New York-based Human Rights Watch has accused President Uhuru Kenyatta and his deputy William Ruto of deploying State resources to stop the cases they are facing at the International Criminal Court (ICC). The advocacy group, in its 2014 world report, has claimed that after the two narrowly won the March 4th general elections and barely avoiding a run, they have resulted to “deploy all the resources of the state toward stopping their prosecution” by the ICC over the 2007/08 post election violence. HRW, in a report officially released on Wednesday, has also accused the two of capitalizing on the September 21st terrorist attack at Westgate Mall and convince the world they need to be around to fight terrorism in an attempt to fight their ICC charges. The group has said the two either directly or through their supporters fought efforts to create a special tribunal in Kenya to address the violence, betting that the ICC would never get involved in Kenya. “They bet wrong,” HRW has said. The group has accused Kenyatta and Ruto of orchestrating impunity by trying to fight the ICC. It has said they have been pushing a theory that ICC was targeting only African leaders and accused them of failing to offer any other recourse for justice of the victims of the violence. “The alternative they offer is not national prosecution but impunity,” HRW has said. The international lobby group has noted that though Kenya pledged to continue cooperating with the ICC, since the election of Kenyatta and Ruto the new government has actively campaigned at the United Nations and the African Union (AU) to have the cases dropped, deferred, or referred to a local justice mechanism. “Their unstated and wrongful assumption is that their electoral victory is sufficient to extinguish the right to justice for the victims of the electoral violence and their families. Although its efforts failed to orchestrate a mass withdrawal of African states from the ICC, Kenya has succeeded in enlisting the African Union on behalf of its quest for impunity,” adds the report. It has noted that last September, the National Assembly and the Senate approved a motion calling on the Kenyan government to withdraw from the Rome Statute, the treaty establishing the ICC, which Kenya signed in 2005. “The ICC cases in Kenya have been marred by withdrawals of prosecution witnesses, allegedly because of bribery and intimidation; the defendants have also alleged evidence tampering or intimidation of witnesses. The ICC prosecutor described the level of witness tampering in the Kenyan cases as unprecedented,” notes HRW. The group has claimed that East and Horn of Africa allies—Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda, and Ethiopia-continue to be important players with regard to Kenya’s anti ICC campaign and, together with Burundi, have all called for the Kenyan ICC cases to be dropped or referred to a domestic mechanism. HRW has said civil society has come under increased pressure for advocating for justice for the 2007-2008 post-election violence. HRW has said during their election campaigns, Kenyatta and Ruto accused civil society of manufacturing evidence against them and coaching witnesses in the ICC cases, of receiving foreign funds and furthering foreign interests and of preventing the ICC cases from being tried in Kenya or Tanzania. HRW has added that in September last year, Maina Kiai, the former head of the Kenyan National Commission for Human Rights and a UN special rapporteur on the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association, and Gladwell Otieno, the director of AFRICOG-were threatened by supporters of the president and his deputy for their role in the ICC cases. “A group of youths threatened to burn down Kiai’s rural home while unknown people send messages to Otieno, threatening to kill members of her family if she did not stop opposing the idea of ICC partly sitting in either Kenya or Tanzania,” HRW. HRW has said that the slow pace of police reform, the lack of accountability for security force abuses-including extrajudicial killings, torture, and other human rights violations by the police— and the government’s failure to hold accountable perpetrators of the 2007–2008 post-election violence remain key concerns.
Posted on: Fri, 24 Jan 2014 11:50:53 +0000
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