The BBC's Karen Allen reports on the emergence of vigilantes in Kenya in the year following the formation of a coalition government. A peace deal brokered by former UN Secretary General, Kofi Annan, put an end to the ethnic violence that erupted following disputed elections...but human rights groups say now vigilante violence has taken its place.
This text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI's THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI's THE WORLD is the program audio.
LISA MULLINS: I'm Lisa Mullins and this is The World. The East African nation of Kenya was engulfed by factional violence early last year. Thirteen hundred people died before a peace deal created a coalition government. But that government has failed to tackle the causes of the crisis. Kenyans still suffer poverty and inequality, and the government is unable to protect its citizens from rampant crime, some of it from a gang called the Mungiki Sect. Kenyans have responded by creating vigilante groups. But those groups have only escalated the violence as the BBC's Karen Allen reports from Nairobi.
KAREN ALLEN: The fragile coalition government is accused by the public of not delivering on key issues of judicial and police reform enshrined in the peace deal. When the Justice Minister, Martha Karua, dramatically resigned recently, she warned that the rule of law was under threat here. Now, with the rise of vigilante groups to tackle crime, it seems that fear is being borne out.
MWALIMU MATI: It appears that the police have encouraged the formation of vigilante groups of youths who are now responsible for providing security.
ALLEN: Mwalimu Mati is a prominent human rights campaigner. Criminal gangs have traditionally been used in Kenya to extort money and mobilize crowds for political rallies. But now, ordinary Kenyans are resisting the mobsters and doing the policing themselves.
MATI: When you've got a situation where the disciplined other security forces are now sort of handing over those responsibilities to civilians, then you also have the potential that you could have the escalation of this violence when, you know, we don't want basically to be seeing shoot-outs in Central Kenya when we have a police force.
ALLEN: But it's come close to that already. This is the funeral of a group of vigilantes who were killed at the hands of the criminal gang the Mungiki Sect late last month. Twenty-nine were hacked to death in the massacre which shocked the nation. The question everyone is asking, "Were the police complicit or overwhelmed?" Simon Murethi Kabutu's nephew, Francis, was one of the vigilantes killed on the edge of Ndia Constituency in the shadows of Mount Kenya. People, he said, had started to stand up to the Mungiki Sect, the quasi religious criminal gang which operates right under the noses of some of the most powerful in Kenya's political elite.
SIMON MURETHI KABUTU: The fighting broke out after motor bike taxis and local residents refused to pay extortion money. They had refused to pay this monthly fee that was being demanded of them.
ALLEN: We're talking to people who say Ndia is now run by the Mungiki. What do you say to that?
KABUTU: It is true, it is true. There are many Mungiki in this area.
ALLEN: We're just traveling on a popular method of transport here. It's the boda boda, it's a motor bike that many people use to jump from village to village here. But just in recent weeks people have told us they've had to start paying to the local Mungiki. This driver tells me he has to pay fifty shillings, about a fifth of his wages, each day to the Mungiki simply to run his business.
DRIVER: Yes, fifty shillings per day.
ALLEN: What happens if you don't pay?
DRIVER: Oh, they will beat me very thoroughly.
ALLEN: They beat you?
DRIVER: Yeah.
ALLEN: With a major crackdown on criminal gangs in the capital, Nairobi, the Mungiki appears to be looking for new extortion possibilities in the rich farming belt of central Kenya. As the coalition government is distracted by other issues such as who gets the most pay and details of protocol, people now face a stark choice, either join the Mafia-like Mungiki Sect or become a vigilante. This is street justice Kenyan style.
JOSPHAT: You have built a stone house, you will be demanded one thousand shillings.
ALLEN: Josphat, not his real name, lists the informal taxes that businesses are now having to pay to the Mungiki gang. Like hundreds of other villagers, Josphat goes on nightly patrols. Suspected Mungiki members once caught are eventually handed over to the police as part of a kind of community justice. They call it, "The Hague," a word play on the International Court in the Netherlands.
JOSPHAT: We have to do it now for us to protect our lives.
ALLEN: Alarmingly, some of the vigilante groups are now meting out their own justice. In the past few days I've received reports of Mungiki suspects being forced to commit suicide by vigilante gangs. If the coalition government fails to shake up the security services as was promised in the peace deal, it could rapidly spiral out of control. For The World, I'm Karen Allen in Nairobi.
transcript