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{
    "id": 1522500,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1522500/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 276,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Turkana County, UDA",
    "speaker_title": "Hon. Cecilia A Ngitit",
    "speaker": null,
    "content": " Thank you, Hon. Temporary Speaker for giving me a chance to contribute to this Adjournment Motion. First and foremost, I pass my sincere condolences to the families of Turkana people who lost their people and property. Secondly, I attest to this House that I went to Todonyang. I personally visited the place. Whatever I am saying here is based on what I saw with my own eyes. What happened at Todonyang is unimaginable and beyond human understanding. We were there in a closed-door meeting without doing anything. The families who lost their loved ones were just hovering around, crying. They could not prove if their people were alive or dead simply because we were not allowed to access the place of the massacre to even take the bodies for burial. Is there any other inhumane act beyond this? How can a sovereign country like Kenya allow a neighbouring country to massacre her people, hold onto their bodies, bury and dispose them as they wish? As the Hon. Member for Turkana West said, that part of Lake Turkana is stinking of the bodies of our people. They hid them under the water hyacinth. Some bodies were hidden in shallow graves. We are not able to account for all the bodies. It is very wrong for anyone to say that 25 fishermen were killed. We do not know the number of people who were massacred because the entire Turkana County goes there to earn their living. That area is concentrated with fish. That is why the Ethiopians are there. There are also Burundians and people from other parts of Kenyan. This kind of massacre only happens to the Turkana people. The lady who rescued the 24 survivors is a Kikuyu. We thank God and celebrate her today. There is also a good-hearted chief on the other side of Dasanach, who facilitated the 24 survivors. We also thank him. Where are the specialised forces, the divers and the navy? Whenever there is a boat accident at the Coast, in Indian Ocean, the Government sends specialised forces there to retrieve the bodies. It is now one week and we are not able to retrieve the bodies of our people. We can only smell the stench emanating from their rotting bodies. The two bodies that were retrieved yesterday were of two men who were killed on Monday and not on the day of the massacre. They were hiding in the water hyacinth waiting to be rescued. When they heard the boats cruising in the lake, they thought Kenyans had gone to rescue them. So, they emerged from their hideouts only to get into another ambush. They were brutally killed in cold blood. It is so inhuman. This is not the first time we are doing this. For how long shall we move adjournment motions in this House to discuss massacres of the Turkana people? This is of an international nature. As Hon. Ngikolong put it, Kenya is able to send police officers to Haiti, and the Kenya Defence Forces (KDF) wherever. However, there is zero KDF presence in Todonyang. Our borders there are manned by theTurkana people. We lose lives and property. The electronic version of the Official Hansard Report is for information purposesonly. A certified version of this Report can be obtained from the Hansard Editor."
}