‘If it were not for police, my children would be alive’

By JECKONIA OTIENO

Young Yusuf Abdu pounds maize as the humid afternoon wears on. Beside him is his mother Gute Amina, picking out the chaff from the pounded maize.

Ms Amina can now afford to smile, unlike a year ago when she was engulfed by grief after losing a child in the Tana River clashes while fleeing from police officers from the dreaded General Service Unit.

Amina lost not only her child but also that of her neighbour, who she was taking care of at the time.

The only child to survive the Tana ordeal was Yusuf, who is now in Standard Four at Mapunga Primary School. He recalls vividly the events that unfolded during the violence.

Amina, her two sons and a neighbour’s son were on the farm tilling land when they noticed GSU officers approaching.

“I abandoned the meal I was preparing for my children and started to run with them,” narrates Amina through an interpreter.

When the children noticed that the police were closing in on them, they jumped into the Tana River. Amina followed suit.

The decision left the two boys dead while Amina and Yusuf survived.

Yusuf says, “The officers were shouting ‘Simameni hapo!’ (stop there) but we could not because all we saw was death.”

As the four swam across the crocodile infested river, Amina was silently praying that all the children would make it safely to the other side.

Amina laments, “I heard my younger son call out, ‘Mama’ twice and then he drowned.”

That was the last time she saw him.

All the while, the officers were standing on the bank of the river watching residents die.

“They did not do anything to save them,” says Yusuf.

Two-hour walk

Amina and Yusuf endured a two-hour walk to their present home and joined the rest of the Abdu family. The following day, they went back to the river and found that the bodies of the two children had been retrieved.

Amina has put up at her co-wife’s home in Seven Kilometre B since then. Her husband, Abdu Bute, says he went back to check his home in Kilelengwani and found that the officers had destroyed all their grain reserves.

He wants the Government to compensate them for the deaths of the two children.

“The action by the police during the violence is the reason my wife and the children risked their lives. So the Government must take responsibility for the deaths and compensate me,” says Abdu.

Abdu adds that some rights groups in Mombasa have called him with promises of helping him seek compensation. However, not much has been achieved.

“Somebody needs to be held responsible for the deaths of my children,” he says.

Today, the old man is jittery whenever he goes to farm on his land in Kilelengwani.

His wish is that the Government would resolve the land disputes in the region to avoid a recurrence of the violence.