We are encouraged that there have been no more full-scale police attacks on Samburu villages since Cultural Survival’s research delegation gathered evidence of the attacks in January. In February, after receiving Cultural Survival’s report of human rights abuses by Kenyan police forces against the Samburu people, Kenya’s Minister of Internal Security ordered police forces to refrain from using force and to conduct the disarmament operation in northern Kenya peacefully. The Samburu and other pastoralists in the region have responded positively by voluntarily turning in hundreds of illegal weapons.
Peace was shattered at mid-day on March 24, however, when a car-full of Administrative Police picked up two Samburu morans (young men) who were herding sheep near their village, Kirish. According to the testimony of the one moran who survived, the police forced him and his friend to drink an unknown substance that burned their mouths and lips. Policemen stabbed both men in the neck. Nakini Lemoyog died at the scene, but Lmaino Lekoloi was able to escape. Fortunately he was found by passersby who took him in a vehicle to the Archer’s Post clinic for emergency medical treatment.
The outraged and grieving Samburu community organized demonstrations and roadblocks, demanding an investigation and prosecution of the police officers responsible for these crimes. For the first time in local memory, the government did organize a line-up of suspects and called witnesses to identify them. According to reports, several people saw the police when they stopped the morans but did not see the murder occur; others saw the group of police after the crime when they stopped to drink sodas in a nearby village. Cultural Survival has demanded prosecution of the offending police officers and an end to impunity for all police officers who commit crimes and human rights violations against the Samburu people.
Cultural Survival’s full Sambauru report will be released on April 20 and hand-delivered on April 21 to James Anaya, UN Special Rapporteur for Indigenous Peoples. We will submit the report to the Kenyan government, the US State Department and other government embassies in Kenya. Look for the report titled, “When the Police are the Prosecutors: Human Rights Violations by Police in Samburu East and Isiolo Districts, Kenya” on the Cultural Survival website.
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