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When residents met Bensouda during her tour of the region, they assured her that the various ethnic groups, particularly the Kikuyu and Kalenjin who make up the majority in the Rift Valley, were now living together peacefully and had resolved their differences.

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Fear still stalks victims of 2008 violence

“My life has changed; I live like a prisoner,” she said. “The government would [do better to] take me to live at the Kamiti Maximum Prison than me living here. You see, in the prison I know I will not be killed. The prison warden will guard me.”

Many other interviewees said in private that there had been no reconciliation between the Kikuyu and Kalenjin communities. They said they were forced to talk about peace and reconciliation in public, or risk exposing themselves to attack.

“If you stand there and start saying that we still have differences, you can be attacked even today,” another woman in Burnt Forest told IWPR. “Let no one say we are in peace.”

A man called Keino, who lost his entire family when the Kiambaa church in Eldoret was burnt to the ground in January 2008, told IWPR of his continuing fears.

The church grounds are now a memorial, with the graves of 36 people killed while seeking sanctuary, standing as mute testimony to the atrocity. Some of them have never been identified.

“I am not sure if any of my family members were buried here. I lost my entire family, my wife and our two sons,” Keino said, struggling to hold back tears.

Keino is among those who returned to Kiambaa recently after being uprooted for more than four years. But he is unwilling to remain and rebuild his life there.

While Bensouda listened to a local resident talking about the Kiambaa graveyard, Keino stood outside the perimeter wall that now surrounds it.

“I will not stay here. I am scared for my life,” he said, shaking his head. “I don’t think these people will ever accept us back. It will be hard for us to live together like before. I feel I don’t belong here.”

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The 2008 unrest was not limited to the Eldoret region or to the Kikuyu and Kalenjin communities. Ethnic violence erupted in other parts of the country including Nairobi’s Kibera and Mathare slums, and the towns of Naivasha and Nakuru. In these areas, members of the Luo, Luhya and Kalenjin groups suffered in the attacks.

The government has launched several programmes designed to resettle those uprooted by the violence. However, it has been criticised for failing to address the underlying tensions and ethnic differences that contributed to the violence.

Recent efforts by the National Cohesion and Integration Commission (NCIC) to build peace in the Rift Valley have run into trouble, as it has been hard to get politicians and local leaders to engage in meaningful dialogue.

Most of those displaced by the bloodshed still live in around 20 camps in Nakuru and Naivasha. Those who have tried to go back home have often found their homes and land occupied. Some say they have been threatened by those who attacked them during the conflict.

In the Burnt Forest area, some of the scattered houses are occupied, while others remain empty. Chebet, living in one of the small houses says intimidation has prevented all but a handful of her neighbours from returning.

“You see that home over there? The people living there are not the real owners,” she said, pointing at a farm in the distance. “I knew them [the real owners]. They were my neighbours, but they are now living in a camp in Nakuru.”

Many of those still displaced want Kenya’s government to do more to help them reclaim their land.

“The government should know that we don’t want free things,” one man told IWPR. “We want what belonged to us – our property.”

“If the government is serious, it should come to us,” another victim in Rurigi suggested. “We can give our title deeds and go with officials and security to show them our land. Once they validate our ownership, then they should buy the land and give us the money to start our lives.”

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Victims say they want a platform where they can share their experiences and identify who their attackers were.

Kenya’s Truth, Justice, and Reconciliation Commission – TJRC is about to release a report on the work it has done over the last two years to investigate human rights violations that occurred between 1963 and 2008. This very broad mandate means, however, that many of the crimes committed in 2008 have not been discussed.

The TJRC had a delayed start because of a controversial choice of chairman.
The lack of political will to set up a special court to try cases, coupled with weak investigations, has meant that prosecutions have not taken place.

In February 2012, the Director of Public Prosecutions formed a 20-member task force to review nearly 6,000 criminal files. However, an interim report released in August revealed that hundreds of these cases would not go forward to trial because of lack of evidence.

Five years on, victims say that in order to move on from the violence, they need some measure of public acknowledgement of what happened to them.

“We suffered,” said one victim. “We don’t know how to start our lives. We need to say what happened to us, who we lost, who killed our people, who burnt our houses, or who we don’t want to stay with. If I cry it is ok; let me cry but [the pain] will come out of me,” he said.

The names of victims interviewed have been changed for reasons of security.

(Judie Kaberia is an IWPR-trained reporter in Nairobi)

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