Kenyan security forces have tortured more than 4 000 people in an indiscriminate offensive against rebels in the remote Mount Elgon area, local rights groups said on Sunday.
Activists said the systematic abuses — including crawling on barbed wire, pouring water into mouths and forcing victims to whip each other — was the worst wave of torture in Kenya under the government of President Mwai Kibaki, in power since 2002.
”The last time we encountered such systematic torture was again back in Mount Elgon in 1995,” Samwel Mohochi, executive director of the Independent Medico-Legal Unit (IMLU), said of the long-troubled area on Kenya’s western border with Uganda.
The report, by IMLU and two other non-governmental organisations, added to a growing chorus of accusations by individuals and rights groups of gross abuses in an army offensive against the illegal Sabaot Defence Land Force (SDLF).
Since early March, hundreds of soldiers have hunted SDLF militiamen in caves, forests and villages round Mount Elgon.
Since the group took up arms in mid-2006 to fight for land it says was illegally taken from the local Soy community, about 600 people have died and 60 000 been displaced.
The little-publicised conflict pre-dates the violence in Kenya after Kibaki’s disputed December re-election. But it shares some of its root causes — land disputes, ethnic rivalries and neglect of outlying areas — and is a microcosm of historical problems bedevilling the East African nation.
Army and police spokespersons have repeatedly in recent weeks denied accusations of torture, harassment and some killings. ”We have not tortured anybody. We are there to help, to get rid of criminals,” regional police boss Abdul Mwasserah told Reuters.
Militia chop ears
But activists at Sunday’s event challenged authorities to explain how locals, including children, were being rounded up in military camps, only to emerge with appalling injuries.
”A crime against humanity has been committed and continues to be committed on a civilian population that has [also] been victim of atrocities by the SDLF for more than one year,” Mohochi said, noting ”in excess of 4 000 people” were tortured.
Interviews with more than 100 victims showed army officers were mainly responsible, though some police were also involved.
Methods included beatings with gun butts, clubs, wires, whips and wood planks. In some cases, gun barrels were inserted into private parts, victims had water poured down their mouths, and detainees were made to bite, suck or whip each other.
Some were forced to crawl on their stomachs on barbed wire as soldiers stepped on them, the report said. ”Only one survivor was interrogated by questioning. The rest were only tortured with no regard for what they had to say.”
United States-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) has also accused both the military and SDLF of ”war crimes” in Mount Elgon.
”The military has detained thousands, tortured hundreds and unlawfully killed dozens of people,” it said in a recent report.
But it also blamed the Sabaot militia for ”hideous crimes” including a trademark tactic of cutting off victims’ ears.
Journalists have been barred from entering the military’s zone of operations. But a Reuters reporter visiting the Mount Elgon foothills recently came across refugees with identical stories of army beatings and raids on villages to round up men. – Reuters