Tackle impunity, AI tells Kenya

2009-06-12 20:05

Nairobi - Amnesty International on Friday warned Kenyan authorities to urgently and decisively tackle a culture of impunity for rights abuses or risk the country slipping into further crisis.

"If Kenya fails to fight impunity, it will be storing serious problems for the future," AI Secretary General Irene Khan told reporters.

The chief of the London-based rights group said that even more worrying was a failure by the two sides to the coalition government to agree on the extent of rights abuses, especially in post-electoral violence.

Kenya's political rivals were pressured into a power-sharing deal last year by international mediators after violence that accompanied the December 2007 elections.

In what became Kenya's bloodiest unrest since its 1963 independence from Britain, at least 1 500 people were killed and some 300 000 displaced from their homes in an ethnic frenzy whipped up by politicians following the disputed polls.

"We are calling on the government to actually rise above the political divisions... to wake up and live up to the responsibility that been placed on them," Khan said.

A government-sponsored probe into the violence recommended on October 15 last year the establishment of a special court to try the unrest suspects.

But the special tribunal is not yet in place.

On Thursday, former United Nations chief Kofi Annan, who brokered peace after the contested polls, warned that if Kenya fails to set up the special tribunal by August, he will have the suspects to face international justice.

But Khan said that if Kenya waited for the International Criminal Court to intervene "would be an abdication of responsibility".

With the post electoral violence having died down, Kenya risks slipping out of the world's attention.

"Time is running out and the government must act urgently to build consensus on fundamental human rights issues," she added.

- SAPA