Kenyan torture survivor Taiga Wanyanja calls for American support

In 1995, Taiga Wanyanja was in a torture chamber at Naivasha GK Prison outside of the Kenyan capitol, Nairobi. He never thought he would survive.

Wanyanja, a husband and a father of two, was arrested on a charge involving a movement against the government of the East African nation. He says the allegations were false, but it didn’t matter to the Kenyan government.

Now Wanyanja is the coordinator of Mateso: Mwatikho Torture Survivors Organization, a nonprofit that focuses on the rehabilitation of torture survivors in Kenya and surrounding nations, and he is in San Diego to ask for support and educate people about his home country, where he says civil rights are breached everyday.

“I’m here to find support for the healing process,” Wanyanja says. “Our community has been traumatized. I’m here to urge for reforms - we need a better government system. Thousands have died since the 1960s and there is still no record of a person being brought to justice for any killing.”

To understand the importance of Mateso, Wanyanja says, it is crucial to understand the history of Kenya.

After the British relinquished control of the East African country, the Kenyan African National Union took over and citizens endured inequality and discrimination, says Wanyanja.

And it didn’t end when a new regime took office in 1978, or in 2002 with current President Mwai Kibaki (although Kibaki has said publicly he would fight corruption).

“Over the years it became more repressive,” Wanyanja said. “They were arresting people in mass for holding certain beliefs against their systems.”

Fourteen years ago, Wanyanja experienced it first hand.

One night, police officers raided his house and arrested him on the allegations of his anti-government involvement.

“I had my family with me when they searched my entire home,” Wanyanja said. “At the end they said to my family, ‘We’re taking him and you may not see him again.’”

He was thrown into the bed of a truck where he saw dozens of men laying face down and on top of each of other, each blindfolded.

For the following nine months, he endured hour upon hour of ruthless torture.

“They would make you sit down, naked and on the cold floor and accuse you of being in a movement against the government,” he said. “I didn’t know what they were talking about but it did not matter to them.

“If it was not enough that I was sitting on the cold floor, they would hit the bottom of my feet…. they would tie strings to my privates and pull them…. they would put electrical wires on me and shock me…. they would beat my eardrums and do it over and over again for hours. They wanted me to break down and say that I was in the movement.”

When Wanyanja wouldn’t admit he was involved in one of the movements, officials changed tactics, he said.

For weeks he wasn’t fed. At other times, the torturers would put him in a freezing pool of water or put him in a room with extremely hot temperatures.

“Each time, they would say, ‘Are you ready to testify now?’” Wanyanja said. “At one particular time, I thought that was the end of me. I could not stop bleeding.”

Nine months after he was imprisoned, when the Kenyan government faced scrutiny and international pressure to liberate captives, Wanyanja was released.

Upon his freedom, but felt responsible to help other survivors.

In 1996, he joined Mateso — an organization created in 1992 — to offer counseling, medical care and advocacy for the thousands of Kenyan torture survivors.

“The survivors were completely devastated and they didn’t know what to do,” he said. “They needed a lot of medical care but they didn’t know where to look for a doctor. There was not this type of organization until we started it. We carry out rehabilitation programs to heal the trauma.”

Because the Kenyan government denies that torture practices in its’ prisons exist, and, because Mateso aids torture survivors and has worked with the U.N. to hold the country’s officials accountable, the organization’s work is considered dangerous.

Wanyanja and his colleagues have had to relocate two times to hide from the government. Wanyanja even took refuge in Uganda for six months. He is still a wanted man. Kenyan officials want to imprison him for his involvement with Mateso.

Despite the threats that plague his life, Wanyanja believes he must keep working and must keep talking until “democratic avenues” are welcomed by the Kenyan government, which he says, imprisons innocent people and the lawyers who represent the people.

The situation in Kenya has become increasingly dire, Wanyanja said, with the rise of militia groups that create their own governance in certain parts of Kenya, and even unjustly “tax” the people.

“[Militias] would kill people and the government would not say anything,” he said. “Why should the government be quiet when people are being killed? It is a militia-state country.The rights of the people have been taken. We are completely paralyzed in Kenya. I am here to ask your people (Americans) to support the healing process.”

Wanyanja is being hosted by Survivor of Torture, a local nonprofit organization, which assists torture survivors who have moved to the San Diego region. He will speak at Price Charities at 6:30 p.m. Thursday. Price Charities is located at 4305 University Ave., Suite 640. For more information about Mateso, visit its Web site. For more information about Survivor of Torture, visit its Web site.

Hoa Quach is the political editor for the San Diego News Network. Follow her on Twitter.

Tags: kenyan african national union, kenyan government, kenyan torture survivors, mateso, mwai kibaki, mwatikho torture survivors organization, Nairobi, naivasha GK prison, no torture organization, SDNN, survivors international

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