The approaching
trials of Kenya's president and his deputy in The Hague are worrying the
upland communities that were rent apart by a post-election bloodbath
more than five years ago, violence the two men are accused of
orchestrating.
When Deputy President William
Ruto enters the dock at the International Criminal Court on Tuesday, to
be followed by President Uhuru Kenyatta in November, members of their
two ethnic groups fear the course of justice could open old wounds.
Their
victory in this year's peaceful election under the Jubilee Alliance has
done little to heal rifts on the ground between Kenyatta's Kikuyu and
Ruto's Kalenjin clans, which clashed after a disputed 2007 poll, when
the two backed rival campaigns.
It leaves on tenterhooks east Africa's biggest economy,
where tribal loyalties have long driven politics or fuelled violence.
It also worries the West, which sees a stable Kenya as vital to regional
security and the fight against militant Islam.
For
the ICC, the first trial involving a sitting president is its biggest
test to date as the institution set up in 1993 faces mounting opposition
in Africa, where it is seen as biased for having only charged Africans.
"The
alliance between Kenyatta and Ruto bought us time," said 34-year-old
Regina Muthoni, who lives near the western city of Eldoret, close to
where her mother and about 30 other Kikuyus were burned to death in a
church torched by a Kalenjin gang.
"We don't know whether their union will survive the trials," she said, calming a wailing infant strapped to her back.
Adding
to the uncertainty, a parliamentary vote last week demanding Kenya
withdraw from The Hague court's jurisdiction has raised some concerns
Nairobi is building political cover for the two men to halt their
participation in the trial, though diplomats see such a move by men who
have attended pre-trial hearings as unlikely.
Kenyatta,
51, and Ruto, 46, have long insisted they would continue to cooperate
to clear their names of charges of crimes against humanity. In addition,
a Kenyan move to quit the court will take a year to implement and won't
halt existing trials.
"The two
believe they can win at trial," said Macharia Munene, a university
lecturer in Nairobi. "The court also has a poor record of convictions,"
he said, referring to its sole conviction to date of Congolese warlord
Thomas Lubanga.
DRIVING A WEDGE
The
court case, as well as being seen as a catalyst to form the Jubilee
Alliance coalition, may have helped Kenyatta and Ruto into office.
Campaigners played on the idea of foreign meddling to whip up
nationalist sentiment in the former British colony.
But
the trials could yet drive a wedge between them and stir up their
communities as case details emerge, testing an alliance at the top that
has yet to filter down to places like Eldoret, one of several
flashpoints after the 2007 vote.
"Their
union is for purposes of convenience, to forge a common approach to
fight the ICC trials," said Ken Wafula, an Eldoret-based rights activist
who works with both communities, which have long tussled over land and
clashed in past elections.
"Both tribes living here know the alliance is not genuine."
Wafula
has campaigned for the trials to go ahead in The Hague, though since
Kenyatta and Ruto's election the government has called to have the
trials dropped or brought closer to home and sought to drum up
opposition among fellow Africans.
The ICC has refused to move the trials, but the African Union lent its support to shifting them to Kenya.
Kenyan
public backing for the ICC has waned. An Ipsos-Synovate poll in July
showed only 39 percent still wanted the trials to proceed. It had been
55 percent in April 2012.
Kenyatta's
supporters dismiss concerns that the trials will cause a rift in the
alliance between two men, who seem at ease with each other despite
vastly different backgrounds.
Kenyatta
lived in State House, the presidential residence, when his father, Jomo
Kenyatta, was Kenya's first post-independence leader, while Ruto talks
of his humble origins around Eldoret and long walks to school.
NO IMPUNITY
"There
will be even more bonding when the trials start," senior Jubilee member
and Senate Speaker Ekwe Ethuro said, though he hinted at the challenge
of governing while on trial.
"What
might cause acrimony is the handling of this matter by the court, which
should ensure it does not appear that it is trying to affect the running
of Kenya's government," he added.
The
decision by the Jubilee-dominated parliament to quit the ICC sends a
further political message about Kenya's unease with a court whose
statutes it ratified in 2005, though opponents said the vote would turn
Kenya into a pariah.
Africa already
has an example of a president who has defied the court, Sudan's Omar
Hassan al-Bashir, who has denounced an arrest warrant over charges of
genocide in Darfur, deepening Sudan's isolation with the West.
But few see Kenya, a big recipient of U.S. and other aid and the trade gateway to east Africa, taking that route.
"A Bashir scenario is highly unlikely," Lodewijk Briet, the European Union's ambassador in Nairobi, told Reuters.
Yet
the cases, as they unfold, could complicate the West's relationship
with the country. There is already frustration in Western capitals at
what one diplomat in Nairobi called Kenyan authorities' "wafer thin"
cooperation with the court.
The
ICC's Gambian prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, has said witnesses in its
cases have been threatened into silence, forcing many to pull out, and
relatives have been offered bribes or intimidated to reveal witnesses'
whereabouts. She dropped charges this year against Kenyatta's
co-accused, Francis Muthaura, for lack of evidence.
Ruto is being tried with radio executive Joshua arap Sang.
The
European Union and the United States already have a policy of
"essential only" contacts with Kenyatta due to the gravity of the
charges. In practice, that has been interpreted fairly generously.
Ambassadors
from those nations have met him. Kenyatta also met Prime Minister David
Cameron on a visit to Britain in March, though British officials
insisted it was in the context of a conference on Somalia, where Kenya
sent troops to restore order.
"The
relations with the West could get even more awkward when the trials kick
off because there could be all these embarrassing allegations," said
political analyst David Makali.
Despite
the fears that communal tensions could once again boil over, there are
still plenty of Kenyans who back the court proceedings.
"These
trials should go ahead," said Yusila Cherono, a 43-year-old Kalenjin,
who was gang raped by suspected members of a Kikuyu militia in the
post-vote violence near the town of Naivasha.
She still walks with a limp from her ordeal.
"We don't want impunity," she said.
(Editing by Edmund Blair and Will Waterman)
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