The mystery of missing youths who were arrested following post election violence is promising to drag Kenyan politics to its dark immediate past. Those shouting justice and due process of the law are busy butchering the same principles by not charging these young men in court. More than six months and no mention of these cases is contrary to the same flawed justice they mouth.
Make no mistake. This is no amnesty call for murderers, arsonists and rapists who must be promptly charged. The paradox crops in when the same police force that arrested these youths claim to be unaware of their whereabouts. This unfortunate announcement by one “RAMBO MOVIE LOVER”, police spokesman Eric Kiraithe is a recipe for heightened political temperatures. The implicit implication is too grim to contemplate. I hope I am wrong but I fear otherwise that this joker is cleverly confirming the nasty rumour doing the rounds that the youths were officially extra-judicially executed.
The amnesty debate is one issue that will either make or break this so-called government of grand coalition. One wonders why one side is so sensitive to the word such that when mentioned even in a funeral the village tantrum speedily replaces any sober etiquette befitting such an occasion. Remember the Ngilu incident in Sotik. Major Ali has no two ways about this grave matter. He has to account for every head his force arrested. The unrepresentative indication that 103 case files, involving 137 suspects, are being handled in various Rift Valley towns, mainly Nakuru and Eldoret, 77 suspects have been charged in Nyanza, 98 in Nairobi, 50 in Western Province and 63 in Mombasa can’t wash.
The government’s tally of 300 is a laughable attempt to top-down at best and playing a game of numbers with peoples’ lives at worst. It leaves you wondering whether Kibaki was doing a Mugabe in arrears. All attempts by his cronies to peddle the lie of courts will surely backfire when it is eventually proved that the missing youths were brutally dispatched to their maker without the benefit/right of a trial. That will mark the beginning of another round mayhem. All the government’s talk about reconciliation and reconstruction are not sustainable because they are simply dishonest. Saying otherwise is to soothe egos with pretence. Only the bitter pill of honesty can successfully diffuse the ticking time bomb.
We need the truth about the young protestors who risked their lives for a just and democratic rule. We would like to see the boys in court as soon ass possible!!
