Clashes commission urges IDP returns

An independent commission has called for the return to their homes of thousands of people displaced by violent clashes around the time of Kenya's last two general elections, in 1992 and 1997. "To inspire confidence in the government, all those who were displaced form their farms during the tribal clashes should be assisted to resettle back on their farms and appropriate security arrangements made for their peaceful stay", said the report on the 'Judicial Commission Appointed to Inquire into Tribal Clashes in Kenya', according to excerpts published in the 'Daily Nation' newspaper. Because disputes over land ownership and use were considered to be one of the causes of the violence, the government should also issue land title documents to people who had either been allocated land, or had bought land from previous owners, the report said. The lack of legal titles to land is an obstacle in attempts by some displaced people to return to the areas they occupied before the clashes, according to a 2001 report on internal displacement in Kenya by the Jesuit Refugee Service (JRS). The Commission, led by Justice Akilano Akiwumi, was appointed by Kenyan President Daniel arap Moi in July 1998, and handed in the report to the president in 1999. Until last week, however, the government had withheld the document, despite calls from civil society groups and a judgement from a court in Mombasa that it should be released in order to be used as evidence in a compensation suit brought by a Kenyan farmer against the government. The report calls for a number of politicians, local administration officials, and security and police officers to be investigated over their alleged roles in clashes, which led to the deaths of more than 800 people and the displacement of some 130,000 between 1991 and 1994, according to the Commission. JRS estimates, however, that some 300,000 people were displaced in violence sparked by the 1992 return to multi-partyism, with tens of thousands more being displaced in 1997, again around election time. Some 220,000 Kenyans are currently living under temporary arrangements, having had to flee their homes as a result of conflict and natural disasters, though not all associated with the 1992 and 1997 elections, JRS says. Among the names of people to be investigated were several current cabinet ministers, including Trade and Industry Minister Nicholas Biwott and Minister in the Office of the President Julius Sunkuli, both for alleged involvement in violence in Kenya's Rift Valley Province. However, Kenya's chief lawyer has criticised the report for alleged bias. "The government is of the view that the report was not objective in its analysis of the evidence before it," Attorney- General Amos Wako said in announcing the report's release on 18 October. The government has released its own document, making comments on the Commission's findings. In it, the government says the 'Akiwumi' report is biased against the Kalenjin and Maasai ethnic groups, and ignores the role played by other groups such as the Kikuyu, Kenya's most populous tribe, according to a 'Daily Nation' report. According to the JRS report, an informal coalition of Kalenjin, Maasai, Turkana and Samburu was set up in the Rift Valley to rid the area of "opposition elements." The 'Akiwumi' Commission also criticised the Kenyan police force, and provincial administrations in several provinces for failing to prevent the violence, and for inciting the violence in some cases. The report criticises the "negligence and unwillingness on the part of the Police Force and provincial Administration to take firm and drastic action which would surely have prevented the clashes from erupting". The report therefore recommends that the police forces should be de-linked from the provincial administrations and be made an independent unit. It also recommends that the provincial administration should be "divorced wholly" from the activities of political parties. The "incitement and abetment of tribal and inter-clan clashes by social and political leaders as well as by members of the security, police and administrative services, should no longer be tolerated," the report said as quoted by the 'Daily Nation'.