January 24, 2012

Yesterday at 1:30 pm local time, the International Criminal Court (ICC) read their indictments for trial of six prominent Kenyans including two, William Ruto and Uhuru Kenyatta, who are planning to run for president this year. In essence the charges against them were that they organized the post-election violence after the disputed 2007 election. A withdrawal of charges against all six would have been a major blow to the ICC. With one of the three judges dissenting, the court upheld the charges against four of the defendants – including the two presidential aspirants. Charges against the two others, Francis Muthaura, the head of Kenya’s civil service, and Joshua Sang, a radio announcer were dropped. While Joshua Sang is not in the same category of prominence as others, I think he was indicted because of the effectiveness of the hate radio station in the Rwandan genocide and the fact that there are recordings of what he said.

In opposition to civil society cries that the defendants should withdraw from government until their cases are decided and contrary to the article on accountability in the new Kenyan constitution, the Kenyan Government has declared that the officials can remain in office until (and if) they are convicted and that they can run for president. Ruto and Kenyatta have carefully played the gullible Kenyan electorate so that they, rather than those killed and displaced, are seen as the “victims.” As such, at least in their ethnic strongholds, these two have major support in their presidentials bid. Until the election is held – and its date is still in dispute – I will be sending out updates as significant issues arise.

The Friends Church Peace Teams (FPCT) set up a Call-in Center to monitor the situation during the announcement because many people feared that there could be violence if, in the case near where we live, William Ruto was held for trial. I set up a system with a program called FrontlineSMS which allows people, whom we are calling “citizen reporters,” to send in text messages about the situation in their community.

The FCPT Call-in Center worked nicely. Forty-five people signed up. Many were from the Turbo/Eldoret/Lugari area near us but others were from various places in western Kenya, giving us a broad representation. The Call-in Center received 29 messages before and after the announcement. There were no reports of violence. Unlike after the 2007 election, security personnel were frequently noted as being active in the communities. People were cautious, though. For example, Jua Kali market, about 15 miles towards Eldoret from our house, would normally be open on Monday, but few merchants showed up so there was no market day. Two citizen reporters in pro-Ruto areas reported that people were unhappy with the ruling, but were not violent.

I thought that the Call-in Center was effective in receiving good information from a large variety of sources in numerous places. There was no training in citizen reporting, but except for one or two, which were personal opinions, the rest were reports on the situation in the community. Perhaps most impressive was the fact that these reports frequently came from places where the mainstream media, both Kenyan and foreign, would never cover.

While I had no problem keeping up with this load of material, it might have been another case if there had been reports of violence. During the up-coming election cycle this year, I am hoping to have one thousand trained citizen reporters. To keep up with this amount of information will require considerable planning and personnel at the Call-in Center. We will also have to work out how the Call-in Center will react to negative information.

The system I used, FrontlineSMS, worked satisfactorily, but there were some quirks that I will ask them about. One problem I see is that when I sent out an email to everyone who had signed up the system only sent out about 2 SMSs per minute. With 45 names this was not much of a problem, but, if the system had 1000 names on it, it would take more than eight hours to send out the message!

Peace,
Dave
David Zarembka, Coordinator
African Great Lakes Initiative of the Friends Peace Teams