UPDATE
on the Dominican Friars in Kenya
Violence
Deepens- Ethnic Strife on the Rise
|
Kevin
Kraft, OP |
KISUMU, KENYA, January 28, 2008 -- As I said in yesterday’s
letter, things seem to be moving (evolving) very fast here, and
in the worst sense. Here are several new developments that we have
just seen or heard about today for the first time, which do not
bode well at all for the future:
In Kisumu there were violent outbreaks early this morning apparently
in reaction to the violence displayed by the ‘other side’ (the
Kikuyu population) in Naivasha, which blocked the Naivasha section
of the Nairobi-Kisumu highway, wanting to ‘check’ people’s
identity cards and determine who had rights to be road users (with
evident death threats against other ethnic groups daring to use the
road through their ‘territory’). But the new twist
is that now Kisumu breaks out in violence because of violence yesterday
three or four hours away in another part of the country. If we
get this kind of reactionary violence due to violence in other
regions, there may be no end to it, but rather an extremely hard-to-stop
spiral of violence.
In Kisumu today, at least one school was attacked, and students
had to run for safety. One school building was burned. It’s not
the first school in the country to be burned; there have been quite
a few, but this is the first we know of in Kisumu, and it seems the
first targeted as a school, instead of just rampage burning, and
was highly publicized at a crucial time when schools were hoping
to open finally, since until this morning, things seemed quiet in
Kisumu. One of the slogans of ODM-inspired youths here is “No
Raila, no education. No Raila, no peace.” And there have apparently
been threats against other schools that wanted to resume classes.
So, with this situation, nobody will want to try to send their kids
to school, nor will schools dare to open. The rioters don’t
know what they are doing to their own city and their own people!
A month lost already, and now perhaps a whole semester, or a year
down the drain? Who knows? Meanwhile, we’re giving some classes
to the kids on our compound, since they haven’t yet been able
to go to school. We thought that maybe this week some could begin,
but now it doesn’t look like it…
Fr. Steve heard from a religious sister who had spoken with her
blood sister in a town called Tarbo, not too far from Eldoret (a
hotspot for several years now), and she related that the roadblocks
there were made with dead bodies!!! That’s a clear sign of
the perverse dehumanization of the rioters and an escalation of
the brutality of the violence.
The nightly news had very shocking information from Timboroa, somewhere
in the Rift Valley, ‘the other side from Kipkelian’ the
brothers said. The entire town of Timboroa sustained a concerted
and well planned attack by arsons from some other place during the
night: the attack took only about an hour altogether, and some 300
houses were torched. The TV footage of the town today is devastating;
it looks like a town flattened by a bomb, and there are some 60,000
refugees from that town: basically the entire town is now camping
out at the police station or out in the open, on cement floors by
the roadside where originally there were traders’ shops. The
people are crying out for help from the government, because they’re
aware that they are now more vulnerable than ever to any sort of
attack.
Yesterday at Maseno University, our friend Raphael heard rumors
that those Luos who were ‘harboring’ Kikuyus would have their
reckoning, because there would come a group from Kisumu (25 km distance)
to evict them. That would mean that somebody has the means and the
will to ferry crowds of rioters from one place to another - - not
a good development! At the same time a bright bit of news: Martin
said one Luo man here had helped to shelter about 50 Kikuyu people
several weeks ago (while we were in ‘exile’), moving
them around from place to place. Evidently he took huge risks,
but probably saved some of them from violence or even from death.
A most honorable and truly heroic thing in these circumstances!
As for me, I’m trying to understand all this violence and
discover what the Lord wants of us Dominicans in all of this, and
how to contribute to peace even in the midst of what looks more
and more like the beginning of an outright war.
email Fr. Kevin Kraft OP
|
RELATED LINKS
Reports from Kevin Kraft:
January
28, 2008
January 27, 2008
Novitiate in Exile
Katie Erisman, MMS
A SPECIAL EYE WITNESS REPORT
on Violence in Kenya from Dominican Friars
Why Is Kenya Bleeding?
Bert Ebben, OP (St. Martin)
Who are the Dominicans in Kenya?
|