[The following comes from Kenyan Pundit, who has given permission for me to reproduce it here--w.m.]
Dear all,
A bunch of us have come together to set up a website to document incidents of violence etc. during the crisis (and soon to follow - information about ways to help on a micro-level). The website is still very much a work in progress and will be updated as we go along. We believe the number of deaths being reported by the government, police, and media is grossly underreported. We also don't think we have a true picture of what is really going on - reports that all have us have heard from family and friends in affected areas suggests that things are much worse than what we have heard in the media. We also (in my idealist world) hope that we can begin to put names and faces to the people who have lost their lives in this mess.
What's the point of all this you might ask? Well, Kenyans have demonstrated their capacity for selective amnesia time and time again. When this crisis comes to an end, we don't want what happened to be swept under the rug in the name of "moving forward" - for us to truly move forward, the truth of what happened needs to be told - Ushahidi ( http://www.ushahidi.com/) is our small way of contributing to that. We will be relying primarily on input from guys on the ground (NGOs, individuals, journalists), so please circulate this widely to your networks and help us witness.
Asanteni,
Ory Okolloh (aka Kenyan Pundit)
Thursday, January 10, 2008
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1 comments:
Thanks for passing on the info of this initiative by Ory, in my view one of the few that have exhibited some kind of non-partisan balance.
I am Kenyan and therefore do not have the luxury of giving up on us, although that is exactly what I wish I could do. I have worn the burden of of what happened here in the past couple of weeks heavily, and I know we're not out of the woods yet.
What I continue to find surprising is that in most of the public intellectual circles, certainly from what is being written and continues to be written by Kenyans of some standing, hardly anyone confesses to having voted for Kibaki. Does that admission alone already carry such a stigma, I wonder? I did. I was well within my rights to do so. I haven't had a single moment to celebrate thereafter though. For whereas I listened to both of the two dominant sides accuse each other of vote tampering and rigging, it was only when the independent observer missions confirmed the irregularities in places like Molo that the sheer shame of what had just transpired (a stolen election) descended.
I respect the rule of the majority in a democracy, even if only a majority of one, but the truth is that I today do not now know who my president is. And I further doubt that any of us will ever know who won the December 27 Kenyan polls.
There a few facts I do know now though, some of which are:
1. I can only respect Kibaki's presidency if it is proven beyond dounbt that his mandate is legitimate from an independent recount.
2. As both the PNU and the ODM camps were involved in trying to rig these elections in their respective favour, neither parties respect my choice for leader, or yours. Yes, both parties inflated their numbers in their respective strongholds, some going as far as to bar election agents from other camps from being present at the tallying centres. I therefore have neither respect for Kibaki, nor for Raila Odinga.
3. The efforts at what is now being termed an ethnic cleansing in Kenya's Rift Valley were pre-medidated. But please do not take my word for this. Events will unfold and evidence will come to light in days/weeks/months to come that will stun, shame and astound us further.
I am still not clear where we as a country go from here, but I optimistically wish you, WM, what I wish for myself and other Kenyans ... a return to the national innocence we enjoyed before AFTER having bravely resolved all aspects of our history and current post-lection events.
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