Ethnic Cleansing Taking Place in Kenya
The New York Times reports that the country that served as an example of all the other African countries, Kenya, has now fallen victim to ethnic cleansing. The top American diplomat said that, although there’s ethnic cleansing going on, it’s not (yet) a genocide.
The violence isn’t aimed at killing people as much as it is aimed at cleansing the lands. People are warned to leave their homes. If they don’t do so before the deadline given to them, they’re attacked. In genocide, obviously, the intend has to be to kill a certain part of the population. That’s not the intend here: the intend is to remove them. If they obey, they survive.
“The Rift Valley, one of the most beautiful slices of Africa, has been the epicenter of Kenya’s postelection problems and is home to ethnic groups that have long felt others do not belong,” the Times explains.
That’s doesn’t make it any less horrific though. Kenya was, as said, once a very stable and prosperous African country. It now seems to be overtaken by extremists who accept no opposition. And so they are destroying their own country.
First the tribe of the sitting president, the Kikuyus, were attacked for weeks after the sitting president, Mwai Kibabi, won the elections (by rigging them). Now, Kikuyus are taking revenge. They “have been taking revenge and violently expelling other ethnic groups from Kikuyu-dominated areas.”
The result: “Kenya seems to be tearing itself apart along ethnic lines, with more than 800 people killed and at least 300,000 displaced.”
What troubles me to no end is that we see yet another African country be torn apart, yet the West is standing by and doing absolutely nothing. For some reason we don’t care all that much about what happens in Africa, probably because helping Africans isn’t in our immediate interests.
The reality is, however, that if we want to make this world a saver place for future generations we have to stabilize and develop Africa. Poverty breeds terrorism. Poverty breeds anger. Persecution breeds revenge.
If this were any other country of the world, the West would have acted. Because it’s Africa we’re standing by and doing nothing.
This behavior will come back to haunt us in the coming decades.
