We, the GEMA Cultural Association Youth Group, representing young people from the GEMA community under the auspices of GEMA Cultural Association (GCA), wish to make the following statement in respect of the majority ruling by the Judges of the International Criminal Court
Pre-Trial Chamber II sitting at The Hague on Monday, 23rd January 2013, and in regard to some critical issues pertaining to the post-2007 Presidential election results yet to be resolved.
Firstly, we uphold with the dignity and the respect it deserves, the ICC judgement read by Judge Ekaterina Trendafilova based on the evidence from all the parties represented.
The courtliness and thoughtfulness in which the Judges and particularly Judge Trendafilova conducted the hearings as transmitted in live coverage from The Hague in our electronic media, earned our unqualified wholehearted commendation.
However, our categorical condemnation of the prosecutorial mannerism, right from the date the ICC Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo announced the names of the six Kenyans he considered as bearing the greatest responsibility for post-2007 election violence, right to the confirmation of the crimes against humanity charges in respect of Hon Uhuru Kenyatta, Ambassador Francis Muthaura, Hon William Ruto and Mr Joshua arap Sang, stands.
We wish to re-emphasise our considered conviction that Prosecutor Ocampo zeroed on the wrong persons in respect to some of the suspects and tried to justify his deliberately and politically lopsided prosecution charges by balancing the accused on political and ethnic scales in order to be seen as acting neutrally.
How, we have been asking, can the dreadfully malevolent crimes known to law be equally partitioned among the warring parties accused of committing such crimes?
And, notwithstanding the respect to the judgement as indicated above, how too, can the charges and dismissal of charges be equally confirmed and dismissed among the parties on trial?
Such investigation, prosecution, confirmation and acquittal in our humble appreciation can only be justifiable politically to achieve a particular pre-determined status, and not evidentially, more so considering the unqualifiedly highest level of threshold that the ICC process demands.
It is common knowledge to Kenyans who desire truth and justice and to the world alike, who were the masterminds of the post-election violence (PEV) and the greatest beneficiaries of the evil deed.
Mass action and “No Raila, no peace” inciters, mobilisers, financiers and beneficiaries of PEV remain at large, enjoying the fruits of the Grand Coalition Government.
Those are the hunters who should have been indicted at The Hague, and not the ‘hunted’ victims of Kenya’s most ruthless power seekers.
By deliberately omitting to name and charge those masterminds and inciters of Kenya’s catastrophic infamy, Luis Moreno-Ocampo entrenched the culture of impunity instead of making Kenya an example of ending it as he promised Kenyans and the world at the onset of his investigations.
We strongly believe that the appeal against the charges will succeed.
Secondly, we wish to be enjoined to all Kenyans led by Mrs. Ida Odinga, the wife of our Prime Minister Raila Odinga, calling for expeditious establishment of a local tribunal or such special courts of law to try locally all the suspects mentioned in the Waki Commission envelope that was handed to the ICC Prosecutor by former United Nations(UN) Secretary General Kofi Annan.
Since only six of the so called “Waki Envelope” suspects were named, investigated and charged by the Prosecutor, in the interest of justice we demand the naming, investigation and charging of all the other names in the envelope.
Our call for the establishment of our own criminal justice system to investigate, try and punish all the PEV cases is anchored in our detestation of our forefathers’ long and shameful history of brutish colonial enslavement.
We remain therefore totally opposed to any interference in our sovereignty, notwithstanding our political elites’ failure to jealously safeguard that sovereignty as they did in regard to the ICC cases.
We therefore unequivocally support the initiatives by the Director of Public Prosecution Keriako Tobiko, and Attorney General Githu Muigai to re-open the 5,000 local files for PEV offenders and the proposal by the AG to Chief Justice Willy Mutunga to open a new wing of the High Court to handle international crimes which incorporate the majority of the PEV cases, including the specific ones being tried for by the ICC at The Hague.
After all as President Mwai Kibaki told the Nation while commenting on the ICC ruling, “We now have a radically transformed Judiciary, an independent Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions, a police service that is being fundamentally reformed and a functional Witness
Protection Agency”, and that “it is the collective responsibility of all those institutions to ensure justice for all at all times”.
Thirdly, we wish to condemn most reservedly the failure by all those responsible to settle all the Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) in their original and constitutionally entitled to homes, farmlands and businesses and/or in similarly appropriate settlements, in addition to the requisite restitution.
We are indeed deeply shocked by the utter indifference and the moral deficiency of those charged with the responsibility of resettling the IDPs who have in turn continued impudently to ignore with impunity the President’s directives.
It is time, we strongly believe, that a time-limit is decreed upon which we resettle all the IDPs much earlier before the next General Elections.
The same decisiveness and expediency must be applied to all those who are illegally occupying other peoples’ houses and property in parts of Nairobi, Rift Valley, Nyanza and Western Kenya counties as a result of PEV. Some of us have parents, relatives, guardians and friends who
have been rendered destitute by such shamefully criminal expropriation.
Fourthly, we wish to express our sympathy while re-affirming our solidarity with our leaders whom we consider as wrongly indicted. We remain hopeful of their acquittal through their appeal. We salute Hon Uhuru Kenyatta and Amb. Muthaura’s personal and voluntary decisions to vacate their high offices at the Treasury and the Office of the President as Permanent Secretary, Head of Public Service and Secretary to the Cabinet respectively.
This strongly attests and demonstrates their respect of public office and their commitment to public service and The Constitution of Kenya. Very few Kenyans have vacated their public offices so voluntarily and expeditiously.
We consider the persistent calls for them to vacate their offices long before the confirmation of charges and for Hon. Uhuru Kenyatta to quit from his constitutionally anchored office of Deputy
Prime Minster under the National Reconciliation Accord, as despicably irresponsible.
The youth of Kenya will forever be indebted to Hon Uhuru Kenyatta’s exemplary stewardship of the Ministry of Finance where he committed billions of shillings in stimulus programmes specifically for their socio-economic and indeed political empowerment. Other similar programmes for the youth have been subjected to mindless corruption and mismanagement.
Lastly, we wish to re-affirm our patriotic fidelity to our new Wanjiku-framed The Constitution of Kenya, 2010, commitment to and the respect of the rule of law and our dedication to hard work, honesty and integrity in our contribution to the attainment of Vision 2030.
We dismiss with the contempt it deserves those who continue to dismiss us as “Mungiki” adherent and who deliberately mistaken other diligent Kenya youth as adherents of the respective lawless terror groups associated with their ethnic communities.
We strongly believe that the youth of Kenya are also faithfully dedicated youth of the world.
Paul Kinyanjui Mwangi
National Organising Secretary
GEMA Cultural Association (GCA)
For, GEMA Cultural Association Youth Group
Nairobi, 8th February, 2012
Pre-Trial Chamber II sitting at The Hague on Monday, 23rd January 2013, and in regard to some critical issues pertaining to the post-2007 Presidential election results yet to be resolved.
Firstly, we uphold with the dignity and the respect it deserves, the ICC judgement read by Judge Ekaterina Trendafilova based on the evidence from all the parties represented.
The courtliness and thoughtfulness in which the Judges and particularly Judge Trendafilova conducted the hearings as transmitted in live coverage from The Hague in our electronic media, earned our unqualified wholehearted commendation.
However, our categorical condemnation of the prosecutorial mannerism, right from the date the ICC Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo announced the names of the six Kenyans he considered as bearing the greatest responsibility for post-2007 election violence, right to the confirmation of the crimes against humanity charges in respect of Hon Uhuru Kenyatta, Ambassador Francis Muthaura, Hon William Ruto and Mr Joshua arap Sang, stands.
We wish to re-emphasise our considered conviction that Prosecutor Ocampo zeroed on the wrong persons in respect to some of the suspects and tried to justify his deliberately and politically lopsided prosecution charges by balancing the accused on political and ethnic scales in order to be seen as acting neutrally.
How, we have been asking, can the dreadfully malevolent crimes known to law be equally partitioned among the warring parties accused of committing such crimes?
And, notwithstanding the respect to the judgement as indicated above, how too, can the charges and dismissal of charges be equally confirmed and dismissed among the parties on trial?
Such investigation, prosecution, confirmation and acquittal in our humble appreciation can only be justifiable politically to achieve a particular pre-determined status, and not evidentially, more so considering the unqualifiedly highest level of threshold that the ICC process demands.
It is common knowledge to Kenyans who desire truth and justice and to the world alike, who were the masterminds of the post-election violence (PEV) and the greatest beneficiaries of the evil deed.
Mass action and “No Raila, no peace” inciters, mobilisers, financiers and beneficiaries of PEV remain at large, enjoying the fruits of the Grand Coalition Government.
Those are the hunters who should have been indicted at The Hague, and not the ‘hunted’ victims of Kenya’s most ruthless power seekers.
By deliberately omitting to name and charge those masterminds and inciters of Kenya’s catastrophic infamy, Luis Moreno-Ocampo entrenched the culture of impunity instead of making Kenya an example of ending it as he promised Kenyans and the world at the onset of his investigations.
We strongly believe that the appeal against the charges will succeed.
Secondly, we wish to be enjoined to all Kenyans led by Mrs. Ida Odinga, the wife of our Prime Minister Raila Odinga, calling for expeditious establishment of a local tribunal or such special courts of law to try locally all the suspects mentioned in the Waki Commission envelope that was handed to the ICC Prosecutor by former United Nations(UN) Secretary General Kofi Annan.
Since only six of the so called “Waki Envelope” suspects were named, investigated and charged by the Prosecutor, in the interest of justice we demand the naming, investigation and charging of all the other names in the envelope.
Our call for the establishment of our own criminal justice system to investigate, try and punish all the PEV cases is anchored in our detestation of our forefathers’ long and shameful history of brutish colonial enslavement.
We remain therefore totally opposed to any interference in our sovereignty, notwithstanding our political elites’ failure to jealously safeguard that sovereignty as they did in regard to the ICC cases.
We therefore unequivocally support the initiatives by the Director of Public Prosecution Keriako Tobiko, and Attorney General Githu Muigai to re-open the 5,000 local files for PEV offenders and the proposal by the AG to Chief Justice Willy Mutunga to open a new wing of the High Court to handle international crimes which incorporate the majority of the PEV cases, including the specific ones being tried for by the ICC at The Hague.
After all as President Mwai Kibaki told the Nation while commenting on the ICC ruling, “We now have a radically transformed Judiciary, an independent Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions, a police service that is being fundamentally reformed and a functional Witness
Protection Agency”, and that “it is the collective responsibility of all those institutions to ensure justice for all at all times”.
Thirdly, we wish to condemn most reservedly the failure by all those responsible to settle all the Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) in their original and constitutionally entitled to homes, farmlands and businesses and/or in similarly appropriate settlements, in addition to the requisite restitution.
We are indeed deeply shocked by the utter indifference and the moral deficiency of those charged with the responsibility of resettling the IDPs who have in turn continued impudently to ignore with impunity the President’s directives.
It is time, we strongly believe, that a time-limit is decreed upon which we resettle all the IDPs much earlier before the next General Elections.
The same decisiveness and expediency must be applied to all those who are illegally occupying other peoples’ houses and property in parts of Nairobi, Rift Valley, Nyanza and Western Kenya counties as a result of PEV. Some of us have parents, relatives, guardians and friends who
have been rendered destitute by such shamefully criminal expropriation.
Fourthly, we wish to express our sympathy while re-affirming our solidarity with our leaders whom we consider as wrongly indicted. We remain hopeful of their acquittal through their appeal. We salute Hon Uhuru Kenyatta and Amb. Muthaura’s personal and voluntary decisions to vacate their high offices at the Treasury and the Office of the President as Permanent Secretary, Head of Public Service and Secretary to the Cabinet respectively.
This strongly attests and demonstrates their respect of public office and their commitment to public service and The Constitution of Kenya. Very few Kenyans have vacated their public offices so voluntarily and expeditiously.
We consider the persistent calls for them to vacate their offices long before the confirmation of charges and for Hon. Uhuru Kenyatta to quit from his constitutionally anchored office of Deputy
Prime Minster under the National Reconciliation Accord, as despicably irresponsible.
The youth of Kenya will forever be indebted to Hon Uhuru Kenyatta’s exemplary stewardship of the Ministry of Finance where he committed billions of shillings in stimulus programmes specifically for their socio-economic and indeed political empowerment. Other similar programmes for the youth have been subjected to mindless corruption and mismanagement.
Lastly, we wish to re-affirm our patriotic fidelity to our new Wanjiku-framed The Constitution of Kenya, 2010, commitment to and the respect of the rule of law and our dedication to hard work, honesty and integrity in our contribution to the attainment of Vision 2030.
We dismiss with the contempt it deserves those who continue to dismiss us as “Mungiki” adherent and who deliberately mistaken other diligent Kenya youth as adherents of the respective lawless terror groups associated with their ethnic communities.
We strongly believe that the youth of Kenya are also faithfully dedicated youth of the world.
Paul Kinyanjui Mwangi
National Organising Secretary
GEMA Cultural Association (GCA)
For, GEMA Cultural Association Youth Group
Nairobi, 8th February, 2012
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