afrol News, 24 January - Kenya's opposition officials and local elders have been blamed for planning and organizing ethnic-based violence in the Rift Valley, targeting mainly Kikuyu and Kisii tribes in the region, an investigation by Human Rights Watch reveals.

"Opposition leaders are right to challenge Kenya’s rigged presidential poll, but they can’t use it as an excuse for targeting ethnic groups, " the right group says, calling on the opposition Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) leadership to "take immediate steps to stop its supporters from committing further attacks."

The group has also advocated for the urgent deployment of extra police officers to protect displaced people and resident Kikuyu communities in the Rift Valley.

“Opposition leaders are right to challenge Kenya’s rigged presidential poll, but they can’t use it as an excuse for targeting ethnic groups,” concurs Georgette Gagnon, acting Africa Director of Human Rights Watch.

“We have evidence that ODM politicians and local leaders actively fomented some post-election violence, and the authorities should investigate and make sure it stops now.”

It has been revealed that attacks by several ethnic communities against rival ones, especially local Kikuyu populations in the Rift Valley town of Eldoret, were planned soon after the disputed polls. And in some cases, local elders and opposition politicians appear to have incited and organize the violence.

Since 27 December 2007, clashes against the Kikuyu and Kisii tribes have left more than 400 people dead and displaced tens of thousands in the Rift Valley.

The group backed its report with interviews it has carried out with several members of the pro-ODM Kalenjin communities who explained how local leaders and ODM party agents actively fermented violence against Kikuyu communities.

Rights Watch quoted a Kalenjin preacher in Eldoret as saying that a local ODM party mobilizer on 29 December 2007 “called a meeting and said that war had broken in Eldoret town, so the elders organized the youth into groups of not less than 15, and they went to loot [Kikuyu] homes and burn them down.”

The following day, the village held another meeting and the youth marched to the nearby town of Turbo. They were turned away by police. But they returned early the next morning, catching the police off guard, “and burnt almost half of the Kikuyu shops in town, including the petrol station,” the preacher says.

In some instances, Kalenjin residents contributed toward the purchase of automatic weapons so as to attack camps of displaced Kikuyu and the two remaining neighbourhoods in Eldore [Langas and Munyaka] where many Kikuyu homes remain intact.

The New York-based body urged Kenyan police to provide adequate protection for displaced persons.

“The murder of people sheltering at a monastery in Kipkelion illustrates the need for better police protection of displaced people,” says Gagnon. “Protecting the thousands of vulnerable people chased from their homes across the Rift Valley from further attack should be a priority for the Kenyan police.”

Both ODM and the government accused each other of perpetrating "ethnic cleansing." President Mwai Kibaki and Raila Odinga are expected to meet for the first time since the unrest began.

The opposition has cancelled its planned rallies after an appeal by the former United Nations Secretary General, Kofi Annan who is mediating Kenya's political deadlock.

By staff writer

© afrol News

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