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When the Police are the Perpetrators An Investigation of Human Rights Violations by Police in Samburu East and Isiolo Districts, Kenya Human Rights Research Delegation and Authors: Paula Palmer and Chris Allan When the Police are the Perpetrators An Investigation of Human Rights Violations by Police in Samburu East and Isiolo Districts, Kenya February 2009 - January 2010 A Report by Cultural Survival Human Rights Research Delegation and Authors: Paula Palmer and Chris Allan © Copyright 2010 by Cultural Survival, Inc. Publication date: April 20, 2010 Special thanks to Samburu Watch for permission to use their photos. For the past 37 years, Cultural Survival has been a global leader in protecting Indigenous Peoples’ lands, languages, and cultures around the world. In partnership with Indigenous Peoples, we advocate for Native communities that are under threat. The organization is based in Cambridge, Massachusetts; its board of directors includes some of the world's pre- eminent Indigenous leaders, as well as lawyers, anthropologists, business leaders, and philanthropists. In addition to advocacy and empowerment activities, Cultural Survival is a comprehensive source of information on Indigenous Peoples and their issues through its award-winning magazine and website. All of Cultural Survival's work is based on the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Cultural Survival 215 Prospect Street Cambridge, MA 20139 USA 617.441.5400 www.cs.org Contents Dedication 1. Overview 2. Research Methods 3. Maps 4. Context 4.1 Samburu Life and Culture 4.2 Prejudice and Discrimination 4.3 Police Impunity 4.4 Cattle Raiding 4.5 Previous Efforts to Control Arms and Security 4.6 Insecurity and Conflict in the Samburu/Isiolo Area 4.7 Political Parties and Pressures 4.8 Tourism and Economic Development 4. 9 Kenya's Obligations Under International Law 5. Testimonies of Survivors and Witnesses of Police Attacks 5.1 Lerata, February 23, 2009 5.2 Naishamunye, February 24, 2009 5.3 Laresoro, February 24, 2009 5.4 Loruko, November 21, 2009 5.5 Lerata, January 10, 2010 5.6 Kiltamany, January 12, 2010 6. Conclusions and Recommendations 6.1 General Conclusions 6.2 Recommendations Appendix 1: Cultural Survival's Letter to Kenyan Government Officials, February 12, 2010 Dedication “We pray to Ngai that everything we have said is true. We are in pain about what the government has done. Bless this writing and this work.” — Samburu elder from Kirish 1. Overview Beginning in February 2009, Cultural Survival received Between January 17 and 24, 2010, the Cultural Survival disturbing reports and photographs of widespread and research team interviewed survivors and witnesses of systematic police violence against Indigenous Samburu police attacks on five Samburu villages with populations communities in the Samburu East and Isiolo districts of between 150 and 1,500. The informants described very Northern Kenya. In January 2010, a Cultural Survival similar scenarios in each village. Around dawn, hundreds research delegation spent two weeks in Kenya of police ground troops surrounded the village and fired investigating those allegations. We recorded testimony into it with guns and mortars. Police helicopters swooped from scores of Samburu survivors and witnesses from five down on both cattle and people, terrifying them and villages (Lerata, Laresoro, Naishamunye, Loruko, and preventing their escape. The ground troops then swarmed Kiltamany) that were attacked by police during 2009 and into the villages, brutally beating women, children, elders, in January 2010. We also interviewed respected leaders of and morans (young men) with heavy sticks and the butts local and national NGOs, clergy, health workers, county of their rifles. In two of the five villages, police shot and councilors, the Samburu East Member of Parliament, and killed Samburu men and women. In three villages, police staff of the governmental Kenyan National Commission raped women. In all of the villages, police ransacked the on Human Rights and the nongovernmental Kenyan people's homes, emptying their stores of rice and maize Human Rights Commission. flour and gourds of milk. They pried open the people's metal safe-boxes and stole cash, cell phones, watches, Our research revealed a consistent and ongoing pattern of identification cards, and school papers. In one village they police brutality, extrajudicial killings, and gross human burned a boma (house) to the ground and set another on rights violations principally targeting the Samburu ethnic fire. Dozens of Samburu men and women were minority. hospitalized for days, weeks, or months following the police attacks, and some are no longer able to provide for The Samburu are one of Kenya's seven main pastoralist their families. tribes. Since the 15th century, they have raised and herded their cattle, camels, and goats on the high semi-arid In these attacks, the police carried no arrest warrants. northern plains. Periodically assailed by droughts and They assaulted young and old, men and women at famine, they and their neighboring pastoralist tribes—the random. They punished entire communities of innocent Turkana, Borana, Somali, Rendille, and Pokot—rotate people who were charged with no offences and whose their herds among the region's known water sources and right to legal representation in a court of law was ignored. pasturelands. Under pressure from the Kenyan The police attacks violated both Kenyan law and government, the pastoralist peoples have settled into more international treaties to which Kenya is a party. Yet the or less permanent village sites, but they still move their police who participated in these attacks have not been cattle across the wide plains in search of water and charged, nor are they under investigation. In this pasture. Kenyan human rights workers report that atmosphere of impunity, there is no protection for the pastoralists are generally held in low esteem by their Samburu people who remain vulnerable and terrified. fellow Kenyans who have assimilated and conformed to Every rumor of an impending police attack sends women western development patterns, while the pastoralists fleeing to the bush with their children. Many women told maintain their traditional economy and cultures. In the us they prefer to take their chances with wild animals popular media and common discourse, pastoralists rather than face the Kenyan police who have inflicted routinely are portrayed as being primitive, backward, and death, injury, terror, severe economic and property loss, violent. and vulnerability to famine and disease upon them. 5 Kenyan police attacked at least ten Samburu villages green light for "his" tribes to attack the Samburu and between February 2009 and January 2010. Police had Turkana. Indeed, the first police attacks on Samburu been sent to the north to guard the borders, quell inter- villages took place within two weeks of the gun delivery. tribal violence, resolve inter-tribal conflicts over stolen cattle, and recover illegal guns. The Kenyan government In the police attacks of late February 2009, police not only is justifiably concerned about these issues, all of which are assaulted Samburu villages, they also rounded up all the contributing to increased violence and insecurity in the villagers' cattle—over 4,000 head—and redistributed the region. Kenya's neighbors— Somalia, Ethiopia, Sudan, and cattle among the Samburu's rival tribes, the Meru, Somali, Uganda—are plagued with civil wars and unrest that can and Borana. These tribes had clamored for the police to easily spill across unprotected borders. Small arms traders recover cattle that the Samburu had allegedly stolen from bring guns across those borders into Kenya, increasing the them. But the brutality of the police attacks shocked them, deadliness of inter-tribal conflicts. Bandits make roads so and they denounced the police for their excessive use of unsafe that last year the Catholic diocese of Maralal force against the Samburu. They also pointed out that the threatened to pull all the church's teachers, health workers, police had made no attempt to identify cows that had aid workers, and mission staff out of the region unless actually been stolen. Instead, the police confiscated all the better security could be provided. Terrorists have already cattle they could gather in these raids at random. The carried out devastating strikes in Nairobi and Mombasa, February 2009 attacks deprived Samburu communities of and they are most likely to enter Kenya from the their only wealth and their primary source of food, vulnerable northern and eastern borders. rendering them vulnerable to famine at a time of severe drought. Our informants in Samburu East and Isiolo districts agreed that insecurity is a serious problem in north-central Kenya. Police remained camped out in Samburu East during the Indeed, all the pastoralist communities are suffering from rest of 2009. Samburu women told Cultural Survival's accelerating violence. For centuries, the Samburu, researchers that throughout the year, individual police Turkana, Pokot, Borana, and Somali tribes of northern officers raped many women and accosted and robbed Kenya have competed for scarce water resources and people at random. They said that the police presence kept pasture for their cattle, camels, and goats. Traditionally, the population in a constant state of fear. they have raided each other's cattle to replenish their stocks after droughts and to exert dominance over prized In November 2009, President Kibaki ordered more police water sources and grazing lands. When the raiding parties forces into the northern region to conduct a disarmament carried spears, few people were hurt or killed in these operation. Police attacks on the Samburu villages of cattle raids. But since the mid-1990s,when arms traders Loruko in November and Lerata and Kiltimany in January from Somalia and Ethiopia made guns available, the raids 2010 took place during an official amnesty period when have taken a greater toll in human lives. the pastoralist people were asked to voluntarily turn in any illegal weapons.