KENYA:KENYAN AUTHORITIES have begun closing camps housing thousands of people displaced by election violence, using armed police to force families to leave.
Witnesses in the Rift Valley town of Kitale said women had been beaten as government officials and police went from tent to tent ordering people out.
In the most serious incident, the district commissioner pulled a stick from a cooking fire and beat a woman around the head in Endebess camp. Catherine Nakhumicha said her 23-year-old cousin, Dorcas Nelima, was beaten until she collapsed.
The aid agency Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) yesterday said it had grave concerns about the way resettlement was being handled.
"While MSF is aware of the importance of the eventual return and the resettlement of those who were displaced during the post-election violence in Kenya, we firmly believe that it has to be voluntary . . . In Endebess this is clearly not the case," said Rémi Carrier, the charity's head of mission in Kenya.
In the past week, some 80 per cent of the camp's population of 9,000 have left. Of the remainder most are either too traumatised or terrified of what may happen to them when they return home, or have no home to return to. They are some of the 300,000 who fled their homes to escape ethnic violence that followed December's disputed presidential election.
A political deal has ended the clashes although reconciliation talks continue.
For the past fortnight the government has been bussing people out of camps as part of Operation Rudi Nyumbani - Operation Return Home.
President Mwai Kibaki said 85,000 had been helped. Officials have promised extra police as well as cash, shelter and food for people who make the journey.
But aid workers say families leaving Kitale have ended up camping at the roadside with nowhere to go.
"Hardly anything has been prepared for the people pushed out of the camps . . . We are concerned about the health follow-up of these people," says Dr Natasha Ticzon of MSF.