How victims recounted ordeals during commission’s public hearings

By ROSELYNE OBALA

Kenya: Kenyans shared moving and horrifying experiences with the Truth Justice and Reconciliation Commission (TJRC) during the public hearings  conducted across the country.

In its report submitted to President Uhuru Kenyatta yesterday, the commision details harrowing accounts of  gross human rights violation, with  women and children being the main targets of heinous crimes such as rape.

The commission collected over 40,000 statements from Kenyans, each narrating their own ordeals.

The commission documented that although some of the crimes suffered by the victims were unspeakable, witnesses did not shy away from describing them in details.

“Men sat on my head and legs. I could not look left or right. Some were even putting soil in our private parts saying ‘fill with soil’, “ narrated Mama Halima Martille, a victim of the Shifa war in North Eastern Kenya.

She continued: “They filled us with soil and left us to die, but we did not.”

According to the report by the team, sexual violence was one of the most recurring themes during the public hearings.

The Shifta war lasted four years, resulting in the death of between 200 and 7,000 combatants and civilians.

The testimony of Dura Nuya, an elder from Garbatulla, suggested that even the process of committing people to villages was a violently organised one.

Nuya said he was beaten and taken to protected village without the knowledge of his parents.

“In 1965, when in grade 1 of primary school, I used to go home when school closed. While at home one day, the armed forces raided our residential place. I was brutally beaten,” he recalled.

He continued: “My parents did not know my whereabouts. They had taken me to Garbatulla and they only came to know about my whereabouts after a week.” 

Nuya was luckier than another neighbour’s boy caught up in the crossfire of the Shifta war whom he saw at the camp.

“The young man, who was a son to a neighbour, had bloodshot eyes and could not speak,” he recounted.

He identified the victim as Ordha Wario Gullio whom he recalled went through a more tormenting ordeal.

“We do not know what happened to him after that. Maybe they burnt him,” he stated.

As Kenyan detainees were systematically released back to their villages, Isiolo residents, who lead a nomadic life, found themselves stranded and Garbatulla was never the same.

The witnesses testified on how Government agents killed their livestock, which further compounded their misery.

 “During this time, the Kenyan authorities believed that camel milk could sustain the lives of the locals for a long time so the soldiers were actually killing camels and human beings alike,” they recounted.

Hassan Kuno Ali shocked the commissioners when he revealed that the soldiers gave them poisonous meat. Ali singled out the police and military.

“It is true that when they came they injected the animals with poison. They then slaughtered the animals and gave the meat to the people. When people ate the meat they slept and never woke up,” he recalled.

Phoebe Asiyo, former Rachuonyo MP, while speaking during the TJRC hearings in Kisumu, made a moving testimony that summarised the prevailing perception about the economic and political status of Luo Nyanza .

“The role of the Luo community in the struggle for independence cannot be over-emphasised yet the former regions have side-lined them in development,” she said.