by Shailja Patel
- Kenya -

And they asked him:
Why do you sing?
And he answered, as they seized him: I sing because I sing

And they searched his chest
But could only find his heart
And they searched his heart
But could only find his people….

From “Poem Of The Land” – Mahmoud Darwish

This poem evokes my friend, Philo Ikonya, who has also sung while being violently seized by police. Philo is the President of the Kenya Chapter of PEN, the worldwide association of writers for freedom of expression. She is a lifelong activist, an artist to her fingertips. She looks unflinchingly at the horrors of poverty and violence and brings the voices of their survivors into the spaces where powerful elites gather. She mentors Kenyan girls raped in the post-election violence, protests government corruption, and wields her pen with fierce, lyrical intelligence in the global media.

by Shailja Patel
- Kenya -

A February 7th article in The Economist, "Ethnic Cleansing in Luoland," dangerously presents the crisis in Kenya as an issue of inter-communal violence. It focuses on the violent attacks on Kikuyu Kenyans in Western Kenya, by their Luo neighbors, following the December 27th election.

The term "ethnic cleansing" is both inaccurate and unhelpful to Kenya's current crisis. It fuels the buildup by the Kibaki (Party of National Unity) camp to the declaration of a state of emergency, the deployment of the military or, worse, the usurpation of civilian governance by military governance.

Unquestionably, victims of the current violence experience the violence as being directed at their ethnicity. But the violence is politically instigated. It finds ethnic expression or manifests itself ethnically because Kenyan politics are organized ethnically.