This post is dedicated to Kenya and all Kenyan lovers.
I don’t know for how many it’s gonna be puzzling that with so much to report from my mother land, I am still writing a blog over half a world away African country. Honestly, I don’t know much about African politics nor I have any first hand information which could have compelled me to write this. But wait … wait, one has his own explanations and mine are:
1) I have stopped reading Times of India and now am an ardent fan of Reuters and BBC website.
2) Something happening this far must affect me only when it has something to do with me. This something can be anything, any sort of connection with this beautiful place(I have done my research over this country !), some future setting, or might be something subconscious. Though I am not sure, yet there is something which excites me about Kenya, because someone gets excited even at the mention of Kenya.
Enough of pleasing… let’s come to the point.
It’s being days since atrocities are being reported in Kenya followed by disputed re-election of President Mwai Kibaki. There is big tussle going between ethnic group and presiding government. Today only, the main opposition party and defeated opposition president candidate Raila Odinga plans to hold Kenya for consecutive three days while police immediately responded that they’ll not allow any such rally. Recent peace talks with Ghana president failed miserably and now another political celebrity Kofi Annan is coming to Kenya for mediating peace talks between the two parties. Dialogue, is ofcourse the most suitable way rather than killing innocent Kenyans and destroying property, but looking at African history and Kenya neighbors, it may sound far-fetched. Ironically, Kenya is supposedly African’s most democratic country.
In a good article at Reuters, author is highlighting the impact of Kenyan unrest over the whole African continent. How a country which stood iconic among its dangerous and unstable neighbors, is now on the verge of breakdown? The whole economy of the region is at stand still and at the same time, seriously impacting other countries which directly depend on Kenya for their respective economies.
The above all the things are simply horrendous details which anyhow I have read from one place or the other. What frightens me is an extreme synchronous characteristic growing among the people worldwide. Hey correct me if I am wrong, but aren’t we facing something alike in SriLanka where Tamils and Sinhalies are fighting, in Bosnia, in Iraq, in Rwanda, in Pakistan, in my own India. The people who have been living together with peace suddenly become one another’s enemy. My little mind fails to understand the psychology of common people, yes, those are killing and are getting killed, all are common people. How these ordinary people can get up one ordinary day and decide to kill their neighbors. There are several anecdotes which are so engrossed in my memory after reading “Votes and Violence” that I can recall each word of few paragraphs. How a child who is running away from fire is caught and then hurled back in the fire again? How a pregnant lady’s womb is first cut and then she along with her half born baby is set to fire? This is not at all humanity, let alone forget tribalism or ethnicity or regionalism or communalism.
Now this is the same thing which is happening on this peaceful, prosperous country. There are iterative accusations and counter-accusations running all around. How Kibaki manipulated the things and how elections got rigged? Comeon, rigged elections issue can be solved on a table. Call international peace agency, ask African Union to mediate, request your Nobel winners to come, but killing innocent people, crippling economy and hitting tourism is not an acceptable idea. I am not that much worried with problem of fixed elections which is at hand but with the long term implications of ethnic discrimination which are getting sowed in Kenyan soil. Experience tells us that such problems become so complex with time that it’s impossible to get away with them.
The most disheartening fact is the way these crimes are executed and then justified over the name of community justice or pride or whatever. Such acts are generally outcome of hatred or feeling of superiority of one community towards other where they wish either to isolate or demonise the other community and are generally backed by the political leaders preaches. They are most well coordinated programmes, which are executed cold bloodedly against common people at severeal places at the same time. The other community reiterates and which is inevitable too and then continues a cycle. Is it the start of that cycle? I wish to be wrong.
I have written this long for an universal problem: the problem of rising intolerance among people, among communities, among neighbours. What’s the solution ? Honestly, I don’t know. The symbolic gestures of UN have highly demotivated the international community. How many of us can recall UN president in two second’s time ? It could have been an authority which could have act and investiage the crimes against humanity. The political crime of election tempering is not that big as the crime of hatred and ethnic discrimation which has led to deaths of thousands of Kenyans and displacement of many more.
