Lest we forget, Ruto bankrolled Kiambaa church killers, victims scars still visible

• Oct 25, 2021

By John Kamau, Editor, Thingira.org (Email:thingiragema@gmail.com)

Why would you burn our people like this.. then tell us you hold the key for GEMA’s votes ???

No wonder you call those GEMA politicians following you a batch of cows.

Pictured above is one of the Kiambaa PAG Church massacre survivor.

Her scars remind us what Willima Ruto does best, kill and maim.

Emily Kimari was lucky to survive KAG Eldoret Kiambaa Church Inferno on New Year eve of 2008.

Unfortunately, her 86-year-old mum could not escape.

She had six children including six weeks infant twins but two disappeared in the middle of confusion.

Her body and face were destroyed while she was trying to search for her kids.

She later regained conscious at Eldoret Moi Teaching & Referral Hospital where she was rushed by Good Samaritans after the attackers left.

Emily was reunited with her four kids, but she could never see her mother and her five-year-old and old eight-year-old sons again.

She lives with scars, every spot is a painful reminder of a happy and prosperous family she had.

The story of Emily is a just but an example of horrendous ordeals that people under went in Rift Valley.

Below is the story as reported by the media:

On December 30, 2007, declaration of highly disputed presidential election results triggered widespread violence across Kenya.

The height of the violence was on January 1, 2008 when Kalenjin attackers who were unleashing murderers' violence on supporters of the presidential candidate who had just been declared winner, Mwai Kibaki, meticulously planned and torched down Kenya Assemblies of God Church full of women, children, and old people who had sought refuge there after learning of an imminent attack on Kiambaa Village in Eldoret.

Seventeen people, mostly women and children, were burnt alive inside the church, and more than eighteen other people were shot with arrows, hacked with machete, and killed outside the church.

Anthony Njoroge Mbuthia, who was then ten years old, survived the church fire but with very severe burns.

He was treated in Kenya for one year and then referred to Shriners Hospital for children in Sacramento, California, USA, for reconstructive surgery.

The international community led by the UN, USA, and the African Union quickly intervened to stop the murderers' violence that was becoming genocide, and thereafter mediation efforts between the combatants gave rise to a government of national unity that incorporated all political stakeholders.

 Investigations into the violence revealed that crimes against humanity were committed by well-organised and properly financed tribal militias.

 Several people, among them deputy president William Ruto, were indicted by the International Criminal Court that seats in The Hague, Netherlands.

While Anthony was recuperating at the hospital and while he was suffering acute pain, he asked, "Dad . . . why did they burn the church? I thought the church is a sacred place?" I had no simple answer.

Another survivor, Faith Wairimu, broke down into sobs when she stumbled across her husband’s remains in a field after days searching in vain.

Faith, a week after a mob torched a church and killed 30 people in the worst single attack of Kenya's post-election violence, was among those who found mutilated bodies of loved ones in nearby fields.

Her husband’s head and torso were missing.

“It’s him, he’s dead,” the farmer said, pressing her fist against her lips and closing her eyes to stem the tears.

“I recognise those were his trousers.”

At the time corpses piled up in a mortuary in nearby Eldoret, and columns of smoke rose from outlying villages looted and burned in continuing attacks by gangs of Kalenjin youths.

Two police officers lifted the hacked-off legs of Wairimu’s husband into a sack and loaded it on to their pickup truck.

“God help us,” muttered one officer, shaking his head.

Youths rampaged in the Rift Valley’s Kiambaa village on January 1, attacking the Kikuyu tribe of President Mwai Kibaki who was declared winner of a December 27 poll.

The mob shut dozens in a church, blocked the door with a mattress and set the church on fire, residents said.

Around 30 people burned to death while the attackers chased others into the surrounding fields, hacking at them with machetes.

Thousands of Kibaki’s Kikuyu tribe fled ethnic-based attacks and more than 250,000 people were displaced nationwide.

The Kikuyu are resented for their perceived stranglehold on the economy and politics, a feeling exacerbated by the electoral outcome.