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Kenya’s religious, racial ‘operation’ an outrage

Saturday April 12 2014

Now is the time for all Kenyans of conscience to say enough. Nothing can justify this. What has been happening for the last week in Eastleigh, Nairobi (and, to a lesser extent Mombasa) is an absolute outrage.

The voices of Kenyan Muslims and Somalis who have been caught up in the “operation” are heartrending. They tell of mass arrests. Of having to buy their way out even when their documents are on their person and in order. Of extortion and theft. Of sexual harassment and rape.

The number of Kenyan Muslims and Somalis now illegally detained in police stations across the city is impossible to verify. Official figures are around 500.

Officially too, the story is that, despite the gazetting of Kasarani stadium as a police station, no Kenyan Muslim or Somali is sleeping there — they are “just” being screened there.

This too was impossible to verify given the initial denial of access not only for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, but also the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights, which is constitutionally mandated to access any and all detention sites.

Everybody was kept out — the UNHCR, the Kenya Red Cross, the KNCHR, other human-rights organisations and the media. Only towards the end of this past week was access was finally granted.

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Why? What was happening in the stadium? Again, the voices of Kenyan Muslims and Somalis are telling. As are the photographs. They refer to the stadium as a concentration camp.

They ask when it was, precisely, that they became cattle, to be herded into the stadium in cramped lorries, the faces of children, women, men alike pressed against the mesh wire, lacking food, water, bedding.

Officially too, we are told that 82 Somalis have now been deported to Mogadishu. We are told that 69 persons have now been charged. With what? Being without citizenship documents when we know the hoops Kenyan Somalis still have to jump through to get IDs? Being without refugee documentation? When Kenya stopped the registration of refugees a while ago?

Meanwhile, the TNA parrots, sycophants and xenophobes screech on at sections of the political leadership that have rightfully spoken up against this atrocity. The TNA parrots, sycophants and xenophobes interpret this as “religious incitement” and “supporting terrorism.”

Frighteningly, Police Inspector-General David Kimaiyo has accused human-rights organisations documenting associated violations and raising the alarm bells of the same thing.

Haki Africa and Muslims for Human Rights are reportedly under investigation. Meanwhile, an ATPU officer allegedly warned a human-rights investigator at Pangani police station that, following the assassination of Sheikh Abubakar Shariff (Makaburi), Al-Amin Kimathi of the Muslim Human Rights Forum is the man the ATPU will be looking for next.

Was that warning an unintended confirmation the ATPU was involved in Makaburi’s assassination? More importantly, how could the ATPU equate Kimathi with Makaburi? Kimathi is not a jihadi. All he and the MHRF have done is insist the counter-terrorism effort be carried out within the confines of the Constitution and the law.

Now is the time for all Kenyans of conscience to stand up and condemn what is happening. 

L. Muthoni Wanyeki is Amnesty International regional director for East Africa. This column is written in her personal capacity

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