by Shailja Patel
– Kenya –
A February 7th article in The Economist, “Ethnic Cleansing in Luoland,” dangerously presents the crisis in Kenya as an issue of inter-communal violence. It focuses on the violent attacks on Kikuyu Kenyans in Western Kenya, by their Luo neighbors, following the December 27th election.
The term “ethnic cleansing” is both inaccurate and unhelpful to Kenya’s current crisis. It fuels the buildup by the Kibaki (Party of National Unity) camp to the declaration of a state of emergency, the deployment of the military or, worse, the usurpation of civilian governance by military governance.
Unquestionably, victims of the current violence experience the violence as being directed at their ethnicity. But the violence is politically instigated. It finds ethnic expression or manifests itself ethnically because Kenyan politics are organized ethnically.
The first wave of violence in Western Kenya took the form of spontaneous, disorganized protest, against the announcement of a presidential result that both domestic and international observers have judged to be deeply flawed and questionable. It was met with a second form of violence – extraordinary force by the police and General Service United (GSU) paramilitary forces. Data collected by civil society and human rights organizations show the majority of deaths in Nyanza and Western provinces to be the result of extra-judicial killings by police and GSU, not civilian attacks on other civilians.
The third form of violence in Western Kenya is organized militia activity, directly traceable to specific leaders, in both the PNU and Orange Democratic Movement (ODM). The Economist neglects to mention that in the week preceding this article, two parliamentarians of the ODM party were murdered, in suspicious circumstances that carried all the hallmarks of political assassination. And that 25 Kikuyu civil society leaders, who have spoken out against human rights abuses and electoral malpractices, have received death threats.
Much of the destruction to businesses and property in Kisumu could have been averted by the speedy deployment of security forces to Western Kenya in the immediate aftermath of the election, to restore law and order. Instead, the majority of Kenya’s police force and GSU security force were diverted to surround Uhuru Park, the City Mortuary, and the slum areas of Nairobi, to prevent civilian assembly and peaceful protest. The “government” clearly made a decision to let Kisumu burn, and to leave its overwhelmed, outnumbered, and exhausted police force to resort to bullets in the absence of support or relief.
Kenya’s hope now lies in the ongoing mediation process, led by Kofi Annan. All forms of international pressure that keep the PNU leaders at the negotiating table – such as the recent US travel ban on hardliners – should be encouraged. The responsibility of journalists, and publications like the Economist, is to name the violence correctly, hold the initiators accountable, and present the conflict in Kenya for what it is – a politically instigated catastrophe, with a political solution.
About the Author
Kenyan poet, playwright and theatre artist, Shailja Patel, is a member of Kenyans for Peace With Truth and Justice, a coalition of over 40 Kenyan legal, human rights, and governance organizations, with Kenyan citizens, working for a just solution to the Kenya Crisis. Visit her at www.shailja.com.
Name the violence correctly.
Shailja Patel’s comments are egregiously one sided. HRW have already described the ethnic violence we witnessed as pre planned and organised. As far as I am concerned their report has more validity and objectivity than any other actor in this sorry saga. It helps no one when People try and veil and pass over what actually happened.
It is exactly because the Police and Security services did not react expeditiously, in fact, they used tear gas and water cannon for the longest time. This translated into a sense of impunity.
I am appalled that Shailja Patel can seriously think this was spontaneous. It was organised. Highways were taken over by Militia and People were taken out of vehicles based on their ethnicity and killed. If this type of thing happened in the united Kindgom or US, where a main route was blocked by Hooligans and people were removed from vehicles and macheted to death, they would have been removed with ‘lethal force’ before you could say George Bush.
What is ‘ethnic cleansing?’ I thought it meant the forcible eviction of people based on their ethnicity. Shailj amight not know but a million Kenyans are estimated to be IDPs. I am sure they will be comforted to know that it was not ‘ethnic cleansing’ as per Shailja.
Aly-Khan Satchu
http://www.rich.co.ke
alykhan@rich.co.ke
+254 735 897 443
One of my concerns, in this terrible time, is that those of us who are on the same side – peace, truth, justice, for all Kenyans – will embroil ourselves in wars over words. There is a risk of spending our vital energy debating among ourselves, instead of putting that energy where it is most powerful – out into the public space to challenge the real forces of greed and violence that we all oppose.
I agree with Mr. Satchu that the violence has not been spontaneous, and with the Human Rights Watch Report that it was pre-planned and organized. This is precisely why labelling it “ethnic cleansing” is misleading. In reality, the violence perceived as “ethnic”, and experienced as such by the victims, is organized militia violence, mobilised and deployed by individual political actors, focussed on specific areas of the country, with a specific agenda.
Kenyans for Peace With Truth and Justice, a coalition of over 40 human rights, legal, and governance organizations in Kenya, has identified four distinct forms of violence since December 31st. The first three I name in the article, the fourth is retributive communal violence, as communities band together to defend themselves and to fight over scarce resources in areas where IDPs are flooding in.
When we allow the term “ethnic cleansing” to go unchallenged in international media, it serves the propaganda machine of all those mobilizing militia and driving the violence to their own ends, in both the ODM and the PNU. It is their defense against genuinely committing to the mediation process, and the requirements for fundamental structural change (constitutional reform, electoral reform, land re-distribution, transitional justice) that the mediation calls for. By crying “ethnic cleansing”, they can get Condi Rice flying into the country to broker and bribe (with toys and favours to both sides) a temporary US-agenda-driven, cessation of the violence. A ceasefire that addresses none of the root causes, and once again, betrays all Kenyans.
When the very politicians who are deploying armed militia, are making press statements accusing the other side of “ethnic cleansing”, we need to be deeply wary of their language.
To quote Muthoni Wanyeki, head of the Kenya Human Rights Commission:
“All forms of violence are completely, utterly unacceptable. All forms of violence must be condemned. And, importantly, accountability must be sought for all forms of violence. There can be no impunity.
But seeking accountability requires the painstaking work of investigation, documentation and evidence collection — particularly with respect to the organised militia activity. We all have initial findings and preliminary information. But that is not enough. Which is why the propaganda war – and the use of terms that heighten the fear – must stop.”
Naturally, the language of ethnic hatred becomes universal at a time like this. It is part of the strategy to make the violence look like universal ethnic warfare, so it cannot be traced to specific sources that can be held accountable.
In his testimony to the US House of Representatives last week, Maina Kiai, Chair of the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights, said:
“The violence is neither genocide nor ethnic cleansing. The root of the problem is not that different ethnic groups decided they could no longer live together. The root of the problem is the inability of peaceful means to address grievances.”
Both Kiai and Wanyeki have received death threats, and have been warned they are targets for state-sponsored assassination, for their commitment to analysing and naming the violence correctly.
Just a few examples of how misleading it is to categorize the violence exclusively as “ethnic cleansing”:
(1)
From Lucy Hannan, lucy@voxcom.tv tel: 0733 616352, journalist who followed IDPs moving from Tigoni to Kisumu/Western Province:
“Ajulu, businessman, living in Polyview estate: ‘We organized our own security groups and patrol night and day. There were gangs who said they were looking for Kikuyus, but they would just identify an affluent-looking house, demand entrance, and then take what they could get. We had to actually fight these gangs…..I now have three pangas in my house …. We have become a target. ”
(2)
“A woman lies dead during ethnic clashes in Kenya” was how Reuters photographer George Phicipas captioned his now-famous shot of a the woman lying dead in Naivasha, in a pool of blood, while her baby screamed from a chair near her body. We now know from a Guardian report that the woman, Grace Mungai, was a Luhya married a Kikuyu. But she was shot by a Luhya police officer, in an operation where police descended on the Naivasha slum area where she lived, rounded up women and children, and sprayed them with bullets. It was NOT an inter-ethnic killing; it was police violence run amok.
(3) David Anderson, author of Histories of the Hanged, says in a recent interview:
“This is political violence of the most classic kind. Ethnicity is how you mobilise it: that’s the modus operandi, not the rationale.
“If you map it, if you look at where it takes place, virtually every bit of violence has been on a settlement scheme … Quite deliberate, quite purposeful. You could argue that it has nothing whatsoever to do with the ballot. This might have happened even if (the opposition) ODM had won.”
“On the other side, one of the main motives for violence by Kibaki’s Kikuyu community against other groups — most notably in the towns of Naivasha and Nakuru — was the Mungiki gang’s desire to preserve its grip on extortion rackets.
“Supported by some high-level politicians, Mungiki took advantage of the situation — and the justification of revenge for killings of Kikuyus by Kalenjins and others — to kick out other communities whose own protection gangs opposed Mungiki’s grip on the local transport and retail businesses.
“Mungiki run those rackets not against non-Kikuyu, but against Kikuyu. They prey upon their own people. So they seek to exclude non-Kikuyu from those areas so that they can ‘protect’ their own people.
“If this (violence) was rooted in deeply-ingrained racial and ethnic hatred, why is there not violence all over the country? It is happening in very specific places which, if you know Kenya well, you could pretty much predict.”
(4)
The mass eviction of ethnic groups from certain areas is analogous to the mass expulsion of Asians from uganda by Idi Amin. Asians in the diaspora claim this was a case of “ethnic cleansing”. I have long argued – and continue to argue – that this terminology ignores Amin’s specific political and economic agenda in expelling the Asians, and the more complex issues of economic inequity and colonial history that fed into it. And that it does not serve my generation of East Africans to view the expulsion through the eyes of ethnic chauvinism, rather than delving into the historical complexity of our position in the region.
(5)
The population of Asians in Kisumu has been decimated. However, it’s clear to all of us (I think!) that attacks on Asian businesses and homes, that drove Asians to leave en masse, were the result of the larger politically-driven violence, not part of a specific agenda to “cleanse” Kisumu of Asians.
(6)
Another analogy I invoke frequently these days is the 1992 LA Riots in the US. An eruption of violence from black youth, triggered by the Rodney King incident, that was acted out primarily on working class and petty bourgeosie Asian Americans, whose homes and businesses were accessible to the rioters. Police refused to take calls from those neighborhoods and ringed them round to prevent rioters from reaching more affluent areas. To this day, many Asians in the US see the LA riots as ethnic violence, where black Americans targetted them specifically for their race. Any political analysis indicates that it was a much more complex phenomenon of class violence, political rage, decades of racial injustice, and culpable failure of the state to send in police intervention.
(7)
If this is about ethnicity, why are Kenyans of all ethnicities helping each other, sheltering each other, at the risk of their own lives? Why do we keep describing these cases as “exceptions” and “heroes” when they are so numerous that they constitute a major part of the main narrative? Why are all ethnicities living together without conflict on the other side of Mt. Elgon, in the communities of displaced Kenyans who have fled to Uganda? Yes, there is ethnic polarization in the IDP camps in Kenya – it’s a classic case of scarce resources, and people banding together in whatever way seems likeliest to ensure their survival.
May we all be able to sit around a table one day, and discuss this in depth, in a Kenya where the 600,000 refugees have regained their homes and livelihoods, the raped women have been reclaimed their agency and power, the burned farms are replanted, the gutted cities rebuilt, the new constitution passed, the greed-and-power-crazed old men retired into history. Until then, naming the violence correctly and attributing each form to the specific person or persons initiating and driving it, is crucial to the salvation of our country.
Mr. Satchu,
It seems as though you read a different article from the one Shailja has written. I come away from Shailja’s piece understanding that while some of the initial violence may have been spontaneous, much of the continued violence and destruction has been organized/state-sponsored. She explains that this situation is not fairly understood as a product of communal tensions/hatred, but rather is due to choices made by Kenyan leaders. To that extent, I think it is fair to question the term “ethnic cleansing.” However, perhaps the full picture could be explained by the phrase “state-sponsored ethnic cleansing”?
Parijat Desai
New York
This article and commentary demonstrates Shailja Patel’s profound understanding of the dangers of the premature and inaccurate labeling in today’s media. To solve today’s issues it is crucial for media to report in depth, accurately, and thoughtfully—an impossibility when the focus is breaking news. Thank you Shailja for good journalism.