Spare victims agony of reliving 2008 memories

Post-election violence did not happen in Mars. It did not happen to Martians. It took place in Kenya. The crimes of post-election violence were not victimless. These were not blue collar crimes. They happened to Kenyans.

There are boys and men who were forcibly circumcised. They were crudely chopped without anesthesia and left by the roadside to bleed to death or to hobble to over-crowded hospitals for medical care. Those who survived the forcible circumcision have not received compensation. Many do not acknowledge their suffering. Since they did not receive any psychological or psychiatric care, every time they hear of the post-election violence and the cases at the International Criminal Court (ICC), they have to re-live the trauma of what happened to them.

There are men who were sodomised. Other men helplessly watched as their wives and daughters were raped. These men also lost their homes to arson or through displacement. Others lost the ability to fend for their families.

At the displacement camps some men could do nothing as the persons in charge of the camps preyed on their wives and daughters in exchange for food, clothing, bedding and medical care. These men also lost their sons in the violence, or through disappearance. Every time they hear of post-election violence and the cases at the ICC they have to re-live the trauma.

There are women who lost their sons in the post-election violence. Their sons left home one day and have never returned. They are women who were raped by those who were meant to protect them; security forces in uniform. Their daughters and husbands were not spared. Every time they hear of post- election violence and the cases at The Hague, they have to re-live the trauma of what happened to them, their daughters, their sons, their husbands.

The more tha 1,000 Kenyans who died as a result of the post-election violence had fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, grandparents, cousins, neighbors, friends, classmates, teachers. Every time they hear of post-election violence and the cases at the ICC they have to re-live the trauma of their loss.

Every time politicians speak of the post-election chaos for political gain or mileage, they re-victimise the victims. They re-traumatise their families. By rebooting their painful memories, they mock their misery. They are cannibalising the victims and their families and friends to feed their ambitions.

A story was once told by LL Fuller of five explorers who entered into a limestone cavern during an expedition. While they were exploring the cavern, a landslide occurred and the entrance was blocked by heavy boulders. Since they could not leave the cave, they settled at the entrance of to wait to be rescued. Minutes turned into hours, hours into days, and days into weeks. When the explorers were rescued twenty three days later, only four explorers were found. The remaining four explorers had killed and eaten the fifth explorer.

The explorer who was turned into a meal by his colleagues was the one who had suggested that they cast dice, and the loser is killed for food to ensure the survival of the remaining four. His rescued colleagues were charged with his murder.

If you were judge for a day would you convict the four explorers of murder? Or would you excuse them?

The answer to this question lies at the heart of the politics of the post-election violence. Should the victims and their families be cannibalised once again for political gain?

The four explorers in LL Fuller’s fictional case, who ate one of their own because they were hungry, were found guilty of murder and sentenced to death by hanging, and hanged.