Nakuru church leaders fear violence tied to elections

Religious leaders in Nakuru, west-central Kenya, have expressed concern that a spate of attacks on church personnel and property in the town could be the start of politically motivated violence connected with general elections scheduled for this year.

"We cannot help but associate these thuggeries with what happened before the 1992 and 1997 national elections," Nakuru religious leaders said in a letter to Nakuru District Commissioner James ole Seriani, and the Officer Commanding the police division at Nakuru, Andrew Kimeto, on Thursday, 10 January.

The letter followed an armed attack by a group of five men on 9 January on the house of Brother David Muchemi of the Franciscan Brothers. Muchemi was shot twice during the attack and was recovering in Nairobi Hospital after being airlifted from Nakuru, the Catholic Information Service for Africa (CISA) reported on 11 January.

While Seriani and Kimeto put the attack down to "common thuggery", the group of Nakuru religious leaders - including the Catholic bishop, Peter Kairo - linked the attack, when seen together with a series of attacks on church personnel and property in and around Nakuru, to a pattern of violence connected with the run-up to the forthcoming elections, CISA said.

The letter listed nine incidents going back to 4 September 2001, including two attacks on the Incarnate Word Sisters, a robbery at the Franciscan Missionaries Sisters, and two break-ins at the house of Bishop Kairo.

Although all the incidents had been promptly reported to the nearest police station, no arrests had been made, the church leaders said. "Even when the culprits are known and reported to the relevant authorities, no action has been taken," they added.

Nakuru District was one of the five areas most seriously affected by violence in the run-up to Kenya's first multiparty elections in 1992, a UN disaster management team reported. According to a Kenyan parliamentary select committee, 799 people were killed and 54,000 displaced by inter-ethnic violence in western Kenya and central Rift Valley during late 1991 and 1992.

An estimated one million eligible youth were denied registration to vote in the 1997 elections, and the lead-up was "fraught with violence and intimidation", according to a Human Rights Watch report.

Recent violent clashes in the Kibera slum of Nairobi, in Tana River District, eastern Kenya, and in other areas across the country have led observers to express concern that Kenya is again witnessing a pattern of rising violence across the country, just as happened prior to the elections of 1992 and 1997.

"The implications of the current chronology of events leaves us wondering whether history is repeating itself," the religious leaders stated in their letter of 10 January.

They called on Kenyan President Daniel arap Moi to make an official statement on the recent attacks. "We appeal that he personally intervenes in order to arrest the situation," the letter stated.

"These events have left us and our people helpless. We are at the mercy of these armed thugs," it added.