‘Kenyan police do not protect us’

By Raymond Baguma
and Daniel Edyegu in Malaba

THE Ugandan truck drivers at the Malaba and Busia border crossings are furious. They were given the greenlight by the Kenyan authorities in Eldoret district to proceed to Uganda and were provided with escorts.

But the Police did nothing when they were attacked and robbed by marauding gangs at the numerous road blocks in the Rift Valley.

“The Police stood by as our vehicles were being stoned and burned,” said Robert Sekasi, a driver of Chatha Motors who crossed at Malaba yesterday.
“They told us they could only care for our lives, not our vehicles.”

He also complained that the Police escorts attached to the convoy were too few.

“We had two Police cars for a convoy of about 300 vehicles, one in front and one at the rear.

The only thing they did was removing stones. But the gangs reinstated the road blocks as soon as they had passed.”
Geoffrey Makali, another driver, turned back with an empty container on Tuesday night when he found the road blocked at Kipkaren, some 130 kilometres from the border.

“We came with escorts,” he told The New Vision at Malaba. “But the Police were not enough and they do not really care. They just leave us to be attacked.”
Mukasa Abdullah witnessed how Kalenjin youth at a roadblock in Burnt Forest set ablaze six Ugandan vehicles and beat up several drivers with clubs and pangas on Monday night.

“We were with Police escorts but they did not want to confront them. It seems the demonstrators have the sympathy of the Police,” he said.

Saad Mugema, a dealer in motor vehicle spare parts, found his container broken into and looted between Burnt Forest and Eldoret, only 100 metres from a Police roadblock.

The driver and co-driver, who were robbed of their phones and all their money, narrowly survived being killed.
“They held a knife at my throat,” narrated co-driver Nassor Ibra Said at Busia border post yesterday. “I jumped out and ran to the Police.”

But instead of acting, the Police called Eldoret for reinforcements, he said.
“We waited in vain for one hour before the Policemen went over and fired in the air, causing them to flee. By that time, most of the container had been looted.”
In another incident on Tuesday, the Kenyan military was not able to prevent a gang in Turbo, 20km from Eldoret, from smashing the windscreen of a Ugandan fuel tanker and torching it.

“They soaked a blanket, poured diesel on it and threw it into the cabin,” said driver Caxton Mwanjala, who had jumped out of his truck.

“We ran to the military but they only scared away the gang. When we saw the smoke, we ran back and used the fire extinguishers to put out the fire.”
Attacks on vehicles with Ugandan numberplates are not isolated incidents. Every driver at the border points has a horror story to tell.

“They blame their woes on Museveni,” said Geoffrey Kibuuka, who was repairing the tyre of his truck that had been punctured by an arrow yesterday.
“They say Museveni has brought about this chaos. But I told them it was not Museveni who had sent us. We were only earning a living.”

As Ugandans, you are like hunted animals,” added Abdullah Mukasa.
“Your president supports somebody who stole our votes and that’s why we are retaliating, the gangs shouted at us. They told us to take our burned vehicles back to Uganda so that Museveni would know that they were unhappy.”

The Kalenjin in the Rift Valley, who support opposition candidate Raila Odinga, blame Museveni for having congratulated Kibaki upon his re-election, Mukasa explained.
They also accuse Uganda of having sent troops to Kisumu to “shoot at innocent people”.

The rumour that Ugandan soldiers participated in firing at demonstrators in Kisumu in early January has persisted among opposition supporters, despite the fact that Odinga himself has refuted it.
In a radio interview on KFM’s Hot Seat show on January 8, he mentioned that people in civilian clothes driving cars with Ugandan numberplates had been spotted in Kisumu at the time of the riots.

“These, in fact, were Kenyan Police officers using cars with Ugandan registration numbers masquerading as Ugandans,” Odinga stressed in the interview.

He added that Museveni had convinced him that there were no Ugandan soldiers in Kisumu.

“I had occasion to speak to President Yoweri Museveni who assured me that there are no Ugandan forces in the country and I have reason to believe what he was saying.”

The Ugandan Government has repeatedly denied it has deployed in Kenya.

At a press conference a week ago, foreign minister Sam Kutesa said:
“The Government wishes to assure our brothers and sisters in Kenya that there is no truth in the allegations that Uganda interfered in the Kenyan electoral process or that it deployed in Kenya.”

Asked what the Government would do to ensure the safety of its truck drivers, Fred Opolot of the Media Centre said the Ugandan security forces were in touch with their Kenyan colleagues.

“These are Kenyan security arrangements,” he noted.
“The Ugandan security is liaising with their Kenyan counterparts to ensure that ample security is given. Other than that, there is not much the Ugandan Government can do.”