The weepin widows of Wagalla

By NZAU MUSAU Photos by JEPTUM CHESIYNA

Ah, could my anguish be measured and my calamity laid with it in the scales, they would now outweigh the sands of the sea. Because of this, I speak without restraint- Job 6: 1-4.

CLUTCHING a waste kindling, Saharah Abdi stares into the patchy roof of her lonesome manyatta as her mind loads up the details of the painful event am seeking to unearth.

Looking me through sunken eyes, falling eye bags, wrinkled face and shriveled fingers, she cuts the image of a troubled soul, one that has for 26 years now wept over immense sorrows brought upon her by a state that forcefully incorporated her community into the nation.

As she begins to speak, it dawns to me that for her, Wagalla- the infamous massacre of February 1984 happened yesterday. The three aspects of time- past, present and future are bound up in one- the present:

“Wagalla found me right here,” she says as she taps the sandy floor of her manyatta where we are all seated cross-legged: “It found me right here, right inside this house,” she adds authoritatively.

On the eve of 10th February 1984, she recalls she slept pretty well with her family. Nothing had seemed unusual in the past few days until that early morning when she woke up to sound of heavy boots pounding her compound.

They were littered allover this place, she says, the military men. Before she could fully apprehend the going’s on, they had already stormed inside her compound and pounced on her husband, his two brothers and their old man.

“They hurled all the men in this yard inside their truck. As if that was not enough, they pounced back on me and started to rape me. I tried to resist but one of them stabbed my breast with his gun; I fell unconscious,” she narrates with a tinge of bitterness.

Bitterness knows no shame for if it did Saharah would have hesitated to show me the bayonet stab-scars in her thighs and boot imprints in her back.

Her husband had been a civil servant working for the ministry of water but that day, there was no regard for anyone as long as he was Degodia, the Somali clan that was the target of the government operation allegedly seeking illegal guns.

“He did not make it far as I later learnt when I woke up to a dead village. He’d tried to resist saving me but they bayoneted him fatally. They threw him on the way to Wagalla and he bled his way to death,” she says.

That was the last day she ever saw the four for they never came back. Those who survived the orgy of beatings were driven to Wagalla air strip twelve miles away and herded alongside hundreds of others collected from allover Wajir.

There, they were made to strip naked and to sleep belly-face in the graveled strip. The four day ordeal of torture, rescue attempts by the women and a fatal break-away began in earnest.

“We tried to go see them but we were repulsed on the way and many of us badly assaulted. They suffered a lot from what we have heard from survivors- burning, beatings, poison- name it all,” she says.

Her story is corroborated by Raha Garat, another victim neighbor of her and whose husband lived to tell the story. Raha had come visiting when she found us engaged in deep conversation and immediately started weeping.

According to Raha, God saved her husband Garat Sanae but left him with permanent injuries which have confined him to bed ever since.

“He was coming back from the mosque when they descended on our manyatta hounding everyone, beating everyone up, stabbing me as they attempted to rape me and burning up the manyatta,” she tearfully recounts.

She, like many others was collected unconscious by an Italian Catholic volunteer Annalena Tonelli who was then working in the area and taken to hospital.

For her, Wagalla is an everyday problem since 1984 as she tends to her husband ever since. We took a stroll to their manyatta a few metres away and found the old man lying on a spread mattress.

It was a morning like no other, he tells me, as he peeps directly at me through his thick glass lens. I later learned that one of his eyes turned blind from the beatings of that day.

“They raped my daughter right in my own eyes and dragged me along into the truck where I found all the men from my village. We were taken to Wagalla and made to lie upside down in the scorching February heat,” he recounts.

Then Wagalla air strip had just been constructed and had a fresh wire mesh around it. Heavily armed military men surrounded it and worked in shifts throughout the four days the men were held there, he says.

By the first day on Friday, some rebellious men were already dead- shot or beaten dead by the officers. By Sunday morning, others had started to die of heat and thirst. On Tuesday, the dead were collected to be thrown away in the bushes and that was the escape for Garat.

“I was collected alongside the corpses and cast away as a dead. We were about 80 ‘corpses’ in the truck and we were driven about 50 kilometers away into the bush and dumped; hyenas feasted on that day,” he says as he attempts a tear.

For him, his life is dedicated to the Catholic volunteer Annalena who went about trailing military trucks in search of the injured: “She took 15 of us alive but many of that number died in her hospital. Many more were eaten by hyenas by the time she found us.”

At this point, Garat pulled down his shirt to reveal a huge scar between his chests: “These are effects of being gritted against hot murram by soldier’s boots.”

But it was the huge protruding growth beneath in his loins which shocked me: “It expands and contracts a time; now it has contracted. This is a result of the beatings and stabbing I went through in the hands of my own government.” He says.

Bitter and lost for more words, the old man struggled to wake up and staggered his way to lunchtime prayers as his sons and grandchildren took over detailing to me the pain of growing up as Wagalla victims.

They took me round the village showing me the vacant plots of Wagalla victims. Here, they told me, women are more than men because most of the men were killed in the massacre.

For Abdi Bellow my guide, the many drug addicts, mad-people walking round Wajir town and troubled orphans abound in the village are living testimonies to the injustice suffered.

“My father died in the massacre. My mum is now insane probably due to what she went through. Her mother was burned alive as she watched. It’s not only my mom who is insane but also her two sisters… my aunties,” he recounts to me.

In one of the manyatta’s, we found a lonesome badly-thatched hut where one mentally disturbed young man spends his entire day in. “He used to ask about Wagalla everyday before he went quiet. He does not talk much any more ever since,” he sister Halima Hussein said.

For Mohammed Khamis, an ex-police officer in his thirties, only the victims of Wagalla can appreciate their sorry states and no much telling it out will help.

“It was a complete disruption and destruction of a society in terms of wealth, lives, social structure and organization. We feel it everyday, we see it, we live it and no justice has been forthcoming so far,” he speaks in his refined English.

For Sahara, Wagalla is a walking shame: “Up to this moment, I cannot hold my urine and the stench around me tells it all. Only God knows about us… only God,” she says as she breaks into tearful and infectious soliloquy:

“Look at us, what is left of us? only God my son, only God… its not even good to be left alone when all our people have died, not any good…”

For a mother who has been jailed five times for speaking about Wagalla massacre, life cannot get any more painful and that is why she is vowing to die fighting for justice of the victims.

She however throws a caution my way: “I fear for you. Anybody who talks about Wagalla is endangered by the very act of speaking… every person who tries. That is why most people are quiet about it.”

As she leads me out through the village, she points out at a spot where some of the dead where thrown and poses the immortal question: “Did a government which exists for the people have to kill them sue gruesomely?”

What Wagalla entailed: The story of the massacre.

According to a sworn affidavit filed in the High Court on 24th February 2005 by Salah Abdi Sheikh, about 5000 men of Degodia clan of Somali community were rounded in the security operation.

The operation sanctioned by the provincial security committee was directed, controlled and commanded by the then North Eastern Provincial Commissioner Benson Kaaria who also served as chair of the provincial security committee, the affidavit says.

It says the men were surrounded by officers from the military, regular police and the administration police on the ground and Kenya Aiforce personnel in military helicopters from above.

“In this horrific, cruel, inhuman and most degrading operation women member of the clan were humiliated through beatings, assaults, torture and rape in presence of their children, relatives,” Salah says in his sworn affidavit.

At the airport, the men stripped naked and made to lie on their bellies in the hot murram under the scorching sun. “Soldiers whipped men until they were a mess of blood,” the affidavit reads,

For days, they underwent torture until about 3000 attempted to break off and scale the high razor fence that enmeshed them: “Only a few made it to the nearby bushes. Bullets felled the rest.”

A massive cover up was then ordered with the dead and the injured being ferried and scattered in the bushes of north eastern districts. Some bodies are said to have been collected as far away as the Ethiopian border.

Others were found in Habaswen and Ewaso Nyiro riverbed. Mass graves have since been discovered in Wagalla, Elnoor, Samatar, Griftu and even in Wajir town at the Wajir TB Manyatta.

Over the years, Salah and Truth Be Told Network comprising of orphans, survivors and victims of the massacre have collected names and identified at least 400 men who died in the operation.

Justus ole Tipis, a minister in the Kanu government in the 80’s told parliament only 57 people died in the massacre when the matter was brought up by area MP Ahmed Khalif. Fifty two of these were civil servants.

No one has ever been charged in court or reprimanded in any way for even these 57 deaths. Informal apologies have however been made to Degodia clan elders by some of those who ordered the operation.

Ends……………/.

Why disbanding the truth commission is not an option

By NZAU MUSAU

STANDING on the edge of a valley overlooking Mathare slums, Nancy Wanjiru takes a deep breath as she surveys the canopy of the noisy shanties beneath.

Barely in her forties, her eyes have sunken and the face is already forming wrinkles out of pain she says she has undergone over the past two years owing to a tumultuous election outcome in early 2008.

On the fateful morning of January 3rd, 2008, Wanjiru was attacked, gang-raped, her husband badly cut up with machetes and her house dismantled by rioters protesting the controversial election of Mwai Kibaki as president.

“They took turns on me as others dragged my husband down the river cutting him up with pangas. Badly hurt, I staggered to his rescue and we took him to Kenyatta hospital. I walked back only to find my house had been brought down. I became an Internally Displaced Person,” she narrates.

She struggles to hold back her tears as she explains the ordeal that turned her life upside down: “I was smelly and felt unworthy of living after all that happened that day. To add salt to the injury, I found out that I had been infected with HIV and there the agony began.”

Her quest for justice ever since has been a torturous one and has not borne fruit. Her violators still taunt her, her life took a turn and she has never been compensated for the loss of her dignity. Particularly striking to her is that no judicial mechanism has nailed her violators.

“I see them every other day. They are still my neighbours. They taunt me that nothing will ever happen to them. I am very bitter with everything,” she exclaims as she rubs her hands together as though submitting to her sorry fate.

And now adding to her bitterness is the current talk of disbanding the Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commission, the only national mechanism that has been set to deal with all human rights violations that occurred in the country from 1963 to February 2008.

Attempts to set up a local special tribunal have thrice failed. The International Criminal Court has been slow in coming and the local courts have not helped the situation either.

They want to throw it away because they did not suffer a thing, she says. “They want us to forget everything and move forward. But how will I do that when I do not have an opportunity to say what happened to me and when I see my aggressors, the people who raped me every day?” she poses.

Wanjiru’s case is no different from Wafula Buke’s, a former student leader at the university of Nairobi in 1980’s and who was arrested, tortured and imprisoned for five years for allegedly spying on the former President Daniel arap Moi’s government.

We caught with Wafula in town while he was running some errand with her 12 years daughter. Like Wanjiru, Wafula has no love lost with those seeking to disband the barely a year old commission because of a credibility crisis occasioned by the chair Bethuel Kiplagat’s adamant refusal to quit.

Kiplagat’s credibility questions have sucked in the entire commission and elicited one resignation of a commissioner. In addition to leadership crisis, the commission has lean funding, no staff and lacks the critical support of civil society and donor community.

“The chair is holding the commission at ransom and creating the circumstance for its disbandment. No one in the coalition government top hierarchy has told him to resign. Instead, they are loud on disbandment, why?” Buke says.

Instead of giving up on the commission because of its problems, Wafula says people should try to get the best they can out of the commission as is.

Kenyans had better be “pragmatic enough” to seize the opportunity as is and get the best out of this situation: “We used Kibaki in 2002 to dismantle the Kanu apparatus despite his known weakness as a conservative. We can do the same with Kiplagat and get what we can for now instead of losing it all.”

But Justice and Constitutional Affairs minister Mutula Kilonzo is very resolute that the commission is irredeemable and must necessarily be disbanded. Such disbandment will work in the interest of Kenyans, the minister claimed.

‘The government cannot interfere with the truth commission but will be pushing for the disbanding of the commission through parliament as the organ recognized by law,” Mutula said.

The minister however concedes that allegations levelled against the chair of the commission Bethuel Kiplagat on involvement in past human rights violations are indeed worrying but he says he’s washed his hands off the matter.

But if the minister is only daring, one MP has already done it. Ababu Namwamba, a member of the parliamentary committee on administration of justice and legal affairs has pulled a fast one on the commission:

“Unknown to the country, on 3rd March, 2010, I filed notice of a motion seeking the disbandment and reconstitution of the TJRC through amendment of the Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Act, 2008.”

Ababu’s has been lying before the House Business Committee for two months now due, partly to the heavy legislative agenda in the last session which included conclusion of the constitution review process, and partly due to what he calls “sharp divisions and uncertainty within corridors of power on how to handle the TJRC fiasco.”

He explains that his motion is premised on one central factor: that the very character of the TJRC as an institution has been so badly damaged that even the mere removal of the chairman alone will not cure the damage nor revive public confidence in the commission.

“To execute its mandate effectively and achieve its noble goal of leading this nation towards truth, justice and reconciliation, the TJRC, like Ceasar's wife of Imperial Rome, must not only be blemish less, but must indeed exist beyond reproach,” he says.

According to the youthful MP, such disbandment will be in national interest and that is why he cannot wait for parliament to reconvene in June to pursue that root.

For Davider Lamba, a member of the 2003 taskforce on truth commission chaired by Prof. Makau Mutua, a disbandment of the commission it’s reconstitution notwithstanding would create a gap by abolishing an avenue to deal with the country’s “murky” past.

Despite its ills of lean resources, time, leadership crisis and all against the background of a broad mandate and huge expectations, the commission must stay on, Lamba says while drawing experience from the 2003-2007 failure by President Kibaki’s first regime to set up the commission.

“We cannot rely on politician’s words from the 2003 experience. The current commission is a creature of the National Accord and cannot be disbanded at whim, it must stay on!”Lamba said.

According to the commission’s CEO Patricia Nyaundi, the situation facing the commission is like the one that faces a father who buys a table and painstakingly transports it to his rural home only to realise one of its legs is shorter.

“The question here is do you transport it back all the way to the city to fix it or do you find a local solution. A wise father would find something to leverage it and the table would still serve its purpose,” Nyaundi says.

The commission has leadership and other institutional problems which should not be the basis for its disbandment; Nyaundi says and adds that Kenyans must pull all the stops to get the best out of the current arrangement.

She says disbandment would not only be expensive in terms of termination of contracts but will also drag the transitional justice agenda and spill it over into the “usually vicious campaigns” associated with our electoral cycles.

“Assuming the government is rich enough to pay us all, when is the earliest that a disbandment can occur? Parliament will be back in June and will busy itself with budget up until September.

There will be a referendum and so issues to do with us may not be a priority,” she argues.
But the minister insists that a new TJRC which has confident of all would not be affected by the campaigns:

“There should be no worries of the coming referendum and 2012 election campaigns; they will not interfere with the commission at all”

The way forward for Nyaundi is that the civil society ought to close ranks with the commission to advance the transitional justice agenda and the Chief Justice expediting the process of appointing a tribunal to investigate the allegations against the chair.

The dilemma facing the country is captured by the ambivalent stand taken by the Kenya Human Rights Commission, the country’s premier human rights body and which single-handedly led the quest for a TJRC.

“We are still deliberating on the way forward but as for now, our approach is that of non cooperation with the commission. We are however working with the victims on documentation of their accounts,” acting deputy executive director of Kenya Human Rights Commission Tom Kagwe said.

Kagwe’s personal opinion however is that a disbandment might sound a sure death knell to the commission which his organization has pressed for many years and whose chair (Mutua) chaired the task force of 2003.

He does not even like the media harping on disbandment option because it gives the impression that it’s doable.

“We should be talking about salvaging the commission because disbandment might play into the hands of some people who do not wish to have a truth commission. The fact that Kiplagat has refused to listen to everyone including Desmond Tutu should make you suspicious,” Kagwe says.

According to him, a way should be found to resolve the leadership issue probably through replacing all commissioners but retaining the secretariat and taking advantage of the possible momentum if new constitution passes through to jolt the process forward.

The truth commission was agreed on during the Serena hotel national dialogue and reconciliation talks of 2008 which gave birth to the National Accord. It took a year or so to develop the TJRC Act and half a year to recruit and appoint the commissioners.

Its mandate includes probing human rights violations in the form of massacres, sexual violations, murder and extrajudicial killings, grand corruption, irregular acquisition of public land, causes of ethnic tensions and state repression including torture and cruelty.

The violation cases themselves run into thousands and thousands of cases but the commission has indicated it will work on a framework of establishing broad patterns of the violations without necessarily handling all cases.

For now however, the commission is in a limbo and suspicion abounds between the two sides as the nation awaits the verdict of CJ Evans Gicheru on truth commissioner’s application for a tribunal to be formed.

The trouble with the tribunal however is that Section 17 of the Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Act of 2008 does not give a timeline on how such an inquiry might last. A similar tribunal set up in 2004 to investigate judges accused of corruption has just cleared its work.

According to a 2006 United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights publications, “Rule of law tools for post-conflict states: Truth commissions, successful truth commissions must have the three critical elements of political will, support of victims and cessation of conflict.

It must have operational independence, enjoy legitimacy and people’s confidence as well as receive considerable international support in terms of funding.

Majority of these are lacking in the Kenyan case begging the question: Is it by design or by chance that the truth commission is failing before its task begins?

Ends...................../.