The Kenyan Diaspora is far-flung. It is likely that every state in the US and every major city of the world is home to a Kenyan community.
Such a huge mass of people scattered around the world is unlikely to have one view on any issue. Indeed, in this wild, wild, west, Kenyans feel no pressure to have a uniform position on anything.
Several factors have helped the forging of a common identity and shared aspirations though. Before explaining what is shaping up to be the Diaspora’s view on the Ocampo Six, it is important to understand these factors.
It is simply that Kenya is beloved by Kenyans in the Diaspora. Yes, people do care about ethnicity but they care so deeply about Kenya that when the two conflict, Kenya wins.
Moreover, Kenyans in the Diaspora experience ethnic and racial discrimination daily. They know how it stings and wish the world were different. Consequently, they know they should not be purveyors of ethnic bias.
Many in the Diaspora share a common story that is also unifying – they were pushed out of Kenya by dysfunctional governments that wrecked the economy, ruined the political culture, and corrupted the moral fibre of the country.
There is bitterness out here that comes directly from this experience of being so vulnerable as to be at the mercy of any village idiot to bribe his way to high office.
Consequently, nothing irks people in the Diaspora more than Kenya’s endemic corruption, its failure to recognise, reward, and retain talent, the looting of the country’s resources, the low wages hard working Kenyans earn, and the death of moral probity.
Mr Luis Moreno-Ocampo is on the right side of Diaspora values and aspirations at this point in Kenya’s history. His six suspects are not. In fact, they are poster boys for Kenya’s malignant cancers, described above, because of their historical affiliations with the country’s dark past and their constant derailment of nascent hopes for a better future.
My survey of Diaspora forums reveals a surprising absence of criticism of the ICC and Moreno-Ocampo, and an overwhelming relief that finally, Kenyan politicians, those lords of impunity, will be held to account through a reliable judicial process.
The lesson of this moment is that institutions are important. Had politicians built strong national institutions, there would have been no need to shuttle them to The Hague.
Unlike ordinary Kenyans who must deal with institutions politicians have rendered dysfunctional, the Ocampo Six have the luxury of a fair trial before a respectable Judiciary.
Consider this: Politicians ruin our hospitals then seek medical treatment abroad. They fail to maintain our roads, then buy foreign-made fuel-guzzlers that don’t suffer from the potholes. They destroy the education system then send their children to private schools. Now that they have ruined the courts, they should be true to form and go to The Hague. Such is the level of frustration Kenyans in the Diaspora feel.
People in the Diaspora have immense faith that the ICC is the right place to sort through complicated evidence to establish whether or not the six had sufficient command responsibility to direct or stop the post-election atrocities.
Many in the Diaspora doubt that Moreno-Ocampo can establish this for all six, and are especially doubtful that Head of Public Service Francis Muthaura and former Police Commissioner Ali are culpable, especially because the ICC prosecutor omitted to name the two principals who were at the pinnacle of the chain of command.
As for Mr William Ruto and Mr Uhuru Kenyatta, their possible control, if not command, of unlawful private militias is what will get them little sympathy there. The two politicians represent what Kenya’s Diaspora considers an intolerable eyesore. If action is not taken now, when?
Many in the Diaspora expect that the ICC will differentiate between perpetrating and counteracting violence. They believe it will be unfair to treat the two the same.
Nevertheless, while most people are sympathetic to counteraction, they still think that an indiscriminate counter-attack that kills unarmed innocent women and children with the same barbarism as that exhibited by initiators of the violence is wrong.
The blood of victims on both ends of the political divide cries out for justice.
Is the ICC as an institution fraught with politics. Oh yes, painfully so. Ruto and Uhuru, however, have no power of persuasion when it comes to charging that the ICC is engaging in politics. This is because they have not established a solid history of progressive politics that Kenyans, especially those in the Diaspora, can relate to.
Ms Kang’ara is an assistant professor of law, University of Washington School of Law (skangara@u.washington.edu)
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