By DANN OKOTH
Friday, February 11, 2011
In her arms is one of her children. The nine-month-old baby is frail and emaciated having gone for weeks without a proper meal. But the baby’s hunger is not even on Jele’s mind.
Where her family will spend the night, is her biggest concern.
A single mother, Jele faces the grim prospect of having to raise her children alone without a place to call home after the Provincial Administration and county council demolished her house.
"I do not know where we will sleep tonight," mutters the 42-year-old mother of nine.
"The well-wisher who took us in has informed me that she can not accommodate me and my family tonight since her relatives whose houses were also flattened will be putting up with her," she added.
Although temperatures in this arid region can soar to over 40 degree centigrade during the day, they can fall to as low as 10 c at night.
Assaulted women
"Already some of my children have started showing signs of illness due to exposure to the elements over the past month," says Jele.
"The one I am holding wheezes all the time as if she has come down with a bad cold. I doubt whether she can stand another night in the cold," she states.
Life has always been a daily struggle in Bularik, but residents know no other place to call home. Jele says Bularik is the only home she has known for the last four decades after her family moved here from Somali in 1941.
The sleepy hamlet, seven kilometres west of Garissa town, had been relatively peaceful until that fateful afternoon of December 31, last year, when a contingent of Administration Police officers accompanied by area DC and Garissa County Council askaris descended on the village.
"They arrived without warning, armed to the teeth, in lorries and bulldozers," recalls Bularik resident, Ibrahim Sankoro,70.
"Before we could find out what was happening, they had descended on us with batons, kicks and blows, tear-gassed the village and assaulted women." he says.
After the operation that lasted more than two hours was over, the authorities went away, leaving in their wake a trail of destruction and a number of unanswered questions. In all, 145 structures were demolished throwing at least 3,000 families in the cold.
Villagers estimate that 10, 000 -15,000 residents will be affected once the eviction notice is implemented.
When The Standard On Saturday visited the area, the place resembled a post-apocalyptic wasteland.
Overturned structures, twisted iron sheets and scattered household goods littered the village.
Sad faces of men, women and children who have been dispossessed and displaced greet visitors to the village.
Their countenance bespeaks volumes about siege and intimidation they have endured in the hands of authorities.
Why would the authorities act on the villagers with such brutal force and why target just one community over land, especially in a town notorious for its poor land and property administration? These are just some of the questions villagers want answers for even as they try to pick themselves up.
The villagers say the officers were acting on a council resolution stating any settlements outside the town’s six kilometres radius be declared illegal and should be removed.
This resolution, they say, was arrived at after the council unanimously decided that such settlements posed a security threat and would also impede proper town planning and expansion.
"Subsequently the council issued us with a 10-day notice to vacate our homes early last year, initially with a proposal to construct a ring road," says Sankoro.
Lucky escape
"But we resisted demanding to know why we were being evicted, and demanded compensation if we had to leave, " he adds.
What would follow however were a series of raids mounted by the council and the Provincial Administration.
Before the December 31 raid that nearly destroyed the community, the police had attacked the village on Christmas Eve and on Boxing Day last year, tear-gassing residents and destroying their property.
"I was lucky to have escaped with my life," says Muhamud Muhammed Hirmoge, 27, of the December 31 raid.
"I was asleep in my hut after a hard day’s work when they stormed in and attacked me. I escaped through a hole in the wall," he added.
Muhammed now spends the night in the cold next to the spot where his hut used to stand. Indeed it is the same story for everyone who used to own a house here, only that it is much harder for people with families, like Khadifa Mohammed. He has to brave cold nights with his wife and four children.
"We all hurdle under that tent at night," says Mohammed, pointing to a frayed polythene tent. "The youngest of the children share the only blanket that was salvaged from the rabble, all the rest do without covers," he tells this writer as he struggles to put up a makeshift shack on the spot where his former house once stood.
Says former Kenya Army officer Adan Muktari: "They demolished everything in my home, rendering me homeless.
The 17 years I served in the army appear to have counted for nothing," he says.
Although Garissa County Council points out development and security as the reasons for the demolitions, recent developments seem to suggest otherwise.
Al-Shabaab militia
For starters Garissa is one of the most stratified communities, with clan affiliation playing a major role in resource allocation and dispensation of justice.
Residents claim that a powerful individual in the town is behind the demolitions as he seeks to acquire the land for real estate development.
The individual, who is said to own more than half the property in the town, is also said to be linked with the al-Shabaab militia in the neighbouring Somalia.
"He has vast wealth whose source is suspected to be the proceeds from the ransom paid by seafarers hijacked by Somali pirates," says a resident who preferred to remain anonymous.
"He also owns a chain of properties in Eastleigh in Nairobi and is known to be a vicious person," added the resident.
Politics, ethnicity and utter discrimination are to blame for perennial evictions in Garissa, but a lack of proper land adjudication and miscarriage of justice have exacerbated the problem.
Efforts to reach Garissa DC Samson Macharia for comments failed as he was said to be out of office. Hostile security guards at the County Council turned the Standard crew away.
Official records
Human rights groups condemned the demolitions terming them atrocious and unconstitutional "This is yet an epitome of the continued impunity by administrators.
The Provincial Administration and the Local Authority officials have never had and do not have any legal right to carry out any evictions without being specifically authorised by a court order," charged Odindo Opiata, director at Economic and Social Rights Centre.
The Minister for Lands James Orengo is on record saying the ministry was implementing both the Constitution and the National Land Policy (NLP).
Orengo says NLP aims at guiding the country towards efficient, sustainable and equitable use of land.
Another key objective, he noted, is to provide an overall framework for land administration, access to land, land use planning, historical injustices, environmental degradation and conflicts.
"The policy also recognises the need for security of tenure for Kenyans and that include all socio-economic groups," added the minister. Residents say not a single plot has a title deed, although accessing official records proved difficult.
The town’s plan that has been in existence for over 35 years is yet to be implemented.
"It is this lack of planning and legal vacuum that the authorities exploit to dispossess communities of their ancestral land," says Abdi Hajir, a leader of Garissa-Tana People’s Settlement Network.
"Our right to ownership of land is clearly captured in the economic and social rights under the Bill of Rights in the Constitution.
"We demand that the Government ensures our rights are respected, including full implementation of the National Land Policy," Hajir says
Source: Standard