Mungiki again: Dozens killed' in Kenya violence

M

MzalendoHalisi

JF-Expert Member
Jun 24, 2007
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At least 24 people have died in fighting between residents of a central Kenyan town and suspected members of the outlawed Mungiki sect, police say.

A police spokesman, Charles Owino, said residents of Karatina had decided to fight back because the sect had been extorting money from local people.

Media reports say there has been a spate of killings targeting the sect.

The Mungiki, mainly from President Mwai Kibaki's Kikuyu ethnic group, are seen as Kenya's version of the mafia.

AFP news agency quoted police spokesman Eric Kiraithe as saying that groups of residents started attacking suspected Mungiki members and slashing some of them to death.

At least three more people were wounded in the violence.

'All-out war'

Mr Kiraithe said the Mungiki fought back.

"We understand that the Mungiki also regrouped and engaged the locals in an all-out war in the villages," he said.

"All of those killed were hacked or stoned to death. Our officers tried to restore order, otherwise the situation could have degenerated into something much worse than it is."

He added that 37 people had been arrested and more were being hunted. Machetes and other weapons were being collected from the scene.

The Mungiki gang has continued to operate despite being banned in 2002, extorting money from owners of minibus taxis and other public transport vehicles.

In 2007 more than 100 suspected sect members were killed in a police crackdown after a series of grisly beheadings blamed on the sect.

Last year it was accused of carrying out revenge attacks after ethnic Kikuyus were killed by rival gangs in post-election violence.

Source:BBC

Friends: Can Kenyans learn to live in peace?? why still killing each other??
 
pshhh, Albino infants and women are being murdered daily in your civilised society and we have never raised the red flag, now that we are getting rid of Mungiki you are trying to potray us as murderous, at times the end justifies the means.

Hope you will do the same to the pple who are murdering innocent albinos, I know your supersticious police force and media is not doing anything to curb the menace.
 
smatta said:
now that we are getting rid of Mungiki you are trying to potray us as murderous, at times the end justifies the means.
Click to expand...

Smatta - The Kenyan - sometimes you are being more Kenyan than what you actually are!
 
My friend at times the best way to defend is to attack!!!! its only when you are pushed into a corner by someone who stupidly thinks he or she holds the monopoly to violence that you resort to some very brutal deeds.because after all is said and done no matter how we delude our selves as intelligent beings some where within ourselves there is an overriding survival instinct that all animals have human beings included and when that instinct takes charge then God forbid.
 
Smatta,

1. Please provide us an update in the efforts made to 'get rid' of Mungiki!

2. We are all praying that killings of people in EA becomes a thing of the past!
 
Mzalendo,
There is a elite force consisting of the best and decorated police and GSU forces, refered to as 'kwekwe squad', which has been handed the mandate to investigate, arrest and at times prosecute the members of the sect. It is impossible to handle a militia group with pink gloves, iron must be met with iron.

We are praying with you on the second issue
 
What the #$&%@??!! MUNGIKI AGAIN?! I thought these guys were flushed out last year? What are the NSIS and other security organs doing? Can they justify their existence? Is there a political will to quash Mungiki?
 
Kikojozi said:
What the #$&%@??!! MUNGIKI AGAIN?! I thought these guys were flushed out last year? What are the NSIS and other security organs doing? Can they justify their existence? Is there a political will to quash Mungiki?
Click to expand...

The security force is working over time to quash this gang, the goverment has been accused of acting too 'strongly/violently' on the murderous sect.
 
At least 29 people have been killed in Monday overnight clashes between Kirinyaga residents in central Kenya and suspected Mungiki members.

The sect members struck two villages on the border between Kirinyaga and Nyeri and killed 29 people in retaliation after a week in which more than ten of their members were killed in Kirinyaga area.

"We have so far received 29 bodies. Most of them have their arms chopped off," doctor David Ndegwa, at a hospital in Karatina, was quoted as saying by the AFP news agency.

Two of the 29 people were burnt to death in a house that the Mungiki set on fire and which they used to lure the people out of their homes at around 2.30 am Tuesday morning.

Those killed were locals as well as members of vigilante groups who responded to the distress call from the occupants of the house that was set on fire.

Central Provincial Police Officer John M’Mbijjiwe said several villagers were hacked to death.

“The attackers burnt the house so as to attract as many villagers as possible and then lay in wait for them and butchered them,” he said.

Eighteen of the people were killed at Gathaithi village while the other seven were abducted and hacked to death with machetes and axes at Kiaruhiu trading centre both in Nyeri East district.

Residents say tens of youths armed with pangas, axes and rungus raided Gathaithi and Kiaruhiu trading centres about one kilometre apart and butchered the victims using pangas and axes.

Police spokesman Eric Kiraithe has said investigations are underway and urged locals not to take the law into their own hands.

"The Kenya Police Force is treating the matter very seriously," he said.

The killings came a day after suspected Mungiki members attacked a matatu that was transiting from Kerugoya Town to Karatina at Jambo area, a few metres from a police road block near Karatina town along the Nyeri-Karatina highway.

Two people who included the driver of the matatu were injured and taken to Karatina district hospital.

Mr M’Mbijjiwe said 37 suspects who were arrested will be charged with the killings.

At Kiaruhiu trading centre, the Nation team counted seven bodies, all male, while at Gathaithi, where the massacre is believed to have started were at least 18 bodies some of them stashed in tea bushes.

The killings took place a few meters from the Wamuthambi River that divides Nyeri East and Kirinyaga West where villagers have killed at least 14 suspected Mungiki members who they accuse of extorting money from households, traders and matatu operators.

Distressed villagers could only watch in horror as Central Provincial Commissioner Japhter Rugut and the entire security team inspected the bodies that were later transferred to Karatina Hospital Mortuary.

The attack is the worst incident to have occurred in the area in the recent past in Mungiki related killings.

Soma hapa
 
The truth behind the Central Kenya blood bath​

Updated 8 hr(s) 24 min(s) ago

nh220409_02.jpg

For many people, it was only a matter of time before a blood bath visited Kirinyaga or Nyeri districts.

In the past two weeks, four vigilante groups have been roaming villages in Kirinyaga at night, ostensibly to hunt down Mungiki members and have killed 15 people.

The Mungiki has been known for vicious reprisal attacks, and residents have been living in fear.

Hours before the attack, there were signs all was not well, as police in Karatina, while heading to Kirinyaga, impounded a vehicle filled with all manner of weapons. Also, days before, police had raided a house and confiscated about 100 machetes.

However, officers are taking the blame for failing to stop Mungiki and the vigilante gangs. While police are in agreement that vigilante gangs have been committing murder, no one has been arrested.

"We are not happy, but it seems to be working for us. If we kill any of the Mungiki people, we are accused of committing extra-judicial executions. So, yes, it is working," a senior police officer said.

Escorted by police

On Monday, vigilantes wielding machetes and clubs made the rounds in Kirinyaga and Nyeri on motorcycles throughout the day. They were escorted by police, who made no effort to disarm them.

However, the groups are now being accused of being as callous as the Mungiki members they are fighting.

The gang has killed about 15 people they accuse of belonging to the proscribed sect, and set ablaze tens of houses. Information has it that there are four vigilante groups operating in various locations.

Those who decline to join them in their night time campaign are punished. When the anti-Mungiki campaign started three weeks ago, residents were full of praise, following years of living under the gang’s stranglehold.

Overnight, Mungiki extortion gangs were dismantled, eliciting cheers from the public. Traders in Kagumo market were especially happy, because Mungiki members who have been demanding protection fees have gone underground.

But things have since turned full circle, and the vigilantes, who call themselves ‘The Hague’, are now accused of cold-blooded murder.

The Standard | Online Edition :: The truth behind the Central Kenya blood bath
 
Mzalendohalisi said:
Smatta,

1. Please provide us an update in the efforts made to 'get rid' of Mungiki!

2. We are all praying that killings of people in EA becomes a thing of the past!
Click to expand...

Mzalendohalisi,

Kuna baadhi ya wanasiasa 'waliwafuga' hawa Mungiki kama silaha
kuitumia wakati wa fujo.Na ni kweli kwamba walitumika baada ya zile
kura za 2007. Tatizo ni kwamba fujo liliiisha na nadhani ahadi zao
hawakutimiziwa na wameamua na liwe liwalo maana polisi wameanza
kuwaua indiscriminately.'Nyoka amegeuka na kuanza kula mayai yake'
if you can get the analogy.
 
Mungiki: Victims tell of their ordeal in hands of sect​

Updated 7 hr(s) 45 min(s) ago

"Mum, we will buy another dad. The other one was killed last night." These words by four-year-old Brian Njuguna convey the sense of tragedy and the shattered innocence of the Nyeri families that lost 29 of their loved ones in the Monday night attacks.

On learning that his father had died in the mayhem, young Brian was only trying to console his mother, Mrs Jemimah Wanjira, whose husband Gerald Mureithi has been missing since he was lured from his house in Gathaithi-Kiangumara village, Nyeri East District, on Monday night.

The boy thinks he can get another father from the shops and it will be years before he understands the reality.

Meanwhile, his mother stares into the horizon, lost for words. Many of her neighbours suffered the same fate.

But there was no respite for the residents as leaflets were circulated in Karatina town yesterday, warning those who fund or support Mungiki that their houses would be torched, even as it emerged that the massacre may well have been prevented.

nh230409_01.jpg

A search of bodies in a tea plantation only yielded a shoe. On Monday night, a Mungiki gang ran riot and hacked tens of residents to death

The leaflets, written in Kikuyu, named 13 prominent local businesspeople and two councillors who are accused of supporting Mungiki. The authors of the leaflets claim to be a vigilante group from Kagumo in Kirinyaga.

Alleged sympathisers

It reads: "As people from Kagumo, we have established who the Mungiki leaders are. We vow that we’ll set their businesses and houses on fire, just like we have done in Kagumo."

The alleged sympathisers of the outlawed sect include hotel and wholesale business owners, and a petrol station operator.

There have been claims, too, that some politicians and traders in the town were financing operations of the dreaded group, and shielded them from lynching by vigilante groups.

A resident who sought anonymity said: "We are aware that some politicians and traders are Mungiki’s grand financiers and they had better abandon the gang or we go for them. We cannot allow them to operate as we are terrorised by their beneficiaries."

Residents told journalists that some of those named in the leaflets were later seen at the local police station.

The build-up to the killings in the village, where members of the proscribed Mungiki sect killed 29, reveals ominous signs that police ignored. Chilling details also emerged about what transpired on the eve of the attacks.

Witnesses recalled how about 600 youths armed with pangas, machetes and other crude weapons rode in motorbikes around Karatina town and neighbouring shopping centres of Kagio, Kimbimbi and Ngurubani in Kerugoya, allegedly in a ‘peaceful’ demonstration against the Mungiki gang.

By nightfall, when The Standard crew encountered the swathes of youths on the Kerugoya-Karatina road, they dutifully reported the matter to police officers manning a roadblock nearby.

"The police just waved us on," says The Standard reporter who was at the scene.

The journalists repeated the message to police officers manning another roadblock four kilometres away. They got a curious response.

The police officer said they (the police) had been accused of extra-judicial killings and "let the people deal with Mungiki".

Vigilante groups

The Mungiki thus had their revenge — killing 29 people in just half-an-hour to avenge the killing of 15 of their members by vigilante groups in the last two weeks.

Yesterday, the scene of the killings remained eerily silent. A swirl of wind picked specks of red earth and then gained pace to build into a whirlpool only broken by the shrubs and the banana trees on the farms.

But the wind did nothing to break the stillness. A deathly silence lingered as relatives picked their dead, shook their heads in shock and then walked away, heads bowed to contemplate the bleak future ahead.

In the stillness, sheets of paper bearing warning messages were hurled onto the streets of the nearby Karatina town. Scores of youths who had witnessed their friends and relatives lured from their beds and hacked to death fled.

Residents told The Standard that youths from Kiamwangi, Gathaithi and Kiaruhiu villages had fled their homes, fearing clashes between the sect and vigilante groups that had coalesced into a group called ‘The Hague’.

Some youths, who are suspected to be sect members, fled for fear of the vigilantes, while others left courtesy of Mungiki terror.

"They cannot wait for another gang to claim to be a vigilante and butcher their sons," said a resident who, in keeping with the tradition that locals observe in this climate of fear, sought to remain anonymous.

The leaflets were dropped in strategic points and streets in Karatina, warning businessmen of dire consequences.

PPO John Mbijjiwe could not be reached for comment as he was said to be in meetings throughout the day.

Give us peace

But local DC Mr Francis Komen said police patrols had been intensified and asked residents not to panic. "Sanity has resumed, and we expect life to go back to normal," he said.

On Tuesday, during a meeting with Central PC Kiplimo Rugut, armed youths from the neighbouring Kirinyaga West district vowed to hunt down Mungiki adherents.

"Mr PC, we will carry on with our mission until we wipe the gang from the area. We will not relent until they give us peace," a vigilante member told him.

A youth from Kirinyaga told journalists that the gang extorted money from young men courting girls.

"They charge youths dating girls Sh100 every month. Does it mean that we shall pay dowry to our in-laws and to Mungiki?" asked the young man.

Meanwhile, two of the five survivors of the Monday night massacre have been discharged from hospital. A doctor at Karatina District Hospital said three others were still undergoing treatment, noting that two had shown tremendous improvement. The doctor asked not to be named.

The other survivor was said to be in a stable condition although he was still in shock and needed more time in hospital.

Serious cuts

"We can even discharge them tomorrow although we have to observe their condition overnight," said the doctor.

The patients had head, back and limb injuries inflicted by pangas, machetes and other crude weapons.

"They had serious cuts, but their condition has improved tremendously," said the medic.

One survivor was rescued from a tea plantation where six other bodies were retrieved seven hours after the vicious attack.

The Standard | Online Edition :: Mungiki: Victims tell of their ordeal in hands of sect
 
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