feared exposing them for fear of being attacked in revenge.
"The members are well known even to the police and chiefs. They meet and identify criminals within their areas. Instead of arresting and handing them over to the police, they decide to eliminate them under the cover of darkness," said a villager in Mosocho division.
The scared relatives admit that while it is hard to identify the killers of their kinsmen, open threats from youths during burial arrangements could easily help.
"The Government simply does not want to act," said a relative of Mr Boniface Machabe, one of the latest victims.
Once the "bad element" has been identified in a village, the vigilantes then start tracking him until he is traced. They will then assemble at night and march to the home of the suspect. They pose as police officers on patrol and demand to be allowed into the house to conduct a search. The targeted suspect is seized, at times blindfolded and taken a few metres away from his house and hacked to death.
The bewildered family members are warned against raising an alarm.
Once they are through with their mission, the gang members walk away leisurely.
Musumbu, however, observes that the local security committee, which he chairs, is not aware of the so-called vigilantes.
The DC, who was posted to Kisii during the recent reshuffle, said, "I read in the
media about the atrocities of the illegal groups but none has been reported to us for action".
"I am asking members of the public who know their identities to come forward and tell us who these thugs are," said the DC.
But while the DC was saying he did not know the terror gangs, Nyanza PC, Mr Paul Olando was urging his officers, including Musumbu, to crackdown on the ringleaders of the outlawed vigilantes groups.
The PC told The Sunday Standard that he had ordered police in Kisii to hunt down suspected gang leaders.
"We have given firm instructions to the police to go for the leaders of the illegal groups," said the PC.
The Government’s fresh orders against the vigilantes come against the latest killing of civilians in the area.
Among those killed in the recent past include an elderly woman identified as Mrs Leah Mosingi, whose only crime was to raise alarm when about 30 members of a vigilante group killed his last born son on suspicion of being a criminal.
Early this week, five people suspected to be members of the dreaded gang executed a man on the busy streets of Kisii on suspicion of being a criminal.
Boniface Machabe was hacked to death on Monday in the afternoon by a gang of five who drove away in a vehicle whose number plates had been plucked off. Machabe was attacked moments after he attended a case in the Kisii law courts. He had just had lunch with his sister, Ms Esther Osebe, when the killers struck.
Machabe had never returned to his rural home in Suneka after he was arrested and charged with the murder of two local chiefs in 2003.
He and his eight co-accused were acquitted by a Kisumu court but one year later, Councillor Livingstone Omoke, who too had been released, was attacked and killed by a gang known as Suneka Sungusungu .
Machabe’s killers, police said, alighted from a white saloon car and hacked him as the members of the public watched helplessly.
Strangely, his killing elicited jubilation at Suneka trading centre as scores of people thronged the hospital and later the mortuary to view his remains.
Relatives of those murdered by vigilantes on suspicion of being criminals are barred from burying them at their homes. They resort to inter them at the Kisii Municipal cemetery or abandon them at the mortuaries.
Suspected vigilantes gang killed Councillor Omoke on June 25 last year at his rented home in Jogoo estate, Kisii town. He was not buried at his Bogiakumu home but at his brother’s farm about 50km away.
"The killings and lynching are appalling. It pains our people that the Government cannot protect its citizens," Fred Orora a Nairobi-based lawyer, said.
Mr Chris Bichage, a political activist based in Nyaribari Chache, says the core role of community policing has been misunderstood in Kisii and need to be redefined.
In the past two weeks, over five people were killed in separate incidents in what was seen as Sungusungu insurgency in the area.
Mr Peter Omwando, a former civic leader and Narc-Kenya activist was killed last week at his home in Mwamosioma, Kitutu Chache. His death came just days after he received an anonymous letter threatening him.
One week prior to the death of the civic leader, the vigilantes are reported to have killed two people.
No suspect has since been arrested. Family members of one of those killed was attacked and critically injured as they planned the burial. The attackers pounced on the corpse and chopped it into pieces.
His remains are still lying at Kisii District mortuary.
