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When Lynch Mobs Become the Law
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- Published on Monday, 16 July 2007 22:55
Inspector Michael Ochieng Owuor (second right) with friends during a passout parade at the Kenya Police Training College, Kiganjo, on July 1, 2005. He was gunned down last month in what police claim was a botched-up robbery in Rongo, Migori district. Family and friends say it was murder.
On this particular morning in April, the mutilated body of Mrs Agnes Orori, lying inert under a pile of rocks, is testimony to their chilling skills. Lying next to the body of his wife, Mr Siro Ochoki writhes in pain, left for the dead. Their house has been torched and is a smouldering ruin. Nothing and no one is left standing in the homestead; even the family's pit latrine has been flattened by the youths who claim to be on a mission to rid the area of crime.
A short distance from the home, the raiders break into song and dance to celebrate their great "victory".
The previous day, the couple's two sons - Chrisanthus Matagaro Orori alias George and Jared Orori - died under a hail of police bullets at their hideout at Nyamasibi area. The attack on their parents was punishment for allegedly harbouring and protecting criminals. And two weeks earlier, Matagaro's step-brothers, Mr Haron Siro and Mr Osoro Osiro, were lynched on suspicion of involvement in crime.
The outpouring of brutality and murder - there have been 20 cases of lynching since August - is the community's response to an increase in armed robberies.
Flying Squad
Nyanza provincial police boss Jambeni Bakari has called in the Flying Squad, but the area remains in the grip of crime. Locals are unfazed by the brutality of the lynchings, vowing to keep up the killings until all criminals are wiped out.
"As much as the outside world views us as unreasonable, we shall continue our efforts to wipe out the criminals because it is our community which knows where the shoe pinches," a Nyamage villager, who would not agree to be named for fear, told the Sunday Nation last week.
Villagers feel that in taking the law in their own hands, they are doing what the police and the courts have failed to accomplish.
Investigations by the Sunday Nation revealed that most of them have lost faith in the police and the justice system. They felt that a corrupt justice system was putting criminals back in the villages, even after they had been apprehended.
The police, they said, had failed to act on information provided to them nearly every day. So the lynch mobs specifically target and destroy assets such as livestock to ensure that victims' families have nothing left with which to bribe law enforcement officers. The families of those lynched take a different view, naturally.
"It is true some of those lynched were robbers and deserved to be killed. But others were unlawfully attacked and action should be aken against those who killed them," said Mrs Nyambeka Orori, Mr Orori's second wife.
Locals believe that the police are working in cahoots with the criminals. Nyanza provincial police spokesman Albert Waweru was, however, quick to defend the force. He accused locals of sabotaging prosecutions by refusing to testify against criminals. Residents, however, say that stepping forward as a witness is to endanger one's life since the criminals end up being released anyway. The courts are too lenient, they argue.
