KENYA: The Women Who Wait For Justice

Source: Human Rights Watch 'Waiting for Justice'

Between 2006 and 2008 approximately 300 Kenyans were forcibly disappeared in Kenya's Mt. Elgon region after being either arrested by Kenyan security forces or abducted by the militia group Sabaot Land Defence Force (SLDF).

Three years after a military operation that aimed to flush out the militia - an operation that was accompanied by serious human rights abuses, including summary executions, enforced disappearances, and torture - the government has taken no action to shed light on the plight of the disappeared or to provide their families with access to justice.

Human Rights Watch visited families of some of the victims

Extracts from 'Hold Your Heart' a Human Rights Watch report

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Elsa Chesut

Elsa Chesut found parts of her husband Jerome’s body in a forest in western Kenya three months after soldiers from the Kenyan army abducted him from his home. The soldiers who came for Jerome in April 2008 accused him of having knowledge about the activities of the Sabaot Land Defence Force (SLDF), a militia group that had been terrorizing the population of the Mt. Elgon region of western Kenya since 2006. They beat him, forced sand into his mouth to prevent him from crying out, tied him to the back of a truck, and dragged him towards a military camp known as Kapkota.

Elsa searched for her husband at the military camp and at a nearby prison, but no one would provide information about his whereabouts until a boy informed her that Jerome’s body was in a nearby forest where the boy grazed his cattle. Three years later, Elsa is still waiting for justice to be done and has not been given full information on the events surrounding the death of her husband.

Elsa’s story is one of the many told by victims of the Mt. Elgon insurgency, a conflict which started in 2006 when the SLDF began to resist government attempts to evict squatters in the Chebyuk area of Mt. Elgon district. Very quickly the SLDF set its sights on the upcoming December 2007 elections as both an opportunity to cause trouble and seize land by force, as well as a chance to ensure that candidates favorable to its cause were elected. The SLDF was financed and controlled by opposition Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) candidates as it did their bidding—intimidating opponents and voters prior to the elections of December 2007, and punishing them afterwards. In March 2008 the military and police conducted a heavy-handed joint operation—Okoa Maisha (“Save Lives” in Swahili)—to crush the SLDF insurgency, which by then had gotten out of hand, becoming more than a political militia and a law unto itself.

Faith V.

Faith V.’s husband was arrested by soldiers at his home on March 16, 2008. According to Faith V.:

They started torturing him just next to our house. They were soldiers from Chepkube. When I witnessed him being beaten, I locked the children in the house so they wouldn’t see that. I couldn’t stand it.… I decided to run away [into the house] and not see it.

When I started crying and the children started crying, the military brought [my husband] back and he showed them his ID. They told me “We have brought him back for you to see him for the last time. Have you heard those bullets at Kimaswa? That’s the weapon that is going to be used on your husband.” The soldiers suspected my husband because he was from Chepyuk [an area from which residents had been displaced due to the disputed government land resettlement scheme opposed by the SLDF].

Faith V.’s husband was taken to Chepkube, an improvised military camp at a coffee factory. Faith V. heard from a neighbor that the detainees at Chepkube were taken to Kapkota military camp the same day. Two days later, she went to Kapkota where soldiers directed her to Chepkube. There, she was sent back to Kapkota. Narrating her ordeal, she told Human Rights Watch that on her second attempt to seek information at Kapkota, “The soldiers told me ‘Your husband has been taken up in the forest.’”

Following this, Faith V. approached the District Officer at Cheptais, who did not provide any assistance. Several days later, she also made a report to the Provincial Commissioner (PC). She said, “The PC told me to go in the forest and look for my husband to bury him.”

Faith V. also submitted a written statement to the Officer Commanding Station (OCS) from Chesikaki police station, providing details of her husband’s abduction. The OCS and other officials who were present when she submitted the statement, including a military commander, promised to assist her:

“They said, ‘We want the truth. If your husband is dead, then we’ll assist you with relief.’ I asked ‘What type of assistance will you provide?’ They said ‘assistance will come, you just wait.’ We have waited for assistance up to now.”

Despite numerous efforts, Faith V. never obtained information about what happened to her husband and she has not had access to any form of justice or compensation.

Shirley D.

Shirley D.’s husband was taken to Chepkube military camp by eight soldiers who came to their home at 11 p.m. on April 25, 2008. Shirley D. went to the camp the following day. She was not allowed to see her husband, but, she said,

“As I was leaving I saw my husband flat on the floor, next to a building. His clothes were blood-stained and he was covered with blood. He was surrounded by about three soldiers. He was not dead because his legs were still moving.”

Shirley D. immediately informed the District Officer (DO) of Cheptais that her husband was at Chepkube and appeared to have been beaten. He promised to investigate, but later that same afternoon, when she again approached the DO, he told her he “had a lot of work to do.” Shirley D. went back to the camp, where she saw a table with the shape of a human body stretched across it, covered by a red cloth. A man living next to the military camp saw her distress: “He told me, ‘Hold your heart.’ I started crying. I was sure that was my husband whom I had seen and that he was dead.”

Over the next few days Shirley D. and her family members went to Chesikaki police station, Kapkota military camp, and the mortuaries at Bungoma, Webuye, and Kakamega, but she was unable to obtain any information about what had happened to her husband.