jabou,this is interesting development. people can live along fine in must cases but the influential folks who always wish to line-up their filthy pockets play the devil advocates in secret. i wonder how far this finding will go. masoud, you declare your unstinting support for democracy,do you have any advice or plan B when democracy get high jacked? we need to look out for all eventuality.this is home we are talking about, Africa.

[log in to unmask] wrote:   By Shashank Bengali, McClatchy Newspapers Mon Mar 17 

NAIROBI, Kenya — A leading human rights group said Monday that Kenyan 
political and business leaders plotted much of the country's recent ethnic 
violence, and it urged the new coalition government to bring the organizers to 
justice. 

New York -based Human Rights Watch found evidence that hundreds of people 
were killed in planned ethnic attacks following the disputed presidential 
election in December. In many cases, the group said, the attacks were planned and 
financed by prominent civic leaders, although the group didn't directly 
implicate any top national politicians.

In a report titled "Ballots to Bullets," the group also charged that Kenyan 
police used excessive force to break up demonstrations in opposition 
strongholds, fatally shooting hundreds of people, including children.
More than 1,000 people have been killed and hundreds of thousands displaced 
by more than two months of fighting, which destroyed Kenya's reputation as a 
stable democracy. Last month President Mwai Kibaki and opposition leader 
Raila Odinga — who claimed that Kibaki stole the election— agreed to form a 
coalition government and a commission to investigate the violence.

"For the new government to function well and earn the people's trust, it 
needs to first heal the wounds by prosecuting those behind the violence," said 
Human Rights Watch's Africa director, Georgette Gagnon .
The fighting, centered in the western Rift Valley region, had its roots in 
tribe-based grievances over land that date from before 1963, when Kenya won 
independence from Britain . Tribes native to the Rift Valley have long 
complained that Kikuyus, Kenya's dominant tribe, were illegally granted large parcels 
of land, and Kibaki's Kikuyu-led government has failed to address the land 
question since coming to power in 2002.

Ethnically charged rhetoric marred the 2007 election campaign, a tightly 
fought race that saw Kikuyus overwhelmingly favoring Kibaki while a smattering 
of smaller tribes backed Odinga.
Researchers found that leaders of the Kalenjin tribe, which backed Odinga, 
planned attacks on Kikuyu homes before the election. One Kalenjin elder said 
he attended a meeting in the town of Eldoret where elders "said that if there 
is any sign that Kibaki is winning, then the war should break."
In most of the Rift Valley , Kikuyus fled to ancestral lands in central 
Kenya . But Kikuyu gangs struck back in the lakeside tourist town of Naivasha, 
where several witnesses told Human Rights Watch that Kikuyu businessmen called 
a meeting at a local hotel on Jan. 23 to plan reprisal attacks.

"This was not done by ordinary citizens; it was arranged by people with 
money," said one young man who attended the meeting. "We were paid 200 shillings 
(about $3 ) for going to the meeting, and we were told we would get the rest 
after the job. It was like a business."
Leading politicians on both sides have denied playing any role in the 
attacks. But many Kenyan activists say that top officials allowed the violence to 
carry on by not appealing more forcefully to their supporters to back down.

The government commission also must investigate the police response, Human 
Rights Watch said. While police admitted to following "shoot-to-kill" orders in 
the western opposition stronghold of Kisumu— killing more than 30 people— 
officers "made little attempt to intervene at all" when pro-government mobs 
went on rampages in Naivasha and the Rift Valley town of Nakuru, the report 
said.
"The commission has to ask why the police were ordered to shoot (in Kisumu) 
and not in other places," said Ben Rawlence , co-author of the report. "There 
must have been different orders in different places."
A police spokesman said the department had no comment because it hadn't read 
the report yet.
( McClatchy special correspondent Munene Kilongi contributed.)




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