Freedom of fear is a human right
Rule of law an obligation of the state

1. Human Body Parts Don't Create Wealth
   This week's kidnapping and eventual murder of a six-year-old Sudanese boy, Emmanuel Agwar Adar, in Nairobi was gory as it can be. But they rubbed it on cutting off his tongue.
   
   Emmanuel's murder comes barely a month after the city's taxi drivers took to the streets to protest the murder of their six colleagues in mysterious circumstances.
   
   The taxi men claimed all the victims had their private parts chopped off before being dumped in the outskirts of the city.
   (...)
   Cases similar to that of the Kenyan drivers, where people disappear mysteriously, only for their bodies to be discovered several days later minus various body parts are so many in the continent today that they are treated as routine crimes in some countries.(Italics added by FVDK). Follow reports from South Africa, Mozambique, Nigeria, Malawi, Zambia, Tanzania, Burundi,
   17 September 2009
    

2. Ritual Killings Worry Taxi Drivers
   Four Nairobi taxi drivers have been killed and their mutilated bodies dumped on the roadside in the past few days. And on Tuesday city taxi drivers staged a protest against the macabre killings, saying that 13 of their colleagues have been murdered in similar style in the past fortnight.
   (...)
   According to the taxi operators, their colleagues were each approached by two customers at different intervals in the wee hours of Monday morning. They disappeared until their mutilated bodies were found dumped in different parts of the city.
   
   Missing parts
   The taxi drivers said the bodies had missing parts and organs such as the brain, tongues and skulls. All the vehicles have, however, been recovered with nothing having been stolen.
   (...)
   Mr Peter Karanja, aged 28 and a father of one, picked up two passengers in Woodley area on the morning on August 31. His body was later found dumped at Adams Arcade near the Winners Chapel.
   (...)
   Another victim, Mr George Mburu Kiarie, in his late 40s, is said to have picked up two passengers on Standard Street next to the Stanley Hotel on August 31 at 3am. He too never returned from the assignment, and his body was found near Kibera.
   (...)
   Also murdered was Mr Charles Mugo, who was approached by two men near the 680 Hotel around 5am on Monday. His colleagues said the two passengers said they wanted to go to Strathmore School. That was the area where Mr Mugo's was found near the Administration Police camp.
   (...)
   An earlier case included that of Mr James Tanu Githuku, 60, who was buried last Saturday. He was working on the night of August 23 and his body was found the following morning at Kibera. Mr Githuku left behind two wives Josline Wangui and Eunice Wambui and 10 children. He was also survived by a number of grandchildren and great grandchildren.
   
   During Tuesday's demonstration, the drivers' national chairman Mr Peter Mburu appealed to the government to investigate the killings. "Our drivers are now afraid of working at night," Mr Mburu said.
   (...)
   September 1, 2009
    

3. Kenya says not to disarm pastoral communities
   The Kenyan government said on Tuesday it is not ready to disarm the pastoral communities on the border with Sudan, Ethiopia and Uganda.
   
   Labor Minister John Munyes who originates from Turkana (North) said Kenya would carry out disarmament only if Sudan and Ethiopia do so.
   
   "How do you expect us to disarm our people when our neighbors, the Merrile from Ethiopia struck in a broad-day to execute a ritual killing? We require a regional approach to remove guns from the affected communities which will be compelled with intensive community policing," Munyes noted.
   (...)
   August 11, 2009
    

4. Two killed, dozens wounded at ritual killing at Kenya-Ethiopian border
   Ethiopian warriors killed two Kenyans and wounded 14 others on Wednesday night in a ritual killing barely a fortnight when deadly clashes between Merrile and Turkana tribesmen killed dozens others along the common frontier.
   
   Survivors and officials said on Thursday that hundreds of Merrile youths aged between 13 and 18 are queued for a circumcision ritual between this month and August and cultural dictates that they exhibit braveness by killing an enemy before being circumcised.
   
   Once they kill, they chop off private parts and other organs oftheir victims, including ears, noses and toes, which they carry away and present as a sign of bravery.
   
   And on Wednesday night, Merrile initiates from Namurupus area, Southern Zone travelled over 40 km inside Kenya and indiscriminately fired at a dancing crowd during Wednesday night attack at Kokuro village.
   (...)
   June 18, 2009
    

5. Regional parliament decries albino killings
   The East African Legislative Assembly (Eala) has decried the killing of albinos in the region and urged "tougher measures" to stop the ritual murders and protect albinos. (...) At the ongoing meeting of the regional parliament in Bujumbura, Burundi, MPs from the five EAC member states called for regional cooperation to protect albinos victimised by superstitious fortune seekers.
   (...)
   The killings are rampant in some parts of Burundi, Kenya and Tanzania.
   (...)
   The legislators said while "considerable progress" had been made on human rights issues in the EA region, the current killings and hostility portrayed towards the albino community showed there was still a long way to go in achieving the full respect for human rights.
   May 30, 2009
    
6. Woman's ordeal of ritual gone awry - a murder attempt
   If everything had gone according to her kidnapper’s plan, Ms Esther Nayale, 38, would have been sacrificed in a ritual killing last week.
   
   Nayale, who was drugged and kidnapped in Nairobi while on her way to Mombasa, could have met her death in Webuye, in western Kenya, hundreds of kilometres away from her Maralal home, Samburu District.
   
   At Matungu Hospital in Mumias, where she is undergoing treatment for serious burns on the back, Nayale said last week’s events are still unfolding in her mind like a nightmare.
   (...)
   May 27, 2009
    
7. Police commissioner Hussein Ali blames rights crusaders for emboldening gangs
   Kenya police commissioner Hussein Ali is in a foul mood. And his major irritants include Prof Philip Alston who came to town early this year, and officials of the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights.
   
   After the killing of dozens of people by suspected Mungiki members in Central Province this week, Maj-Gen Ali accuses the two of sanitising and emboldening criminal gangs. (...) “One is tempted to question the complicity in the commission’s persistent support for a criminal group. Mungiki should not be protected,” he said.
   (...)
   While releasing his report in February, Prof Alston, the UN Special Rapporteur on unlawful executions, blamed the Kenyan police for extra-judicial killings. “Killings by police in Kenya are systematic, widespread and carefully planned,” he said.
   (...)
   For police commissioner Ali, statements by rights agency, and especially that of the UN official, had given members of the outlawed sect licence to continue their activities with abandon. The gang is notorious for extortion, oathing and ritual slaughter of its victims.
   (...)
   For his part, Mr Njuguna Gitau, the spokesman of the National Youth Alliance, seen as the political wing of Mungiki, said that 14 of the 29 people killed in Central Kenya this week were “our members.”
   (...)
   April 24, 2009
    
8. Kenyans Riot After Finding Mutilated Victims of Ritual Killings
   At least five bodies were found hacked up in a Nairobi shantytown over the weekend, the latest victims of a series of grisly ritual murders that have rocked Kenya.
   
   The mutilated corpses all had similar cuts on their backs, and at least one victim was missing both his hands. Two women had their breasts cut off and the remaining victims, all male, had their genitals removed.
   
   Riots broke out in the notoriously lawless Mukuru kwa Njenga neighborhood Saturday morning, soon after the bodies were discovered.
   (...)
   Rumors swirled that a suspect, said to be in police custody, had been spotted licking blood from one of the corpses. Rioters demanded the police turn the suspect over to them so that they could mete out vigilante justice.
   (...)
   In the last year alone, a quasi-religious sect of Kikuyu tribesmen (the Mungiki sect) has beheaded dozens of people in ritual murders
   (...)
   The manner of death in the weekend's killings does not match the Mungiki's preferred methods, however.
   (...)
   In a scarring incident last August, a man in Naivasha, a town near the capital of Nairobi, admitted to raping two women repeatedly and draining one of so much blood — which he said he drank — that she died. A Pentecostal bishop was arrested after the man told police he had supplied the clergyman with vials of blood. The bishop was subsequently exonerated — though not before his church was almost razed by a mob.
   (...)
   Ritual killings have had a long history in Kenya. Government employees themselves were among those frequently accused of mutilation and vampirism during the colonial era, says Luise White, author of Speaking with Vampires, a history of the phenomenon in Africa.
   (...)
   January 16, 2009
    
9. Albinos protest against ritual killing of child
   Kenyans with albinism want the government to launch a manhunt for people who killed a seven-year-old albino.
   (...)
   They expressed fear that the ritual killing was an indicator that the menace that started in Tanzania was spreading into the country.
   (...)
   They said Greentone Njoroge, the albino killed in Namanga during Christmas was attacked as he was out playing with other children.
   (...)
   Yesterday, The Standard’s CCI magazine exclusively reported how witches were buying albino body parts to help their clients acquire wealth.
   December 31, 2008
    
10. Held and freed, Bishop says he is clean
    September 3, 2008
    
    Police in Naivasha have arrested a bishop in connection with the killing of a woman and the drinking of human blood in a bizarre ritual.
    August 22, 2008
     
11. NAIROBI - Kenyan police on Tuesday recovered the remains of a mutilated albino woman with missing organs, raising fears of a possible ritual killing, police said. The tongue, breasts, eyes and genitals had been chopped off from the body of the woman recovered in western Kenya's Borabu district, said area police commander Mwaura Njoroge. "We have launched investigations into this issue that is very rare in this area," he said.
    May 28, 2008
     
12. Nairobi - Kenyan police discovered on Monday the torso of a child they suspect was the victim of a ritual killing. Villagers found the headless and limbless six-year-old boy, who went missing last week, in a pit in the Igembe district of eastern Kenya, local police commander Hebson Kadege said. Ritual killing is still common in many African tribes that believe in witchcraft. Igembe lies in the heart of a region well known for the production of mild narcotic leaves called khat.
    May 13, 2008
     
13. Ritual murder, inspired by traditional religious beliefs, is on the rise in Africa. You can read about it in any of the national papers, from Zimbabwe to Senegal - and now Kenya.
    
    On July 13, 2007, I was sitting in a hotel lobby in Nairobi, reading a disturbing article in a Kenyan newspaper. The day before, a two-year-old boy had been killed in the Korogocho slums of Nairobi. He had been beheaded and his limbs hacked off. The boy's body had been identified by his shocked and grieving father, who had reported him missing a few days earlier. The manner, style and place of his murder was no accident. Police, sociologists and other experts immediately identified it as an act of violence (possibly a ritual murder) perpetrated by the Mungiki.
    
    In the nine months leading up to the recent spasm of election-related violence, it is estimated that the Mungiki were responsible for the murder of more than 43 people, 13 of whom had their heads cut off, mostly in the Kikuyu tribal heartlands of central Kenya, and in the slums of Nairobi.
    February 5, 2008
     
14. He was only two years old, innocent and bubbling with life. But when they found him on Wednesday after missing since Monday, his body lay lifeless by a riverbank, hacked and carved out in a chilling incident the police say was a ritual killing by Mungiki members. The head and the torso were found a few metres apart - but with vital body parts missing. The head had been skinned, his private parts, chest and part of the hands were missing.
    July 12, 2007
    A human rights organisation that has been giving free legal services to suspected Mungiki adherents has withdrawn its services. The organisation withdrew the legal services citing the ghastly beheading and skinning of a two-year-old boy in what is suspected to be ritual killing.
    July 13, 2007
    Those behind a recent spate of killings in Kenya do not have "a right to live," President Mwai Kibaki said on Friday in his strongest comments yet on an issue that has raised fears the violence will disrupt upcoming elections. Kibaki did not name the Mungiki sect, the outlawed group believed behind at least 12 killings in the past three months. The bodies of six of the victims were found mutilated a week ago on the outskirts of the capital.
    June 1, 2007
     

15. It was a grisly scene; human body parts next to a blackened pot, raw blood sprinkled on a dusty floor and a skinned carcass of a goat. The items, found inside a house where 12 Mungiki suspects were shot dead in Murang'a on Sunday, offer spine-chilling insights into oathing ceremonies conducted by the killer gang.
    July 4, 2007
     

16. More than 300 people have been arrested in Murang'a as the crackdown against Mungiki was intensified at the weekend. The arrests came a day after a matatu driver and conductor were beheaded and their vehicle burnt by a gang linked to the outlawed sect. Meanwhile, security officers for two MPs have also been withdrawn as part of the ongoing investigations. Those affected are Wundanyi MP Mwandawiro Mghanga and Juja MP William Kabogo.
    June 4, 2007
     
17. The recent beheadings of innocent citizens by the dreaded Mungiki sect in Kenya have again brought to the fore weaknesses in Kenya’s law enforcement agencies. Mungiki is an ethnic/faith based vigilante organisation that has metamorphosed into a terror group. In one week, six people in separate residential areas in different districts in the Central Province were beheaded in what appears to have been a coordinated onslaught by the perpetrators. In one district, the murders went beyond beheadings: the victims were dismembered and the body parts scattered in different places. In one area, three legs from different corpses were left together by the roadside and the rest of the bodies are yet to be found. In another district, the head of one victim was spiked onto the roof of a neighbour’s chicken pen and another was placed on a telephone pole. The most gruesome and telling find was when the police stumbled upon Mungiki suspects in possession of male reproductive organs and other paraphernalia associated with the sect in Maragua. More male organs were found later in a separate raid. Suspicions were that a ritual had been taking place.
    May 29, 2007
     
18. This is the head, and there are two cuts on the neck," Lucia Wangari says, using dry twigs to demonstrate the gory find. "A stick is pushed through to support the head, and further hoisted on the pole. When I saw it, the head stood this way?" Wangari explains, mouth ajar and hands akimbo.
    May 23, 2007
     
19. Police in Maragua stumbled on Mungiki suspects with parts of male reproductive organs. Local Officer Commanding Police Division, Mr Stanley Lamai, said the scene was also littered with blood and other paraphernalia associated with the sect. More organs were found in a house nearby during the Tuesday night raid in Githemba village.
    May 7, 2007
     
20. Kenya's government says it has evidence devil worshippers are sacrificing humans, drinking their blood and raping children and urges the public to shun such satanic cults.
    September 24, 1994
     

The secretive Mungiki sect: banned since 2002 but still very powerful. Mungiki sect members have engaged in ritual murders and the outlawed sect is suspected to have close  connections with powerful politicians who are accused of using the murderous sect for political purposes.

A Profile of Kenya's secretive Mungiki sect

Secret Mungiki Profile

Kenya government accused of using murderous sect and other news items on the Mungiki

Superstition in Kenya and other countries:
'Witches' Set Ablaze in 21st Century Kenya

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