BY PAUL ORENGOH KE/SECURITY
In Kenya , the existence of a gun licensing program creates the legal fiction that law-abiding Kenyan citizens can possess a firearm.
But in reality, very few Kenyan citizens, especially those living in remote areas, meet the criteria for a gun license and can afford to pay the associated fees,” says Official Opposition leader Uhuru Kenyatta.
In practice, however, only the rich and the socially or politically correct or well connected manage to obtain firearms certificates and keep them…Thus the gun law can be pretty arbitrary and subjective in its application, he chuckles.
Ordinary Kenyans are not even allowed to possess bows and arrows, and the bow and arrow laws are also applied discriminatorily.
Among the pastoralists of the Kenya/Uganda borderlands, many households have firearms, and the crime rate is low, although there is a substantial problem of violence between tribes and clans, especially in cattle-raiding. Estimates of the pastoralists gun stock range from 50,000 to 200,000 in Kenya , and 50,000 to 150,000 in Uganda .
Yet even the worst inter-tribal cattle-raiding violence is exceeded by the violence of the gun confiscation programs. According Kenya’s Internal Security minister John Michuki, the Government would stop at nothing to recover the arms.
West Pokot area District Commissioner Stephen Ikua warned “We shall use force to get them.
In March 2006, a shoot-to-kill directive for the entire country of Kenya was issued to police by Internal Security minister John Michuki, giving the police free rein against the populace.
But the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights cautioned Kenyans to śbrace themselves for a killing field if police officers were to effect the order.
Extreme brutality in the enforcement of gun prohibition is nothing new in Kenya . A gun confiscation program which the military conducted in 1950 caused the deaths of 50 people, while the government confiscated 10,000 head of cattle.
In 1961, then-Lieutenant Colonel Idi Amin of the King’s African Rifles in the then-British colony of Uganda crossed the border into Kenya and tortured and terrorized members of the Turkana tribe who refused to give up their weapons. At least 127 men were castrated and left to die.
The failed 1984 Operation NYUNDO [Operation Hammer] was a brutal example of the difficulty of disarming civilians who would rather risk death than surrender their ability to protect their families. Operation NYUNDO was a collaborative effort of the Kenyan and Ugandan armies”as are the current gun confiscation programs in those countries.
Krop Muroto, a political activist living in the remote West Pokot, of Western Kenya recalled: “No one knows to date how many people were killed in that operation that lasted three months. The community was further devastated by mass killing of their cattle. 20,000 head of cattle were confiscated, rounded up in sheds and starved to death. Among other atrocities…the army used helicopter gunships, killed people and destroyed a lot of property.
Lukim Kpamba, an elder in the dusty and dry village of Ombwede in the West Pokot district, said the soldiers who carried out that mission were “wild, beyond humanity.
He said many shot Turkanas and Pokots on sight, or forced men to lie on the ground in a line as they ran across their backs. Other men had their testicles tied together and were then made to run away from each other, he said. Women were raped in front of their husbands, sometimes with empty beer bottles.
Ironically, in April 2006, Security Minister John Michuki told Parliament, The Government has decided to disarm the Pokot by force. If they want an experience of 1984 when the Government used force to disarm them, then this is precisely what is going to happen.
Stephen Ikua, a government representative, said that threats were necessary in order to get civilians to peacefully surrender their firearms. He said: As a government, you should talk from a position of strength. You cannot come in saying you are going to respect human rights.
On April 4, 2007, the civil society in Kenya described the latest military operation in Kenya , code-named Okota [Collect], utilizing tanks, trucks, helicopters, and a local school building as barracks for the army.
In the village of about 2,000 people, 8 weapons were recovered by the intimidation. Fearing a repeat of the 1984 human rights violations that accompanied disarmament, 15,000 panicked people fled to Uganda with their cattle and guns, leaving behind the aged, infirm, and the children.
Starvation and anguish are now stalking Mt Elgon and West Pokot residents, since the Government launched a forcible disarmament exercise a month ago.The residents now say they have resigned themselves to fate and have become refugees in their own country, says Polycarp Ocholla Kamili, lead security analyst with Witerose Group.
A recent visit by this writer revealed the sense of hopelessness and vulnerability that the disarmament has brought, forcing majority residents to relocate to Uganda . Schools have also become ghost institutions, with very few pupils. Although the Government says the operation has not disrupted the villagers normal life, a spot-check reveals otherwise.
In West Pokot alone, 120,000 people need food aid, but only half are getting rations. Schooling is disrupted, and farmsteads are being neglected.
Only months after the forced disarmament program began, seventy illegally possessed firearms had been recovered. Apparently, a few dozen firearms are reason enough for the Kenyan government to go to war against its own citizenry.
((Writings by Paul Orengoh, Tel: +254720878315, Email: wuorengoh81@yahoo.com;
Paul Orengoh
Economic and Political Writer
Tel: +254 720 878315
Email: wuorengoh81@yahoo.com
Published by African Press in Norway, apn, africanpress@chello.no tel +47 932 99 739 or +47 6300 2525
