Again, the Police Attack

2009 November 28

by roxanne

And again, innocent Samburu and others are killed, raped and mutilated.

It’s been a bad few weeks in Isiolo and other areas of Samburuland. At dawn Sunday, Nov 22 Kenya Police returned to the Lurora, Loruko and Lokumai areas and continue to beat, rob, and rape the Samburu people in those communities. Several people have been hospitalized with injuries. The “disarmament” operation [carried out by the government] —of only one tribe– seems a coverup, giving the police opportunity to act yet again with impunity. Survivors’ testimonies are being recorded.

… and the Samburu continue to tell the world what is happening to them. G. S. e-mailed back:

“It was the saddest morning again where Samburu awaken up by the music of bullets and see death on their eyes, I thought fighting was within the communities, I was shocked to see police, GSU uniforms, all over the village in Loruko in Isiolo district. It is samburu again??, government against citizens, live bullets pointing poor,innocent women and children. I saw one dearth in my naked eyes, a dead woman in her bed lying and the head is off after thousands rain of bullets in her head. Saddest thing — I saw a very young innocent child was sucking, not knowing what happening. I took her picture but my heart and pain not allow me to take other bodies’ pictures and attached above show some of the heart breaking pictures. It is not fair because disarming is not that of killing women and children. They disarm Turkanas in Ngaremara but not a single bullet shot out? Why in Samburu always? We spoke with chief. He will come with some reporters. [I'm] not sure if they come at all.

thanks

L. G.

[Note: I revised some spelling, punctuation and grammatical errors where the more standard, English wording was clear to me, but left other sections alone. Roxanne]

And here are some of the more stomachable pictures that G. took this saddest morning. The last is the most graphic I dare post here for the unsuspecting to view, but he forced himself to photograph the woman dead inside the manyatta, her home, in more detail too.

[I'm sorry: I can't seem to insert G's images here at the bottom of the post, where you can more easily decide what to look at and what not. I will try again later to see if I can move them to the bottom here without deleting all images. Roxanne

Ah, later on in the evening, after multiple tries, I managed to relocate the photos to below.]