Untitled Document

Bush snubs world opinion
on Iraq, punishes Germany
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Ex-political prisoners visit
Kenya torture chambers
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Feb. 19 (AGR)— Meeting for an emergency summit in the Belgian capitol of Brussels on Tuesday, the 15 leaders of the European Union agreed that United Nations weapons inspectors should be given more time to find and destroy Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction, and declared that a war against Iraq "should be used only as a last resort."

Most EU member states were stunned by massive and unprecedented anti-war demonstrations over the weekend.

"In cities across Europe, people were clearly showing that they did not want war," said Guy Verhofstadt, the Belgian prime minister. "I hope this...will help the EU to find a common position."

While the leaders reached consensus, White House officials announced that US president George W. Bush plans at least two more weeks of diplomacy before deciding whether to attack Iraq.

Bush aides insist that he will not be slowed down by dramatic international opposition that was clear in Friday’s United Nations Security Council meeting, or by the millions of protesters who attended the record-breaking peace demonstrations around the world. Up to 10 million people marched across 600 towns and cities over the weekend in the biggest coordinated anti-war protest in history. On Tuesday Bush said that the size of the protests was irrelevant.

"Size of protest, it’s like deciding, ‘Well I’m going to decide policy based upon a focus group.’"

But Friday’s favorable reports by UN weapons inspectors, in addition to massive global opposition to war - expressed both in the council and in the streets - came as a blow to Bush’s plans.

A majority of the 15-member Security Council called for more inspections, and criticism of the US-British position produced several bursts of applause, a rare event in the council chamber that violated protocol but revealed the depth of sentiment.

The Russians smiled, the Chinese nodded, the French relaxed, the British froze in solemn contemplation, and the US Secretary of State, Colin Powell could scarcely contain his irritation, staring sourly into the empty space where his now discredited case for war had shone only last week. Powell’s argument that the inspections were virtually useless was overridden.

During the Security Council session, one of the most weighty in recent history, chief inspectors Hans Blix and Mohamed ElBaradei said that 115 inspectors have examined more than 300 sites and have found no evidence of nuclear, biological, or chemical weapons.

"The results to date have been consistent with Iraqi declarations," Blix said.

He also took an indirect slap at Powell, who last week presented satellite photos to demonstrate that Iraq sanitized some suspicious sites before inspectors arrived. Powell’s long dossier of Iraq’s alleged non-compliance came under attack from the chief UN weapons inspectors. They said they found several elements of his evidence either false or unconvincing.

Blix picked on two satellite images of a chemical warfare site, which Powell had told the Security Council, in his 90-minute presentation last week, proved Iraq was engaged in deception.

"We have noted that the two satellite images of the site were taken several weeks apart," Blix said, as Powell listened from the other side of the horseshoe-shaped table. "The report of movement of munitions at the site could just as easily have been a routine activity."

The night before, Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chrétien stood on US soil and warned the United States that it is not trusted in the world and needs United Nations legitimacy for a war on Iraq. "The price of being the world’s only superpower is that its motives are sometimes questioned by others," Chrétien said. "Great strength is not always perceived by others as benign. Not everyone around the world is prepared to take the word of the United States on faith." Chrétien said that if the United States, without UN support, wages war against a Muslim nation, it would raise the specter of a "clash of civilizations."

US to punish German ‘treachery’
America is to punish Germany for leading international opposition to a war against Iraq. The US will withdraw all of its troops and bases from there and end military and industrial cooperation between the two countries - moves that could cost the Germans billions of euros.

The plan - discussed by Pentagon officials and military chiefs last week on the orders of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld - is designed "to harm" the German economy to make an example of the country for what US hawks see as Chancellor Gerhard Schröder’s "treachery."

The hawks believe that making an example of Germany will force other countries heavily dependent on US trade to think twice about standing up to America in the future.

This follows weeks of increasingly angry exchanges between Rumsfeld and Germany, in which at one point he taunted Germany and France for being an irrelevant part of "old Europe."

Now Rumsfeld has decided to go further by unilaterally imposing the Pentagon’s sanctions on a country already in the throes of economic problems.

"We are doing this for one reason only: to harm the German economy," one source told British newspaper The Observer last week.

Another Pentagon source said: "The aim is to hit German trade and commerce. It is not just about taking out the troops and equipment; it is also about canceling commercial contracts and defense-related arrangements."

The Pentagon plan - and the language expressed by officials close to Rumsfeld - has horrified US State Department officials, who believe that bullying other countries to follow the US line will further exacerbate anti-Americanism and alienate those European countries that might support a United Nations resolution authorizing a war.

"After this, Germany is finished as a serious power," one of the sources added.

Last Thursday, Rumsfeld refused to rule out the US use of nuclear weapons in the possible war with Iraq.

Former NATO supreme commander, General Wesley Clark, said last Sunday that the United States is well on its way to becoming a colonial power if Bush does go ahead with plans to attack Iraq.

"We are at a turning point in America’s history. We are about to embark on an operation that is going to put us in a colonial position in the Middle East following Britain."

It is a huge change for the American people and what this country stands for, he said.

The Bush administration, he said, has not respected its allies and that is why it finds itself without the support of many NATO allies and even in those countries prepared to support the US, public opinion is against the war.

France threatens EU membership over Iraq
On Monday night French President Jacques Chirac launched a furious attack on east European candidates for EU membership, saying they had behaved "recklessly" in making pro-American statements on the Iraq crisis.

Speaking at the end of the emergency EU summit in Brussels, the French president astonished diplomats and dismayed the European commission and other governments by accusing the incoming and aspirant members of "infantile" and "dangerous" behavior. He warned the candidates the position could be "dangerous" because the parliaments of the 15 EU nations still have to ratify last December’s decision for 10 new members to join the bloc on May 1, 2004.

Chirac particularly warned Romania and Bulgaria, who are still negotiating to enter the bloc in 2007.

"Romania and Bulgaria were particularly irresponsible to (sign a US endorsement letter) when their position is really delicate," Chirac said. "If they wanted to diminish their chances of joining Europe they could not have found a better way."

Sources: Associated Press, Globe & Mail (Toronto), Guardian (UK), Independent (UK), Inter Press Service, Knight Ridder, Los Angeles Times, Observer (UK), Reuters, The Scotsman, Sydney Morning Herald, Times of India, Washington Post

Geneva, Switzerland, Feb. 11 (IPS)— The practice of dumping in international agricultural trade is hurting the livelihood of 70 percent of the world’s poorest people, says a new study by the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP), a US-based think-tank.

This kind of trade distortion — selling goods at prices below production costs — reaches levels as high as 40 percent for some commodities in the United States, says IATP.

The United States is placing five primary farm commodities — maize, soy, cotton, wheat, and rice — on the world market at dumping prices, according to the IATP analysis comparing the production costs with the prices these products fetch in international trade.

The differences are "shocking," says the report by IATP president Mark Ritchie, director Sophia Murphy and agricultural economist Mary Beth Lake, presented in Geneva Tuesday.

In the case of wheat, US dumping levels stand at around 40 percent, while for maize it varies between 25 and 30 percent. Price distortions for soy increased over the last four years and now reach 40 percent. In 2001, cotton saw a 57 percent difference between sales price and cost of production, while for rice the difference has stabilized at 20 percent.

This form of disloyal competition, which violates World Trade Organization (WTO) rules, is one of the most harmful of all market distortions that are perpetuated in the multilateral system, according to the study.

IATP trade director Murphy stressed that the practice of selling farm commodities at prices below production costs paralyzes agriculture in developing countries, where farming is vital for food security, sustaining rural populations, reducing poverty and improving trade.

"Below-cost imports drive developing country farmers out of their local markets," and is occurring around the world, in places "as far apart as Jamaica, Burkina Faso, and the Philippines."

Dumping also hurts farmers who sell their products to exporters and end up finding their participation on the global market is undermined by the lower-cost competition, says IATP.

The report notes that after many years of tolerating dumping of agricultural commodities, some countries are beginning to take action, seeking investigation into whether certain US farm exports are being sold below cost.

Brazil, for example, is considering filing a complaint against the United States with the WTO dispute settlement body for its distortive practices in the cotton trade.

"In 2001, Canada briefly imposed both countervailing and anti- dumping duties on US corn imports," states the IATP report.

The release of the study, titled "United States Dumping on World Agricultural Markets: Can Trade Rules Help Farmers?", comes at a crucial time in the WTO negotiations for modifying the Agreement on Agriculture, one of the areas lagging farthest behind in international trade liberalization efforts.

The talks began Jan. 1, 2000, and are slated to wrap up Dec. 31, 2004, but have been bogged down by the fact that most of the industrialized countries are proving unwilling to reduce their protectionist measures for their farm sectors.

The European Union, Japan, South Korea, Norway, and Switzerland are the heaviest subsidizers of their farmers, but the IATP study shows that the United States is also highly interventionist in the agricultural sector through its dumping practices.

A panorama of how the WTO agricultural negotiations are going will be evident in the coming weeks, after the chairman of the special committee on agriculture, Stuart Harbinson, presents a progress report.

The WTO ministerial conference held in Doha, Qatar, in November 2001, established that the committee must approve new trade rules by Apr. 1 of this year for the second phase of the negotiations, when bartering on real liberalization of the agricultural markets will begin.

For the 145 WTO member nations, this is a critical moment, says IATP. "The minimum acceptable outcome for the reform of the Agreement on Agriculture is to provide and enforce rules that outlaw dumping in world agricultural markets."

The study says the United States is a leader in defending trade remedy measures, such as duties to boost prices on imports deemed to be entering the US market at devalued prices.

The new duties imposed on steel imports in 2002 "underline that the current US administration does not intend to change its policy of taxing dumped imports."

But when it comes to farm commodities, Washington shows no interest in addressing the dumping problem, say the IATP experts.

In 1998, points out the report, US-based multinational companies sold US wheat abroad at an average price of $34 a ton, which represented nearly a billion dollars under production cost for the 28 million tons of wheat sold.

To confront the problem of farm commodities dumping, the IATP urges "the elimination of visible export subsidies as quickly as possible."

The report also calls for a commitment from exporting countries to "keep products priced below the cost of production out of world markets."

To achieve this objective would require strengthening international trade rules, says IATP, ostensibly putting the ball in the WTO’s court.

Feb. 13 (AGR)— Three Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) contractors who vanished after their plane crashed on Feb. 13 during an intelligence gathering mission in southeastern Colombia last week are believed to be held by a unit of the guerrilla Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). Another American and a Colombian army officer were killed "execution style" at the scene of the crash, said the Colombian military.

It is the first time during the four-decade Colombian civil war that an American working for the US government has been killed or kidnapped by the rebels, although dozens of Americans have been kidnapped in the past and three US rights activists were killed in 1999 after rebels accused them of having ties to the CIA.

The cause of the plane crash was apparently unrelated to guerrilla activity.

After getting word of the crash, US officials scrambled to send rescue teams to the region, but at least one report said rebels had been heard announcing "We have them! We have them!" in an intercepted radio transmission.

Cropdusting pilots contracted by the US State Department have been waging a massive fumigation campaign against coca crops in the areas near the plane crash. But the State Department Contractor, DynCorp, said its personnel were not aboard the crashed plane.

A Colombian military official said Colombian military Black Hawk helicopters were being sent to the area following the crash, but were ordered to return, with US officials being in charge of the case. About 4,000 men, including both US and Colombian special forces, supported by helicopters and spy planes, were dispatched to find the three Americans. About 3,500 people, mostly civilians, die each year in Colombia’s civil war. The 18,000 strong FARC and a smaller guerrilla group, the ELN, battle both the outlawed paramilitary United Self Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC) and the Colombian military, which has strong ties with the paramilitaries.

The FARC, ELN, and AUC are included in the US State Department’s list of foreign terrorist groups and the FARC considers US personnel "military targets." The US has given Colombia aid totaling $2 billion since 1997, mostly for the military and police. Military assistance this year is expected to total $500 million, with $98 million used to train Colombian troops in counter-guerrilla tactics in an important break by the Bush administration from a past policy that restricted aid solely to anti-drug programs. Four hundred US military personnel and an equal number of "contractors," most ex-military and many with ties to the CIA, are present in Colombia.

Colombia’s government has been clamoring for more varied assistance and fewer human rights restrictions on the future aid.

In recent speeches, President Alvaro Uribe has proposed that a military deployment similar to the one being mounted against Iraq take place in Colombia.

Feb. 13 — Afghan officials said yesterday that at least 17 civilians were killed in a US-led bombing raid in southern Afghanistan.

The victims were living in villages in the Baghran district of Helmand province in southern Afghanistan, a Pashtun area where many had supported the Taliban regime.

Haji Mohammad Wali, a spokesman for the Helmand provincial authority, said the relatives of the dead had been pouring into local government offices. "The people came crying, saying their relatives had died or were missing," he said. Their accounts suggested that mostly women and children had been killed.

US military officials based at Bagram, north of Kabul, said they had been conducting an operation along a mountain ridgeline in Helmand targeting suspected Taliban fighters. Colonel Roger King, a US military spokesman, said he had no information about civilian casualties. If the account of civilian deaths proves accurate it would mark one of the most serious bombing errors by the US military in Afghanistan for several months.

Last July, 48 people were killed and more than 100 injured when a US gunship attacked a wedding party in Uruzgan province in central Afghanistan, the home of the Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar. At the time the US military insisted its aircraft had come under fire. Since then American soldiers patrolling in the Pashtun areas of southern Afghanistan have faced growing resentment and guerrilla attacks. US officials said the latest raids in Helmand began on Monday when ground troops saw 25 Taliban fighters taking up offensive positions. The men were armed with Kalashnikov assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenades. The troops called in B52 and B1 bombers which targeted the ridgeline for eight hours with 2,000-pound JDAM "smart" bombs. A Danish F-16 was also involved in the raid, dropping a 500-pound GBU-12 bomb. On Tuesday after the bombing, US troops arrested 12 armed men believed to be Taliban suspects near the village of Lejay in the Baghran valley, Col. King said. He said the operation, code-named Eagle Fury, was still under way.

"The intensity to a certain extent depends upon on the enemy," he said. "If the enemy presents itself in a posture to attack us, then we will engage them."

Jilani Khan, who runs a money-changing business in Baghran, near the site of the bombing, said US and Afghan soldiers had cordoned off the area. He said American soldiers had told villagers they were hunting for Mullah Omar.

In Helmand, Wali said he had passed the accounts of civilian deaths to the central government in Kabul. There had been more bombing in the area on Tuesday night, he said, but it was unclear if there had been more civilian deaths.

A spokesman for President Hamid Karzai in Kabul said the government had asked the US not to launch bombing raids during the three-day Islamic Eid-al-Adha holiday, which began on Tuesday.

"The government prefers they shouldn’t bomb in respect of Eid days, unless it is very necessary," said Tayab Jawad.

Feb. 19 (AGR)— Israeli officials reacted with outrage to a Feb. 13 decision by Belgium’s highest court that Belgium could try Prime Minister Ariel Sharon for war crimes once he leaves office.

Benjamin Netanyahu, the foreign minister, lashed out at the ruling as "an affront to truth, justice, and the right of the state of Israel to defend itself against terrorism."

Israel recalled its ambassador from Brussels, while Netanyahu summoned Belgium’s ambassador to Israel to receive a protest.

Human rights groups hailed the court decision as permitting victims of genocide and war crimes to pursue justice regardless of where the crimes took place.

Sharon and the current director-general of the Israeli Defense Ministry, Amos Yaron, are being sued by survivors of a 1982 massacre of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon by Lebanese Christian militias, who were backed by Israeli forces.

Reports at the time said the Israeli army allowed the militia into the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps which they guarded while the massacre continued.

Yaron oversaw the Beirut sector when Israel invaded Lebanon to repel attacks by Palestinian fighters.

An Israeli investigation found Sharon, who was Israel’s defense minister at the time, indirectly responsible for failing to prevent the massacre of between 800 and 2,000 refugees and he was forced to resign from government but never faced charges.

Former Labor Party leader and Foreign Minister Shimon Peres accused Belgium of interfering.

"Belgium cannot be Israel’s judge. It has not gone through [the same things] as Israel and cannot judge history," he said.

At issue is a 1993 Belgian law allowing the courts "universal jurisdiction" over crimes against humanity or war crimes. The court’s ruling accorded serving high officials immunity, but implied that they could be pursued once they left office. The ruling overturned a lower court’s decision last year that accused people had to be present in Belgium to be investigated.

In the new ruling, the Supreme Court said the case against Yaron could proceed, while new investigations into Sharon could get under way once he leaves office.

Israeli justice minister, Meir Sheetrit, referred to Belgium as "this small and insignificant nation," wondering how it could present itself as "the judge for the whole world."

Besides Sharon, war crimes proceedings have been brought in Belgium against a number of world figures.

These include Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, Cuban President Fidel Castro, Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, and Ivory Coast President Laurent Gbagbo.

Arafat agrees to power share
According to a Feb. 14 report by the British paper the Independent, Palestinian leader Yassir Arafat agreed to appoint a prime minister to take over the day-to-day Palestinian leadership in a letter to Tony Blair.

Arafat has been under pressure from the United States to appoint a prime minister – and the letter, sent to Blair before his talks with George Bush in Washington last month, was apparently intended to be passed on to President Bush.

The idea of a Palestinian prime minister was floated as a way of getting round Israel’s refusal to deal with Arafat, and President Bush’s call for Arafat to be replaced as Palestinian leader. The idea is that Arafat will be "kicked upstairs" to a symbolic role as Palestinian leader with a prime minister taking over the day-to-day running of what is left of the Palestinian Authority (PA), and negotiations with the Israelis.

The appointment of a prime minister is one of the provisions in the "roadmap", a peace plan drawn up by what has become known as the Middle East "quartet" – the US, Russia, the EU, and the United Nations.

Perth, Australia, Feb. 13 (IPS)— Australian troops deployed to the Persian Gulf in an impending war against Iraq have been warned by their parents to refuse anthrax vaccinations, which a US medical expert says has serious risks linking them to Gulf War Syndrome.

The Australian Defense Force confirmed Wednesday that 11 sailors refused the vaccinations against anthrax, being undertaken as a precaution in case the attack on Iraq involves coming under biological warfare.

Three sailors who earlier refused the shots are already back in the country, and eight others are being sent home.

Local news reports indicate that dozens of other Australian personnel have expressed serious concerns, fuelled by Internet reports linking the anthrax vaccine to sterility in men and serious diseases like cancer.

Lesley Bullard of Darwin in northern Australia, said he e-mailed his son, telling him to refuse any further vaccinations.

"I want my son to partake in the operations over there (the Gulf) should we need to go to battle, but I don’t want him dead before he goes to battle," Bullard told Australian Broadcasting Corp Radio.

His son, aboard the warship HMAS Darwin, was not told of the need to be vaccinated when he left Australia.

In the United States, there has been a campaign against the compulsory vaccination of military personnel, while more than half of the 16,000 British forces being sent to the Gulf have refused the anthrax vaccine.

Meryl Nass of the US Vaccine Advisory Board said the anthrax vaccine had been linked in three separate studies to Gulf War Syndrome. "In particular, the anthrax vaccine is dangerous," said Nass.

"People who take it and give it should be well aware of the risk-benefit analysis before they go ahead and get themselves injected," she said. "What we do know is that there is a high rate of initial reaction and in the Gulf War population, there’s a high rate of chronic disease."

The anthrax bacteria is used in biological warfare. As an aerial weapon, it is made up of microscopic spores than can be inhaled and in a nightmare scenario has the potential to kill millions of people.

But Defense Minister Robert Hill maintained there was no danger. "There have been some service personnel that have been reluctant to be vaccinated, which I don’t quite understand because I am advised that it’s a perfectly safe vaccination," he told ABC Radio.

"Our medical advice is that this is a perfectly safe inoculation and we’re providing it to them for their safety. It’s our responsibility to do so. …Unfortunately, there are those that are promoting, through websites, suggestions of severe adverse reactions to anthrax vaccinations. But that’s not our medical advice," Hill added.

In the 1991 Gulf War, hundreds of thousands of coalition soldiers, including Australians, were vaccinated against anthrax and other diseases.

Graham Bertolini, now with the Gulf War Veteran’s Association, was one of them and believes his health has been jeopardized by the very vaccines administered to protect soldiers.

"The health problems that are coming back are fatigues, rashes, muscle cramps, spasming, joint muscle pains, memory loss, blistering — they’re just some of the problems," he said.

Australia is the first country apart from the United States and Britain to begin deploying troops to the Gulf. Canberra has committed 2,000 personnel that will join 200,000 US and British troops already in the Gulf or en route there.

Bertolini said he was worried that the experience of Gulf War veterans who served in 1991 is about to be repeated. " These poor boys and girls are going to be in the same boat in 12 years’ time. I hope they are not."

Former able seaman Jody Parish, also a veteran of the 1991 Gulf War, supports the Australian navy personnel’s refusal to have anthrax vaccinations. "I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t take any of the injections," she said.

Parish was a 19-year-old electrical engineer aboard supply ship HMAS Westralia when the hostilities broke out with Iraq. Since her return, she has experienced fatigue, irritable bowel syndrome, skin irritations, memory loss and anxiety disorders. "We had anthrax vaccinations. That I know of," said Parish.

"I went to the Gulf and then I was getting sicker and sicker when I came back. I’m 31 and sicker than most people in their 60s," Parish added. "I can put washing in the washing machine and 20 minutes later I’ve forgotten about it. Then I’ll find the clothes in there the next day."

Nairobi, Kenya, Feb. 14 (IPS)— Nothing could more powerfully symbolize the change that has come to Kenya than the sight of Raila Odinga, now one of the most powerful ministers in Kenya’s month-old new government, touring the torture chambers where he was incarcerated under the previous government.

The National Rainbow Coalition won a landslide victory over the Kenya African National Union (KANU) in elections on Dec. 27, bringing the party’s 39-year uninterrupted rule to an end.

The Nyayo House torture chambers have been whispered about for more than a decade, with human rights activists narrating brutal tales of torture and interrogation.

On Tuesday, they were finally made public when a group of survivors toured them.

On Thursday, it was the turn of Odinga, accompanied by three other former detainees.

Nyayo House, a 26-story building in Nairobi city center, is the government’s Nairobi provincial headquarters.

A 12-foot wide gray steel door in the building’s underground car park slides back to reveal a steel barred gate behind which is a narrow corridor and 12 tiny cells. Here, these men and thousands of others were held naked, in dark waterlogged rooms, for days on end without food or water.

The four former inmates compared notes, remembering their painful experiences.

"You had a mattress on the floor. What was left was only three feet. I would walk that three feet nearly a thousand times until I became dizzy and fell down again," recalled Wanyiri Kihoro, a member of parliament (MP), who was kept in Nyayo House for 74 days in 1986.

"Out of 74 days, I was not given any food or water for 24 days. I was totally naked. I lived in water. I was a human amphibian. That was the most inhumane treatment I ever received," he added.

They also visited the 26th floor interrogation room and described how they were tortured there.

"In the mornings, you would be brought up here for interrogation," said Odinga who was twice detained in Nyayo House, during the struggle for the restoration of democracy, in 1988 and 1990.

"First, it’s fairly friendly, like a persuasion. Then if you persist, the following day they will become more intimidating. The third day, they would be violent until you finally give in and confess," he said.

Israel Agina, the longest-serving detainee who was held in Nyayo House for 96 days, described how his torturers threatened to kill him.

"They told me they had the express authority of the then President [Daniel Arap] Moi that anybody who resists can be killed. And they said you either accept or you get killed," he said.

"But I told them that I stand by what I want. We want change. We want Kenyans to speak freely and we want political prisoners to be freed.

"They said if that was the case they are going to hold me here and if possible kill me," he said.

Odinga said the NARC government will "very soon" establish a South-African style truth and reconciliation commission to investigate the human rights abuses carried out under the previous government.

"We don’t want revenge. We as a NARC government want reconciliation. We are going to give people an opportunity to forgive each other so that we can move together, as the Kenya people, in the future," he said.

Kihoro said he had already been offered compensation for his ordeal but had refused it.

"We don’t want to be given compensation in a way that it will look like a bribe that is being given to an individual," he said.

"We want everybody who has gone through this process, fighting for multiparty democracy in this country, to be treated equally, to be given the opportunity of reliving that experience. It is a very therapeutic treatment that will be good for the future of this country," he asserted.

When the Nyayo House cells were first opened to the public on Tuesday, the government announced that it would turn them into "a national monument of shame."

"We want the Nyayo dungeons to be preserved," agreed Kihoro.

"We want this place to become a museum that Kenyans can learn from, even schoolchildren. Because in another 10 years, we don’t know who comes in. It could be a mad man. And we want to make sure that will not happen to any other Kenyan in future," he said.

"This was our Auschwitz," said Odinga, referring to the infamous Nazi concentration camp.

"This is a history that we need to preserve so that our people can be reminded that the cost of freedom is dear. That Kenyans will never again allow themselves to be led by a despotic regime that can design this kind of a mechanism for the torture of its people," he said.

An estimated 2,000 people were tortured in Nyayo House during President Moi’s rule (1976-2002), at least a quarter of whom were killed.