Peter Thatiah

The raging debate on the 2007-8 post-election crimes is dangerously getting out of context.

And, unfortunately, it is persons who have been going around the country making guilt-laden speeches who have the initiative right now.

For starters, let us not even debate whether international justice is possible. We saw that when the Nazi butchers were hauled before justice at Nuremberg in 1946. To rest this case, let us veer off the vain road of semantics and interrogate the essentials.

It is a gross abuse to the intelligence of Kenyans to debate the 1,300 murdered in January last year had anything to do with a stolen election. It is not about land either, simply because no one has even attempted to produce any evidence to support the assertion.

Yet in this incongruous burlesque we are evidently losing it. For once, the guilty mouths seem to be talking some truth. Leaders are calling out for something to be done, not out of their love for justice, but because they feel that vengeance against the masterminds is in order. Their emotional pronouncements attest to this.

We are playing into the hands of the people who feel they have a case to answer at The Hague. For the suspects who continue to sit in Cabinet, we have effectively turned a criminal question into a political contest.

In the manner of all political contests in Kenya, various groups are tearing out texts that favour their stand out of the whole, and selling it to their tribesmen in broad daylight.

But let us not miss out this cardinal premise. There should be no debate whether we need a court (whatever court) for justice or a reconciliation commission. We need both. But first those who involved in the mayhem in whatever way have to be taken to court if we still believe in civilisation and the rule of law. Justice, especially on capital offences, is not negotiable.

The tragedy is that the gaudy sideshows have become the main arena. The country seems poised to lose the battle against murderous impunity because we have all fallen to wiles inherent in the psychology of genocidal criminals in our midst.

Genocidal criminals are always decent-looking people who are usually driven by a deep sense of mission, however demented. They are not common termagants. We saw Herman Goering, Augusto Pinochet, Saddam Hussein and recently Charles Taylor, go down insisting their innocence and proclaiming the merit of their deeds.

And this is not mere pretence. They believe it!

Likewise, the masterminds of the post-election violence will insist on their innocence to end of their days.

Likewise, the masterminds of the killings that we call post-election violence will insist on their innocence to end of their days. Nothing would please them more than engaging the rest of us on how the country should respond to their atrocious actions. Right now they have won the first round, namely, that their acts of commission — capital offences on such a frightening scale — are being debated across the country and in such hallowed halls as the UN.

Never again

Those who want justice done in Kenya must employ level-headedness in their arguments. Those who are beating the drums of vengeance or revenge should know that these have no place in a just world.

Likewise, those who think they are implicated in crimes against innocent Kenyans should know that justice cannot be served or argued on political podiums.

We are agreed that justice must be done. Never again should the life of a single Kenyan child be snuffed out just because we can’t agree on how to count ballot papers.