[Imc-communication] Update from Kenya - People Power and Solutions

[Anna]

Hi,

I am forwarding this email sent to the imc-africa list by John Bwakali,
one of the organisers of the indymedia coverage during the WSF last year
in Nairobi, Kenya. You have all heard about the tragedies that are
happening there now. I'm not usually fond of emergency set-up of imc's
but here I think help is needed. John is asking people to help with the
set-up of their site which basically already exists. Open publishing is
disabled because the group lacked maintainers of the website. See
http://kenya.indymedia.org/ . Search new-imc for imc-kenya, if you want
details. They are looking for people who can help hosting their site and
for tech and design help. Please consider helping! And please forward to
your local groups and tech lists.

Anna





Dear Indymedia Colleagues,

I have already sent this message but it was too big so it is still
awaiting moderator approval. In the meantime, I have broken it into
three parts so that you can all receive it sooner rather than later.
Five days ago, on the 27^th of December, I stood in a queue for six
hours - from 5.30 AM to 11.30 AM, waiting for my turn to cast a vote in
my country Kenya ?s presidential, parliamentary and civic elections.
When the votes were counted later that night, Raila Odinga, the
opposition leader, began taking a near-unassailable lead. At one point,
he led with almost one million votes. But somehow, Mwai Kibaki the
incumbent president squeezed through a disputed victory. I can live with
that. What I can?t live with, is that in the last three days, more than
200 Kenyans have lost their lives because of this disputed election results.
When the tension escalated, I had to move to my brother?s house because
I stay in a neighborhood dominated by the Kikuyu, the biggest tribe in
Kenya and also one that President Mwai Kibaki comes from. Tragically,
Kikuyus around the country are bearing the brunt of an angry people and
they are also beginning to retaliate. Just a kilometer from where I am
now staying, a crowd of Kikuyus gathered at the police station asking
for trucks that they can use to ferry their fellow kikuyus from
different parts of the country. In the meantime, they are beginning to
demand that all non-Kikuyus in this region should start vacating.
I recently talked with a close Kikuyu friend from Eldoret town and she
was so scared. She is from the Kikuyu community while most of her
neighbors are from the Kalenjin community. Due to no fault of hers, the
president happens to be from her community. Due to his own fault, the
president has greatly angered the Kalenjin community together with
thirty eight other communities. Even the supposedly official results
show that he only led in two provinces out of eight. Consequently,
members of all other communities generally feel that the president has
robbed them. Unfortunately, they are taking it out on innocent members
of the three communities that voted overwhelmingly for the president -
Kikuyu, Embu and Meru. It is becoming a ping-pong game of violence as
members of these three communities are also starting to hit out.
I blame the people who commissioned and condoned the rigging of these
elections. While I realize that most losers usually blame rigging for
their losses, these particular rigging claims are not mere speculation.
Samuel Kivuitu, the chairman of the Electoral Commission of Kenya has
already admitted that he announced the presidential results under
pressure from the President?s Party of National Unity. He also conceded
that there were widespread irregularities which resulted in extended
delays in announcing results from some forty eight constituencies. Both
local and international observers have explicitly reported that while
the actual voting process was beyond fault, the tallying of the votes
was riddled with faults. Raila Odinga has refused to accept these
results. Millions of Kenyans have refused to accept these results.
Business has been paralyzed across the country and it is not business as
usual. Lives have been lost and life cannot go on like this.

Kenya is now in a state of panic. Just yesterday when the rest of the
world was celebrating the New Year thirty women and children were burnt
alive in a church that they had sought refuge. They have died because
someone found it fit to rig an electoral process and someone else found
it fit to either facilitate or condone that rigging. They have died
because there has been no concerted high level effort to quell a fire
that is now consuming highways, byways and villages of this great
nation. They have died because a subjective mass intolerance has been
borne from massive political deception.
I hold all the aforementioned persons responsible for these deaths and
any other deaths that may result from this tragic situation. The blood
of these fellow Kenyans is primarily on the hands of the politicians
whose legs have trampled on the fundamental voting rights of Kenyans.
This innocent blood is also on the guilty hands of those whose acts of
violence inflicted irreversible death blows. No injustice, however
heinous, warrants murder of the innocents. As we learnt from the Rwanda
genocide, this blood will also be on the hands of all those who will
turn a blind eye on this simmering conflict. Which is why we cannot, and
must not turn a blind eye on this violence and other violent situations
around the world.


<http://us.rd.yahoo.com/evt=51734/*http://tools.search.yahoo.com/newsearch/category.php?category=shopping>

But what can you and I do to stop this violent, raging fire that is
razing down innocent Kenyan lives?
1. *Share this information far and wide*: Send this piece to your local
newsrooms and radio stations. When more and more people are informed,
more possibilities avail themselves.
2. *Volunteer as a web designer for the Kenya Independent Media
(Indymedia) website:* The Kenya Indymedia website can and should act as
a platform for accurate and widespread expression. We need to publish
dozens of first account stories that may not make it to the mainstream
media. We also need to publish photos, audio and video. We therefore
need volunteer web designers and programmers to work on it consistently
for a period of 2 - 3 months as the Kenya Indymedia team builds its web
designing and programming capability. As Kenya Indymedia, we now need to
communicate to the world what is really happening and a vibrant website
will be one way of doing this. We are liaising with national movement
known as Million Youth Action to call and text people from across the
country, moreso the worst hit areas of western Kenya and Rift Valley, so
that we can in turn share their stories. This way, statistics will cease
to be cold figures and they will take on a personal, human angle.
3. *Host the Kenya Independent media website: *In order to enable a
download of videos, images and audio of this conflict, the website needs
to have sufficient space. We would like to use this site to keep track
of all the Kenyans who are needlessly losing their lives, getting
injured, robbed and displaced in this post-electoral violence. We would
also like to use it to keep track of /who /is instigating, undertaking
and condoning this violence. Even more important, we would like to know
the victims of this violence so that we can reach out to them one way or
another, in our own small way.
4. *Mobile phone communication:* The only way that most endangered
people can communicate and be communicated to, is through mobile phones.
We would like to distribute mobile phone air time to as many people as
possible so that we can enable them to communicate about what happened,
is happening or may be about to happen. As already mentioned we will
file all this communication on the website and pass it on to relevant
authorities. One dollar will provide four minutes air time. These four
minutes may make a difference between life and death.
5. *Help relocate someone from a danger zone:* This violence has taken
on ethnic dimensions, which means that people from certain communities
are now no longer safe in certain places in which they are the
minorities. Property belonging to such individuals is being looted and
destroyed. Even worse, their lives are in grave danger. Many of them are
however not able to flee since many public means of transport have
suspended their services due to rampant insecurity on the roads. We
intend to relocate such people through any means possible. This includes
tipping food delivery trucks, cargo trains, newspaper vans and any other
vehicles that are moving from one point to another for whatever reason.
6. *Help feed a relocated person: *we have identified and are continuing
to identify families in Nairobi and other parts of the country that can
temporarily host relocated persons. As this is a grassroots movement
with an emphasis on grassroots solutions, we intend to temporarily host
displaced persons in host families. These families will greatly
appreciate whatever food supplements we can give them.

7. *Diplomatic missions:* Contact your respective embassies in Kenya and
seek to know what they are doing about the deteriorating situation in
Kenya . Give them our contacts and forward this paper to them. Embassies
can do more than issue blanket statements for people to 'keep the peace'
as if don't already know that!
8. *Tend to a child: *More than 75,000 Kenyans are now internally
displaced. Most of them are women and children. What a tragedy when
young children are caught up in such a mess. There is no perfect formula
for reaching out to such innocent ones. We intend take to them toys,
clothes, chocolate, drinks, books and more gifts that can cheer them up.
We will particularly target children who have been displaced or those
whose parents have died in this conflict.
9. *Pray: *For those of you, who like, believe in God, do whisper a
prayer that peace will eventually prevail in Kenya .
10. *Share your ideas: *it will greatly help if you share any concrete
ideas that you may be having. Most politicians are just telling Kenyans
to keep the peace and not really taking any concrete action to address
this situation. People power and solutions can make a BIG difference.
You can do any of the above by donating any of the mentioned things or
what you would consider to be their monetary equivalent. Just go with
your gut feeling and thanks for your thoughts.
Cheers,
John

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