Centre for Applied Human Rights
Mary
Kenya, CAHR, Spring 2010
My name is Mary. I'm the proud mother of two girls. I'm a professional counsellor. I'm a founder member and the immediate former executive director of a community-based organisation that supports disadvantaged people in our local province. In my six years working there, I have been working with child survivors of sexual abuse by giving them psychosocial support and journeying with them as they seek medical care and pursue justice in the courts of law. I have been involved in advocacy campaigns for the prevention and awareness creation on sexual violence and I'm happy that the culture of silence and stigma surrounding sexual violence is gradually being broken.
In my work, I have also been working with women working in local flower farms where cases of child sexual abuse and child labour have been quite high. I have been training the women on best practices on the prevention of child abuse, giving them tips on how to identify an abused child who is not ready to report and giving them basic counseling skills.
During the general elections of 2007, I was a civil society constituency election monitor. I organised public forums on voter education. After the presidential results were announced and the President was sworn in (at night), violence broke out in other parts of the country and people from my ethnic community were targeted for brutal evictions. Violence later broke out in my area where my ethnic community - with financial support from influential politicians - targeted other ethnic communities. 45 people were brutally murdered in the two day orgy of madness and over 15,000 people were displaced while properties worth over millions of shillings were destroyed or looted.
In the ethnic madness, I chose to be a rescuer and refused to join my community in the evictions.
In the ethnic madness, I chose to be a rescuer and refused to join my community in the evictions. I joined the police in evacuating trapped persons, organised the displaced persons camped at the local police station camp for effective distribution of relief supplies, helped them identify their dead at the morgue, petitioned the government to provide doctors to perform post mortem on the bodies, and sourced from well-wishers and legislators funds to transport the greatly traumatized people to their rural homes.
As a consequence of 'being a traitor' to the community, my home and office were broken into by the militia and my neighbours and vandalised. They looted my furniture too.
Soon there was a cease fire which was brokered by Kofi Annan and a coalition government was formed. A commission of enquiry to the post election violence was formed and was known as the Waki commission. I mobilised witnesses and also gave my testimony on camera.
Unfortunately when the final report was published, it exposed my identity and I started receiving threats from militia and the politicians. My neighbours, family and friends started displaying open hostility and I was forced to flee for my life and abandon everything; my home, my work and all that I had grown used to. I have been staying in various safe houses from November, 2008 and using false identities.
My coming to the Centre for Applied Human Rights has really given me a break. I feel secure and I'm excited to use my true identity after more than one year. I can now walk with my head upright and look people straight in the eye without the fear of being recognised.
I'm writing a book on the violence and I'm getting a lot of research material from the library. Staff at the Centre are also of great help; I have learned a lot from Lars Waldorf's work on the Rwanda genocide and from his book collection. The health and human rights class has also broadened my thinking and as I write my book, I'm now exploring on the health and human rights of the post election violence victims and how those rights were violated.