The last week has been beautiful here- with sun and a short work week because of last weekend's bank holiday- but the news from Kenya is not good. a sect - the Mungiki -are out of control at the moment and have murdered many people- very close to where I was just last month- and I worry about the friends I have made there. While I was there I did hear of problems with the matutu drivers but it has escalated. reuters has jus published this:
alarm in Kenya
08 Jun 2007 10:49:35 GMT
Source: Reuters
By Barry Moody
NAIROBI, June 8 (Reuters) - Severed heads displayed on poles, savagely mutilated bodies and dozens of deaths have sparked alarm in Kenya as a secret criminal society goes on the rampage and police launch bloody retaliation.
With presidential elections little more than six months away, the crisis has sparked a fierce row between government and the judiciary, set politicians at each others' throats and brought calls for emergency rule in affected areas.
"The homeland is under siege", the Standard newspaper said.
At least 33 people died during paramilitary raids this week on a Nairobi slum that is a stronghold of the Mungiki, a gang that developed from an anti-Christian sect into Kenya's biggest criminal society.
In a conflict rapidly turning into a war of attrition with deep political overtones, the Mungiki have killed at least eight police and a dozen other people, striking terror into villages in central Kenya, heartland of the majority Kikuyu tribe from which they are drawn.
Some of the dead were elderly, dragged from their beds and beheaded despite having no known connection to the gang.
But the crackdown and fierce vows to wipe out the Mungiki from President Mwai Kibaki and Interior Minister John Michuki seem so far to have done little to dent their activities.
Four more people were decapitated this week in central Kenya and a skinned head turned up in Nairobi's Mathare slum.
Experts say the police violence, encouraged by Michuki's shoot-to-kill orders, will only make things worse.
"It is totally counterproductive. In fact he is just heightening the tensions," said Ken Ouko, a Nairobi university sociologist.
BETRAYAL
While the Mungiki, meaning "multitude" in Kikuyu, have been around since splitting from the Tent of the Living God sect in the early 1990s, their attacks have become more savage and frequent in the last few months.
There are several theories about why this has happened now but most revolve round the build-up to elections, a period notorious for violence over the last 15 years.
Several analysts said the Mungiki felt betrayed by Kikuyu politicians who they helped in the 2002 election that replaced the authoritarian Daniel arap Moi with Kibaki, a Kikuyu.
"A lot of Kikuyu politicians have had linkages with the Mungiki and they are now the ones in power," said Maina Kiai, head of the government's own human rights organisation.
"There is a feeling that this is their government in terms of ethnicity but their government has disowned them. ... I think they are doing this to try to get attention," Ouko said.
Opposition politicians may be trying to fan crime to discredit Kibaki and undermine his bid for a second term, analysts and security experts say.
This may explain the ferocity of the government response but could also be a dangerous Faustian bargain for the politicians.
"These are not stupid, illiterate people. ... They are used by the politicians but they also cleverly use the politicians themselves," said Mutuma Ruteere of the Kenya Human Rights Commission, an expert on the gang.
Politicians have long forged alliances with the Mungiki to exploit both their muscle for intimidating opponents and their ability to mobilise poor voters, especially destitute young men attracted into the gang's ranks by gruesome violence and money.
"This is a group that is brilliant when it comes to recruiting and organising people. They have the reach, especially in slum areas and among poor sectors of the community that the politicians would love to have," said Ruteere.
Five former or sitting members of parliament have recently been questioned by police over alleged Mungiki connections.
Mungiki infiltration of the police and civil service as well as powerful political circles, combined with the gang's intense secrecy, have undermined efforts to destroy it. Analysts say it could not survive without high level complicity.
MAFIA
The Mungiki have followed a trajectory similar to that of other criminal societies, including the Sicilian Mafia, beginning as a group to protect the oppressed and mutating into a violent gang over the last decade.
They claim succession to the Mau Mau movement of Kikuyu opposition to British colonial rule in the 1950s, using similar elaborate oathing, "baptism" ceremonies and secret handshakes.
Mungiki ranks were boosted in the 1990s when Moi's government instigated militia attacks, including the burning of villages, against Kikuyu areas, as pressure for multi-party democracy increased against him.
They are believed to have thousands of members and some estimates say they number up to 100,000.
The Mungiki began by offering protection to the operators of the minibus transport system used by most Kenyans then moved into wholesale extortion, including levying "door fees" on houses in the huge and squalid slums.
They also sell electricity, tapped from overhead wires in the shanty towns, and clean water. They are recently believed to have moved into kidnapping.
Horrific mutilation and beheading is meted out to those who betray the gang or even try to leave it, enforcing a code of silence like the Mafia's omerta.
And while East Africa's biggest economy continues to suffer stark disparities between rich and desperately poor it seems there will be no shortage of recruits.
"When you have a dysfunctional society, then this is the price to pay," Ouko said.
Saturday, June 9, 2007
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