Fighting terrorism with terror certainly not the way to ensure our security

On 15 May this year, 35-year-old Noor Abdi Diis was arrested in Mandera.

One week later, his decomposed body was found in a thicket. It had five bullet wounds to the back of the head.

In April, a couple of weeks after the terrorist attack on Garissa University College, men travelling in an armoured military vehicle, a lorry, a Probox, and a Land Cruiser “arrested” 23-year-old Feisal Mohamed Ibrahim in Mandera.

His family is still looking for him. In July this year, also in Mandera, Hassan Dimbil Issack was arrested.

His body was later found half buried in the ground. In Wajir, bodies have been found in graves.

NUMEROUS CASES

Nobody knows who dug the graves or how the people buried in them died.

Other similar cases of mainly young ethnic Somali or Muslim men disappearing or having been killed mysteriously have been reported in Garissa, Lamu, Tana River, Kwale, Kilifi, Mombasa, and Nairobi.

Last week the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights (KNCHR) released the findings of a report titled The Error of Fighting Terror with Terror that documents more than 120 cases of what it calls “egregious human rights violations” that include 25 extrajudicial killings and 81 forced disappearances.

According to KNCHR, these violations, many of which took place this year, are widespread, systematic, and well-coordinated.

They include arbitrary arrests, extortion, illegal detention, torture, killings, and disappearances.

INHUMANE TORTURE METHODS

The methods used to torture the victims seem to have been borrowed from Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and include waterboarding, electric shock, mock execution, and food or sleep deprivation.

KNCHR claims that these “counterterrorism operations” are being carried out by a combined contingent of Kenyan Defence Forces, the National Intelligence Service, the Kenya Wildlife Service, county commissioners and their deputies, chiefs, and various units of the National Police Service, including the Anti-Terrorism Police Unit, the Kenya Police Reservists, the Rapid Deployment Unit of the Administration Police, the Border Police Unit, and the General Service Unit.

Not too long ago, when Al Jazeera aired a documentary that carried interviews with members of a special unit who admitted carrying out extrajudicial killings in Kenya, the government vehemently denounced the news organisation and claimed that the interviews were fabricated.

EXTRAJUDICIAL KILLINGS

Now an organ of the State that is mandated to document human rights abuses appears to be confirming the Al Jazeera documentary’s findings — that the government, in its attempt to deal with terrorism, may be using unlawful tactics to force confessions and might be responsible for ordering extrajudicial killings.

How the government will react to this report is anyone’s guess. Will this report, like the Kenya Truth Justice and Reconciliation Commission report, be ignored and forgotten, just as the victims of historical injustices have been?

Will Kenyans who have suffered at the hands of the State be given a limp apology and receive little or no compensation?

Not surprisingly, the families of those who have disappeared are complaining that they have received no assistance from the government in looking for their lost kin.

RADICALISATION

These events do not augur well for the country’s security.

As I have said many times before in this column, extrajudicial killings, torture, and ethnic profiling only contribute to radicalisation.

The families and communities of those who have suffered or who died in custody are less likely to cooperate with security organs and may even seek revenge for their loss.

The physical and psychological trauma associated with torture has been well documented. That is why torture is considered a human rights violation that should not be applied in civilised societies.

MUNGIKI MENACE

Kenya has not had a good record of protecting human rights.

Various human rights organisations have in the past criticised the way the State handled the “Mungiki menace”, which involved the extermination of dozens, if not hundreds, of young Kikuyu men.

Since the 1960s, the government has failed to manage insecurity in the northeastern region: On the contrary, it has carried out massacres in places such as Wajir.

The State has yet to acknowledge the families of those who were killed in the Wagalla Massacre. Apologising to these victims of historical injustices means little when human rights violations continue unabated.

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