why ambassador bethuel kiplagat should quit for kenya to attain ...

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identifying the perpetrators and the reasons behind their actions; recognizing
victims and providing justice or some form of redress for the harm and suffering
inflicted on them by the previous governments; auditing the state and suggesting
corrective measures to avoid a recurrence of abuses; and creating an enabling
environment for national reconciliation and healing.
But Kenyans are clear that these functions cannot be successfully performed
unless established categories of human rights violations and economic crimes are
fully investigated and addressed. While it is true that many horrible and
unimaginable violations have been perpetrated by the state over the last forty
years, the Task Force believes that a truth commission cannot investigate every
human rights violation. The Task Force therefore recommends that a truth
commission address certain categories of violations. The violations that ought to
form the terms of reference of a truth commission must be those that indicate a
systemic pattern or state policies, actions that were carried out as policies of the
state to abrogate the rights of Kenyans. Thus a truth commission must have the
discretion to decide which violations qualify for scrutiny. In any case, it is
practically impossible for a truth commission to address more than several
thousand cases. That is why the Task Force has identified individual cases and
groups of violations that it believes ought to be the subject of inquiry. The Task
Force has made this choice consistent with the views of Kenyans and with due
regard to the purposes of an effective, timely, and the least burdensome truth
commission. The Task Force recommends that a truth commission investigates
six categories of human rights violations and economic crimes.
1. Political Assassinations and Killings
It is an undeniable fact that the Kenyan state has over the last forty years of the
reign of KANU employed political murder as an instrument of silencing political
dissent, stifling democratic opposition, and creating a despotic, authoritarian, and
murderous state. The Task Force heard, over and over again, harrowing accounts
of how prominent and ordinary Kenyans, whom the state deemed political
dissidents, have been assassinated and murdered by the state over the years. It is a
telling testimony of the state’s planning and execution of dozens of assassinations
and murders of political leaders and government critics that virtually no one has
been held accountable for these killings.
The purpose of the killings, without doubt, was to eliminate political opponents
and all those who would oppose the monopoly of power enjoyed by KANU from
1963 to 2002. Kenyans are united in their demand that political murder must
never again be an instrument of state policy to silence political dissent or
government critics. Kenyans want the perpetrators of political killings
investigated and called to account, their victims recognized, and justice done.
Impunity for these killings must be ended, and the only sure way of doing so is by
holding those responsible accountable.
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