Kenya to resettle violence victims

Mr Moi's Kanu government was accused of inciting the violence

Kenya's parliament has agreed to resettle victims of politically motivated ethnic clashes that rocked the country during the advent of multi-partyism in the 1990s.

Members on Thursday voted 47 to 46 to pass the motion which was sponsored by the ruling Narc party and supported by some members of the opposition.

The clashes were blamed on the previous Kenya African National Union, (Kanu) government who now make up the opposition in parliament.

They live in intolerable inhumane conditions Patrick Muiruri Kanu MP

The measure's opponents, mainly legislators from the Kanu party, which was in power when the violence occurred, said that it could reopen old wounds and encourage new clashes.

The international organisation Human Rights Watch has estimated that more than 1,000 people were killed and at least 300,000 fled their land during the clashes, which began in 1991 in the Rift Valley, Western and Coastal regions of Kenya.

Inhumane conditions

Kanu MP Patrick Muiruri told the BBC's Network Africa programme that in his constituency alone about 522 displaced families still live in the forest without "shelter, medicines and are fed by charity organisations such as the Red Cross and World Vision".

Thousands from Rift Valley were forced to flee to the forests

"They live in intolerable inhumane conditions," he said.

Koigi wa Wamwere, the Narc MP who tabled the motion asserted that those displaced were living like squatters in their own country.

Mr Muiruri said that the Kikuyu community in the Rift Valley had been terribly affected.

He said it was not fair to have removed them from the land where they were born, raised and lived and sent them to the Central Province - the Kikuyu's ancestral land.

"Political agenda"

He dismissed the argument that the resettlement process could lead to renewed tribal clashes, saying that those MPs with such views have their own political agenda.

The people who create fears that people would fight because they could lose their land should be required to produce evidence of how they acquired the land, Mr Muiruri said.

"Did they grab it, steal it, take it by force or did they kill people to acquire that land?"

Mr Wamwere said what Kenyans wanted was the law to take its course and have perpetrators punished to deter such occurrences in the future.