Kenya opens up torture chamber

IN THE tiny cells, inmates were once beaten with wooden sticks and held under water to gain confessions.

Yesterday, Kenyan torture victims returned to the dark Nairobi basement after the government opened it to the public, determined to turn it into a national monument to the human rights abuses committed by the previous government.

The 24 floors of Nyayo House, in the centre of the Kenyan capital, tower high above many of the city’s buildings. But from 1983 to 1996, the building’s subterranean levels were home to a detention centre where human rights groups say more than 100 people were interrogated, tortured and beaten by Kenyan security forces. Some people died, though no-one knows how many.

Behind a now-demolished wall in the basement car park, a dark corridor leads to 14 cells, each about two yards square. Water pipes, hoses and pieces of broken chairs remind the survivors of what they endured.

Joe Njoroge, now 35, said he spent five weeks at Nyayo House in 1990, accused of belonging to an underground movement called Mwakenya, said to be against the government of the then president, Daniel Arap Moi.

"I used to sit like this, as the floor was submerged in water," he said, squatting in the corner of cell number two. "I was stripped of my clothes and was naked in the cell all the time I was there. Every morning, the guards would bring a hose and blast highly pressurised water at me.

"I didn’t know whether it was day or night as it was always dark and the guards would bring me breakfast in the evenings in order to confuse me."

Kiraitu Murungi, the justice minister, said the new National Rainbow Coalition (NARC) government, which won a landslide victory in December’s elections after 24 years of Moi rule, wanted to ensure that what happened in Nyayo would never happen again. "We will take measures to have this torture chamber protected as a national monument of shame, as we have made a commitment to protect and promote the human rights of all Kenyans," he told reporters and human rights activists.

Victims described how they were taken from the underground cells to the 24th floor, where they were beaten with broken chairs.

"They blindfolded me and brought me here," said Paddy Onyango, a Mwakenya member who was held twice at Nyayo House, in 1982 and 1986. Now 43, Mr Onyango is the executive director of Kenya’s Truth and Justice Commission.

"There were days when I thought I was going to die as they used to beat me all the time and none of my family or friends knew where I was," he said. "There were many days that I wasn’t given food or even access to the toilet. I survived because I was forced to drink the water and my urine on the floor of the cell."

The Kenyan civil rights group, People against Torture (PAT), said the opening of Nyayo House was a historic moment for human rights in Kenya, but added that more needed to be done. "We want an independent and thorough investigation into the incidents of torture by the previous government. We want prosecution of all those who are responsible and we want to convert Nyayo House torture chambers into a national museum," said Kang’ethe Mungai, himself a survivor and founding member of PAT.

In another sign of change, the government yesterday seized a skyscraper that belonged to KANU - the party that had run the East African nation for 39 years before its defeat in December. The 32-story Kenyatta International Conference Centre (KICC) had been used as KANU’s party headquarters since 1989.

Rafael Tuju, the tourism minister, said yesterday: "While the ownership of the property is muddled by the fact that at one time, the boundary between party and state was non-existent ... on balance this property belongs to the government of Kenya."

Mr Tuju said the KANU government had not followed the proper procedure for disposing of government property when it handed the KICC complex over to the party.

A crowd of KANU supporters jostled with Mr Tuju to keep him from entering the KICC building yesterday.