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"id": 194973,
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"speaker_name": "Mr. Farah",
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"legal_name": "Farah Maalim Mohamed",
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"content": "Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, I wish to support this Bill. I have been a member of the Parliamentarians for Global Action (PGA) for many years. Our own statutes have been the baby of that body for many years. We have tried as much as we could to get our country and our municipal Parliament to also ratify those statutes. It is very welcome that now we have also seen crimes against humanity in our own midst and we are ready, and do appreciate the importance of this thing. There is one thing that worries me about the Rome Statute; one of the biggest supporters of the International Criminal Court (ICC), which is superpower itself, is not a signatory to the Rome Statute, and that is the United States of America (USA). What we are seeing now is a global statute of a global court that essentially will still have sacred cows. There are some people who cannot become subject to this court regardless of how much genocide they carry out. I want our own country, as much as possible, to use this in a manner that is very fair, and that is in line with its own objectives and spirit; it should not be used to intimidate sections of the May 7, 2008 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES 917 society. I also want this law to have a retroactive effect. We have had genocide in our country, which the Government and the State admitted, and the people of Kenya are witness to it; it is the Wagalla massacre, which was perpetrated by none other than our security forces. If the Attorney-General is serious about this, and because there is no statutory limitation on crimes against humanity, we will appreciate if he does some real work on the Wagalla massacre. People should be brought to court to face charges for the deaths of multitudes of people in Wajir. There was also another massacre in Malkamari in which 124 Kenyans were massacred by none other than our own armed forces. These are the security forces which were supposed to protect them. There is another one which happened in Garrissa in Bulla Kartasi, where 330 innocent Kenyans were killed. At that time, the incidents were very simply dismissed as dealing with Somali Shiftas. We were like lesser humans. Now that it has come home, and has happened in other parts of the country, suddenly we have realised that there is a crime against humanity and we need to deal with the situation. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, if the equality of this nation and the seriousness of this Government and the Attorney-General, who, incidentally, was also part of this kind of a process globally--- The man did a very good job in East Timor and many other countries in the world by trying to fight such crimes, but he has not impressed us so far in dealing with our own massacres and genocide. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, the law states that the States that carry out genocide, the warlords--- Our brothers in Somalia have been in the grip of warlords for the last 18 years. Those warlords have an interest here. The killers and maimers of women, children, the elderly and innocent people and the massacres that were carried out, are right in our midst. After we have ratified this statute, we want to see a situation in which our forces will have some teeth and carry out some investigations. If they need to compile evidence, as it is, we have 400,000 Somali refugees in our midst, many of them being victims of those warlords. Some of those warlords ended up becoming very senior Ministers in the Transitional Government, which we support under the auspices of the Inter-Government Authority on Development (IGAD). Those poor victims and their families are now prepared to come before such a jurisdiction and give evidence if our Government will be serious in apprehending and bringing them to justice. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, I am an ardent believer in the presumption of innocence until proven guilty, whether it is in a civil or criminal matter. The world and Kenyans know who the warlords and the criminals, who conducted this genocide, are. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, the least of the genocide is the cultural genocide, where peoples' languages, cultures and development have been suppressed by the superior race or tribe. Extreme marginalisation, which is the State marginalisation itself, is to keep a certain section of the society as a permanent under-class living in poverty, and to deprive it of its own land and livelihood; it is formal genocide. That is precisely what has happened to many hunters, gatherers and pastoralists in this country. We need to redefine that in line with the definition of the UN of what genocide is, which also includes cultural genocide. The Ogiek, the Njemps, the Boni, the Walianguru and many other indigenous communities in our midst, who do not have their land, need to have their problems addressed so that their further marginalisation can be arrested, otherwise the Government of Kenya will also be guilty of genocide. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, I would have been much happier if Kiswahili was put in as one of the languages of the ICC. I have seen that they have included Russian, Spanish, Arabic, English and Chinese. There are more speakers of Kiswahili than of the Russian. Our own Governments, and the continental body, would have been done a lot of pride if we also had Kiswahili as one of the languages in the ICC. I get worried about the restrictions on surrender. There are restrictions on surrender here. 918 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES May 7, 2008 Clause 51(1) states:- \"The Minister shall refuse a request by the ICC for the surrender of a person if- (a) there have been previous proceedings against the person and Section 53(3) applies.\" Clause 51(2) states:- \"The Minister may refuse a request by the ICC for the surrender of a person if- (a) there are competing requests from the ICC and a state that is not a party to the Rome Statute relating to the same conduct and Section 59(4) applies.\" Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, one state that we know that is not a party to the ICC---"
}