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Stop These Murders At Once
- Details
- Published on Monday, 16 July 2007 22:24
As we report elsewhere in this edition, residents of some parts of Kisiiland have become captives to self-styled vigilante groups. They have become prisoners in their own community, blacklisted and cut off from their homes for fear of death.In a word, most of the killings have become a pure witch-hunt and must not be allowed to continue. What is happening in Kisii, for example, is a mix of many things. Some people are being hunted and killed on suspicion of practising witchcraft, without any proof whatsoever, while others are being killed allegedly for belonging to terror gangs.
Vigilantes gangs routinely set out to look for particular individuals and without authenticating accusations against them, hack and burn them to death.These acts are brutal, illegal and unacceptable. No society can allow such carnage to thrive as it is a great threat to peace, tranquillity and civility.
The reason why we have a Police Force, provincial administrators and courts is to promote civil arbitration of disputes. No individual or group has the right to adjudge another guilty and proceed to execute him or her as we have witnessed in some parts of the country.
That the police and the provincial administration, and even the political leadership, have failed to address the killings is an indictment government.A question must be asked: why do people take the law into their own hands? Is it a thumbs-down statement against the law enforcers - that they have failed the people, who no longer have confidence in them?
The perpetrators of this violence must be apprehended immediately, security intensified in the affected areas, and claims of witches wreaking havoc be investigated and acted upon. But the most important thing is that the violence be stopped once and for all.
