Kenya Human Rights Body Claims Violence Was Paid, Directed By Politicians

Kenya Human Rights Commission (KHRC) claimed on Tuesday that the violence that rocked the country after the announcement of the disputed December 27 elections was the work of militias paid and directed by politicians.

The violence has so far led to the deaths of more than 500 people and displaced over 200,000 people with both the government and opposition blaming each other.

Speaking in Nairobi the executive director of the independent human rights body, Muthoni Wanyeki said investigations by KHRC reveal that the militias were well-trained and organized in groups of 15 people and took shifts to orchestrate killings targeting one community in the Rift Valley province. President Mwai Kibaki belongs to the Kikuyu tribe.

Wanyeki said ethnic cleansing was going on in the province and KHRC knows both the attackers and organizers who were behind the killings.

“We have documented both the names of the attackers and organizers of the attacks,” said Wanyeki.

Wanyeki further pointed out that the outlawed Mungiki religious sect, a Kikuyu gang that grabbed headlines worldwide mid last year as being behind macabre killings of innocent Kenyans, has been reactivated and deployed in the Rift Valley on a revenge mission and also to protect the Kikuyu community in the province.

She also decried the raw force meted out by police while quelling violence across the country with autopsies revealing that most of the people killed in the opposition stronghold of Kisumu in Western Kenya died from gunshots and crude weapons.

Source African Press Agency

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