WITNESSES WHO came forward to testify about Kenya’s 2008 post-election violence have become targets of harassment and death threats, as the people who orchestrated the clashes fear they will deliver evidence to the International Criminal Court (ICC).
Rights activists say the political leaders behind the clashes, in which 1,300 people died, are waging another well-planned, systematic campaign to silence witnesses who would dare speak out.
A man who calls himself Victor – not his real name – testified twice last year before panels investigating the violence that shook Kenya after the rigged vote in 2007. He told how leaders of his Kalenjin tribe whipped up ethnic fury and paid boys to kill people and torch their homes.
Victor’s testimony helped prove what people now take to be fact – that the violence was a well-organised political power play, not some paroxysm of tribal rage. Now, Victor gets text messages warning he will die if he ever speaks out again. He says strange men knocked over his eight-year-old son as he walked back from school a few days ago. “Someone ran over my son with a bicycle. He was lucky to run away,” Victor said in an interview. “The man told him, ‘You are lucky this time around, but maybe next time around you will not be so lucky.’”
In the last year, 22 people who testified before the two major Kenyan panels investigating the violence have reported being harassed, said Ken Wafula, director of the Centre for Human Rights and Democracy. In early January, says the Nairobi Star newspaper, men driving a Toyota Prado left an envelope with 3,000 shillings (€28) for one witness. The note said he should use it to buy his own coffin.
Mr Wafula says the intimidation has got worse now that trials of those responsible for the post-election violence look more likely. The prosecutor for the Hague-based ICC, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, has asked the court to allow him to investigate those believed to be responsible for the clashes.
Mr Ocampo wrote a letter to the Kenyan government on January 22nd reminding it of its responsibility to protect witnesses. In an interview, however, he said Kenya is an easier place to work than other nations where he has investigated suspects, including Darfur and Congo. “Any witnesses I take, I will organise a way to protect them,” he said. “It’s not a good situation, but we’ll do the job. We are factoring in this problem and we think we can manage it.”
The EU and US want to help Kenya set up a witness protection programme that might include moving some witnesses to other countries. Yet anyone trying to help witnesses faces one problem: government ministers and police officials who normally run such a programme may be the ones who don’t want witnesses to testify.
“Without a credible legal system and without honest police and without a judiciary that you can trust, how can you do such a programme?” asked a western diplomat involved in the discussions, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Police officials refused to comment yesterday. They have told Kenyan newspapers that witnesses made up the claims of intimidation for money or to live abroad.