Mungiki
Mungiki ( Kikuyu for mass ) is a social movement in Kenya that is regarded by many as a criminal organization .
The traditionalist Mungiki group spread rapidly from around 1985, mostly among the young and impoverished Kikuyu, especially in the slums . It came to her aid that the new democracy movement from 2002 onwards had created a kind of power vacuum through less police presence . The youth sect tries to tie in appearance and secret rituals to the great Mau Mau uprising of the fifties. Initially, the sect was a social movement that stood for security, anti-corruption, concrete help and value orientation. Mungiki ran model farms for poor farmers. But that soon changed. Its co-founder and leader was Hezekiah Ndura Waruinge , born around 1970 , a grandson of the famous Mau Mau general Waruinge.
13 of the leaders (including Waruinge) converted to Islam in 2002 in a Shiite mosque in Mombasa . Islamic leaders of the various wings have spoken out both for and against the sect.
The sect was banned unsuccessfully in March 2002 under President Moi's government. The sect lives underground and may have an estimated two million followers today. Waruinge has since left the group (but still supports it) and has become an Islamic preacher under his new name Ibrahim . In December 2006, he had not succeeded in reopening the proceedings before the court of appeal.
The members, who often become violent through arson , forced circumcision of women, extortion of protection money or murder, demand that all Christian things be abandoned and that they return to traditional African customs or religion . Mungikis practice polygamy and force girls and women to (officially) long since given up genital mutilation, even if they are not followers of the sect. Tobacco and alcohol, but also pants and mini skirts, are forbidden for women in the sect.
Dissidents who have broken free from the sect have been brutally murdered in dozen of cases. On May 20, 2007, gang members presumably beheaded three men of around fifty in the small village of Kianjogu near Mount Kenya . On May 21, 2007, 30-year-old Solomon Karinge Njenga "tout" (a "conductor" on a matatu ) died in agony after being kidnapped and fighting for his life in a corn field. The murderers not only beheaded Njenga, who, according to his brother, was critical of the mungikis, but hacked off all of his limbs and genitals. They threw their heads on the stairs in front of the village elder's office, their torso on a farm just a short distance from the Matatu stopping place and their legs in a homestead in the village of Banana, so that the residents had to discover the body parts immediately. In 2009 the sect is said to have killed 24 residents in a Kenyan village.
In 2002, modern child protection legislation was anchored in Kenya with the “Childrens Act”. According to this, genital cutting of girls under 16 is prohibited by law and is made a criminal offense in Article 14. It is not known whether this article has ever been used in court. By contrast, Amnesty International has found that Mungiki members have already been convicted of murder. The Kenyan government has also drawn up a "National Action Plan for the Abolition of [Female] Genital Circumcision from 1999 to 2019".
Individual evidence
- ↑ Welt Online - severed heads are on the wayside May 22, 2007
- ^ Spiegel Online - Mungiki sect: Many dead in brutal attack in Kenya April 21, 2009