20,000 Kenyans still stuck in camps 2 years after election riots drove them from their homes

20,000 Kenyans still in camps 2 years after riots

NAIROBI, Kenya — More than 20,000 Kenyans made homeless by riots following the country’s disputed 2007 elections are still living in makeshift camps, a human rights commission said, warning that tensions over the failure to resettle them could threaten the 2012 election.

Police broke up a protest by thousands of displaced Kenyans earlier this week after they tried to march to the capital to publicize their plight.

“We were assaulted when we tried to explain to the police that our intentions were peaceful,” said Peter Kariuki, chairman of Mawingu camp for internally displaced people.

Kariuki has been living in camps for the past two years, ever since the postelection violence that killed more than 1,000 people and displaced 600,000 others. He fled with his wife and three children after his house was burned down and is too scared of his neighbors to return, he said.

On Tuesday, Kariuki and thousands of his neighbors attempted to march 135 miles (215 kilometers) from their camp in the Rift Valley to President Mwai Kibaki’s residence in the capital of Nairobi to protest the government’s failure to pay. But the protesters only managed to march a short portion of the long trek before police beat them back with batons.

The Kenyan government ordered the closure of all camps for the displaced last year after the government gave camp residents money and transport to return home. But the state-funded Kenya National Commission on Human Rights says a 10-day survey they completed in January showed about 4,000 households remain in so-called “transit” camps near their former homes. The average size of a household is six people, they said.

“Tensions are still rife within the communities that were affected in the last polls, and if the government fails to address those people’s plights, then the problem will be much bigger come 2012,” said Patrick Bonyante, a human rights officer from the commission. “People will want revenge.”

Kenya is East Africa’s regional powerhouse. It has remained untouched by the wars that have consumed the region around it. Most of its neighbors import their goods and gasoline through Kenya’s Mombasa port. A repeat of the riots during polls scheduled for 2012 could seriously threaten the stability of the region.

The Kenyan government said they had given all families displaced by the violence $435 as compensation. But the families were also supposed to receive startup money and money to repair of the houses they fled. But by Jan. 20 this year, nearly 50,000 families had not received those additional funds, the commission’s report said.

The government says not everyone has been paid. Wilfred Ndolo, the director of resettlement at the Special Programs Ministry, said 38,000 people had not received the $300 meant to repair homes. Ndolo said 7,000 people also didn’t receive $125 in startup money because they lack proper identification.