API

In an interview with API, Counsel Njenga Mwangi characterises the International Criminal Court’s Registry on the way they select lawyers to represent the victims in Kenya case one and two.

Interview

African Press International Video: Counsel Njenga Mwangi disapproves the way the ICC registry selected lawyers who represent the victims in the Kenya case

►

Mwangi thinks it is wrong for the ICC to impose lawyers on the victims. It is important that the lawyers representing victims are known to them.

In the case of Kenya, the victims have been given lawyers who hardly know Kenya and the way the victims think.

They are simply strangers to the victims. The ICC would have helped the victims better if local lawyers who understand them are the one to represent them.

Before the Hague process started, Counsel Njenga Mwangi had advocated for the enactment of a statute to establish an independent international local tribunal to try those who bore the greatest responsibility of the crimes against humanity committed in the Republic of Kenya during the post-election period.

Interview with Citizen TV (Kenya) Power Breakfast Show: Part 1

InterInterview with Citizen TV (Kenya) Power Breakfast Show: Part 2

Interview with Citizen TV (Kenya) Power Breakfast Show: Part 3:

End

——————

international criminal court, mwangi, lawyers, kenya, and api.

——————

By API

After two and a half days of prosecution presentation with details on the case against Uhuru Kenyatta, Francis Muthaura and Hussein Ali, the prosecution gave way to the defence. at 18.15pm.

Mr Khan defending Muthaura took the stand for 46 minutes and started tearing into the prosecution’s evidence, before the court was adjourned until tomorrow Saturday 09.30am when he will continue his presention.

Drama is expected in the court tomorrow, because Mr Khan is ready and is in a combative mood.

Mr Khan told the court that the prosecution’s witnesses have no truth in them and the statements given to the prosecution is full of lies.

There was no Mungiki meetings in State House Nairobi as alleged by one of the witnesses, Khan said while referring to a letter written to the court by President Kibaki to confirm the same. He also showed a video clip of a meeting held in State House where Kibaki was speaking with the youth leaders who were to help him in his campaign. These are the same leaders the prosecution wants to baptise as Mungiki who went around killing innocent people. The prosecution seems to have taken a decision to use anything available, even anonymous witnesses who are lying, in their efforts to get the charges confirmed against Uhuru Kenyatta, Francis Muthaura and Hussein Ali.

He immediately told the court that the case has no foundation in truth because the prosecution has done no thorough investigation. He told the court that the prosecution’s case is flawed.

Khan accused the prosecution for wishing away the truth, telling the court that it was his client who actually took the initiative for the formation of the Waki Commission of Inquiry. Such a man would not have don so if he was part of the crimes committed during the post-election violence.

I can say without any doubt in my mind that my client is a man of integrity, Mr Khan told the court.

He will continue his defence tomorrow (Saturday) before calling witnesses on Monday.

End

…………….

uhuru kenyatta, president kibaki, combative mood, election violence, and mr khan.

…………….

By Korir, Chief editor, API

Dr David Nyekorach-Matsanga held a press conference today at the International Criminal Court, Hague. In his briefing to the press he criticised Chief prosecutor Moreno Ocampo, characterising him as incompetent and unfit to hold office.

Pointing out the chief prosecutor’s weaknesses, Dr Matsanga stated as follows;

1. That there is no threshold in the Kenyan cases as they don’t meet international standards of ICC
2. That flawed investigations by the Chief Prosecutor have led to a bungled case
3. That fake and outlawed witnesses gathered through duress, inducement and bribery is being used by the prosecution to persecute the six Kenyan suspects
4. That there has been a violation of the Rule of Complementarity by the ICC Chief Prosecutor
5. And that there is Political underhand by the international community.

Dr Matsanga participated together with UN delegates and other international peace makers in trying to bring together President Yoweri Museveni and General Joseph Kony in an effort to end the conflict in Uganda.

Video part one:

http://www.africanpress.me: Dr David Nyiekorach-Matsanga at the ICC speaks on the Kenya cases

►

Through his efforts, General Kony’s LRA agreed to move out of South Sudan territory where they used to operate in their fight against Museveni’s government.

Video part 2:

African Press International video Part 2: Dr David Nyiekorach-Matsanga addressing the press at the ICC on the Kenya case

►

His efforts were almost bringing peace to Uganda, but Chief prosecutor Ocampo decided to disrupt the whole process, according to Dr Matsanga, when he issued a warrant of arrest on General Kony and some of his men.

Dr Matsanga blames the Chief prosecutor for  issuing the warrant of arrest that made Kony to be suspicious of the whole peace process leading to his refusal to sign the final peace agreement which was to bring peace to the country.

In his analysis on the Kenya case,  Dr Matsanga  writes as follows;

“Rift Valley: Rift Valley recorded 744 deaths out of the 1,133 deaths due to PEV. This constitutes 65.6% of the deaths due to PEV. Naivasha and Nakuru recorded 258 deaths or 34.6% of the Rift Valley total killed and 22.7% of the national total. Of the 258 killed 102 were Kikuyu while approximately 20 wer PNU supporters from Kisii and Kamba communities. As such a total of 122 people who died in Nakuru and Naivasha were PNU supporters compared to 100 ODM supporters killed made up of the 66 ODM supporters who died in Nakuru and 34 ODM supporters (30 Luo and 4 Kalenjin) who died in Naivasha. Thus, in the two theaters of violence (Nakuru and Naivasha) 47% of the known dead were PNU supporters with Kikuyu alone comprising 39.5% of the dead. The ODM supporters all comprised 100 or 38.7%. A total of 50 or 24% were recorded as unknown. Thus, the Kikuyu comprised most of the victims of PEV in the Naivasha and Nakuru.”

In his analysis, Dr Matsanga continues to detail the events in the Rift Valley as follows;

1. Nakuru District: 208 deaths were recorded at the mortuary between December 31, 2007 and March 1, 2008. Of these 97 persons constituting 46% of the total dead were Kikuyu. The Luo/Kalenjin and Luhyia constituted 66 or 31% of the total dead. 50 persons constituting 24% of the total were recorded as unknown. The notion that PNU or Kikuyu leaders working with Mungiki killed ODM supporters cannot be supported by the official death figures recorded at the Nakuru mortuary.

2. Molo District: 94 deaths were recorded during the PEV of which 58 were Kikuyu and five wer Kisii and Kamba who were known as supporting President Kibaki at the time. Thus, in total there were 63 PNU supporters killed in Molo making 61.7% of those killed. 31 or 33% of the rest were mainly Kalenjin who supported ODM.

3. Naivasha District: There were 40 deaths reported in Naivasha town and another 10 deaths reported in Gilgil making a total of 50 deaths in Naivasha District. Of the 50 dead in Naivasha, the causes of death were 23 burning, 6 gunshots, 12 injury. In terms of tribes 30 (605) of the dead were Luo while 5 (105) were Kikuyu while another 4 were PNU supporters, while an additional 4 were Kalenjin who were supporting the Luo. Of the Luo killed, 19 died in one incident where a house was burned. This shows the importance of the house burning incidence in the Ocampo case.

If one looks at the Naivasha town killings, they compare well with the Molo incidence. In Naivasha, the majority of the victims were Luo in a predominantly Kikuyu area. In Molo the majority of the victims were Kikuyu who made up 61.7% or 58 out of the 94 killed in Molo District. The majority of those who died in Molo were Kalenjin because they are the second largest community after Kikuyu in Molo. In terms of Molo deaths, they were widespread unlike in Naivasha where the majority of the dead died in one incident; concludes Matsanga.

End

——————–

president yoweri museveni, joseph kony, international criminal court hague, yoweri museveni, and chief prosecutor.

——————-

Photo: Contributor/IRIN

More than 15,000 people could be displaced

YANGON,  – Resistance is growing to a hydroelectric dam being built at the beginning of the Ayeyarwady River in Myanmar’s northern Kachin State, with several campaigns to halt construction under way.

Opponents to the Myitsone Dam have been collecting signatures, circulating posters, organizing meetings, and speaking out to foreign media. Some residents affected by the dam project have remained in their villages as a form of silent resistance.

“The government should listen to the voice of the people, if they really practise a democratic system,” Bauk Char, a Kachin activist, who has been calling for a halt to the dam’s construction, told IRIN.

Environmentalists say the dam, with a flooding area larger than Singapore, will have a devastating impact on the environment and livelihoods. More than 15,000 people in 60 villages are being forced to relocate without proper resettlement plans, according to the Kachin Development Networking Group (KDNG).

“This kind of undemocratic resource exploitation by the Burma [Myanmar] military government can never be sustainable and never lead to peace and reconciliation in Burma,” Ah Nan, a KDNG spokeswoman, said. “War has already started in Kachin State and will only get worse if this exploitation continues.”

Fighting broke out in June between government forces and the Kachin Independence Army (KIA), the military wing of the Kachin Independence Organization (KIO), ending a 17-year ceasefire and displacing more than 25,000 people.

The dam – a joint effort by Myanmar’s military government and the China Power Investment Corporation – is expected to produce 6,000MW of electricity that the government will sell to China, bringing in more than US$500 million annually. Construction began in 2009, just 1.6km below the confluence of Mali and N’Mai rivers – the natural heritage and cultural heartland of the Kachin people, locally known as Myitsone.

“We’ll never back down”

Resistance to the project has escalated in response to a recent announcement by Zaw Min, Minister of Electric Power, who said at a press conference in Naypyidaw, the capital, that the government would proceed with the project despite objections. Government officials maintain the dam will not affect water levels on the Ayeyarwady River, nor have any adverse environmental effects, saying it will utilize only 7 percent of the water flow.

“We’ll keep working on the Myitsone Project. We’ll never back down,” Zaw Min said. “We won’t halt this project in spite of objections from environmental groups.” 

Zaw Min is also being criticized for saying the government is providing as much as 1,500MW for domestic use – way beyond current demand. That is why the government, he said, can sell surplus electricity to other countries in the future.

“This is not true,” said Myat Thu, an organizer for one of the campaigns to save the Ayeyarwady, Myanmar’s longest river, which provides millions of people with a livelihood. “A large part of the country has seen severe power shortages.”

According to government figures, only 2,000 out of about 60,000 villages across the nation have access to electricity. Some parts of Yangon, the country’s largest city and commercial capital, experience frequent blackouts.

Aung San Suu Kyi, a Nobel laureate, has joined the growing appeals to save the Ayeyarwady and called for a reassessment of the Myitsone Dam, which would be 152m high when it is completed in 2017.

“We’ll keep raising the public awareness [on the dam issue] by holding talks, by delivering stickers, etc.,” said Win Cho, a politician and activist calling for a halt to the dam project. “We will keep inviting more people to join with us.”

lm/es/mw source www.irinnews.org

Photo: Mohamed Garane/Radio ERGO

Most of those displaced by the fighting were initially from the famine-stricken Bay and Bakool regions (file photo)

NAIROBI,  – Hundreds of displaced families taking refuge from the drought in a town on the Kenya-Somalia border have been forced to flee fighting between forces loyal to the Somali administration and Al-Shabab insurgents, said locals.

The fighting broke out on 11 September in the town of Eil Waq in Somalia’s southwestern Gedo region.

“Our estimate is that 5,700 families [34,200 people] were displaced by the fighting,” Mohamed Ahmed Baadiyow, the team leader of Dialog Forening (DF), an NGO based in Eil Waq, said.

Baadiyow said many of those who fled had initially come from the famine-stricken regions of Bay and Bakol while others were from other parts of Gedo.

The UN estimates that four million Somalis need assistance, mostly in south-central Somalia, which has been the hardest hit by famine and drought.

Baadiyow said the displaced were now scattered in villages on both sides of the border; they had not returned to Eil Waq, despite a lull in the fighting in the past few days.

“There are constant rumours that the fighting will resume any time and people are afraid,” he said. “It is that fear [of violence] that is keeping them away and in areas where they have no access to any assistance.”

A local journalist told IRIN that Eil Waq was one of the places Al-Shabab was likely to target. “They are now targeting areas where they think defence is weak and Eil Waq and many other small towns in Gedo fit that.” 

Photo: OCHA

He said the group seemed to be more interested “in creating fear and uncertainty than actually holding territory”.

No access to aid

Adan Abdi Adan, a medical worker in Eil Waq, said many of the displaced were already weakened by the drought and living in terrible conditions.

“Many of the children are suffering from respiratory diseases and diarrhoea and hunger-related diseases,” he said, adding that access to healthcare in Eil Waq was minimal, “but now they are in areas where there is nothing”.

Mohamed Xirsi Dheere, an elder, said the community was coping and supporting one another; “the problem is reaching some of the displaced”.

Dheere said the UN World Food Programme (WFP) had provided food rations to some of the people “but only to those that could be reached”. Some people who had fled to villages near the town had come back just to get the rations and then left again. “It is the uncertainty about the security situation that is the root cause of our problem.”

ah/mw source www.irinnews.org

BURUNDI: An escalation, not an anomaly

Photo: Désiré Nimubona/IRIN

While the scale of the Gatumba bar attack was unprecedented in recent years, killings are reported almost daily in Burundi

BUJUMBURA,  – The massacre of 41 people in a bar near Bujumbura on 18 September was one of the most deadly incidents in Burundi in recent years but it took place in a climate of constant low-level violence and political instability.

[See IRIN film: Turning the page]

Violent deaths are reported on an almost daily basis in the central African country’s media yet government promises of investigations rarely, if ever, lead to the prosecution of perpetrators.

The bar shooting took place in Gatumba, 13km west of the capital and close to the border with the Democratic Republic of Congo. Witnesses said some of the attackers wore military uniforms.

No evidence has emerged to support suggestions that the attack was carried out by the Forces nationales de liberation (FNL), a political party and former rebel group, which, according to a December 2010 UN report, was in the process of remobilizing in eastern DRC.

Visiting Gatumba after the massacre, President Pierre Nkurunziza said his security forces already knew the names of some of the attackers.

“I give a month to the police, the judiciary and the population to join their efforts and identify those behind the killing, wherever they are, in Burundi or outside,” he said.

The government has repeatedly dismissed the idea that the FNL presents a security threat, insisting “bandits” are to blame for previous killings in the country.

A commission of inquiry set up to investigate the deaths of dozens of people found floating in the Ruzizi River last year has led to no arrests so far.

“We have had many Gatumbas in this country,” said Pacifique Nininahazwe, chairman of Forum de Renforcement de la Societé Civile, a grouping of civil society organizations.

Calling for investigations into “killings that have targeted FNL supporters with the intent to exterminate them”, he added that some 60 people across the country had been killed in the month of May 2011 alone.

According to human rights activist Claver Mbonimpa, that figure rose to 97 by the end of June.

“In some places bodies are discovered and hastily buried without investigations into the circumstances of their deaths,” said Emmanuel Ntakarutimana, who chairs the National Independent Human Rights Commission.

He also called on the government to “bring to trial the perpetrators of the Gatumba massacre and all preceding crimes, whatever their origin, position, political membership”.

While the opposition accuses the government and particularly its youth wing, Imbonerakure, and the national intelligence services of arresting and killing opposition and especially FNL supporters, the government, for its part, blames the opposition for the climate of insecurity.

“Instead of accusing one another, the government and opposition should sit together and find an adequate framework for dialogue,” said François Bizimana, spokesman for the Conseil National Pour la Défense de la Démocratie (CNDD) opposition party.

Rising tensions

In a statement released on 20 September, Human Rights Watch noted tension in Burundi had risen over recent weeks.

“Whereas most of the victims of killings in previous months were low-level rank-and-file members – or former members – of the FNL, those targeted recently have included more prominent individuals. They include demobilized FNL commander Audace Vianney Habonarugira, shot dead in July 2011; Dédithe Niyirera, FNL representative in Kayanza province, killed in Kayanza in late August 2011; and former FNL commander Edouard Ruvayanga, killed in Bujumbura on September 5,” HRW said.

“The political violence has been characterized by a pattern of reprisals, with killings by one side typically followed by killings by the other. In the majority of cases, the perpetrators have enjoyed complete impunity,” the statement added.

jb-am/mw source www.irinnews.org