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A collage image of River Yala in Siaya County. |
HAKI Africa has raised the alarm over the increasing cases of bodies retrieved from the Yala River in Siaya County.
The organization, which is committed to improving livelihoods and promoting the progressive realization of human rights in Kenya, visited the area after receiving news on social media of bodies floating in the river.
The Haki Afrika team, led by Executive Director Hussein Khaled, says they actually witnessed "with our own eyes" the bodies floating in the river.
“We also saw dozens of unidentified corpses fishing from the river in the morgue of Yala county hospital. Some bodies were found in sacks that were sewn up like parcels,” says Haki Africa.
Locals say the bodies were dumped into the river by unidentified people. “They are usually brought in a double-cab pick-up and probox. When they reach the bridge, the men get out of the vehicles, pick up the bodies and throw them over the bridge into the river," one of the locals told representatives of HAKI Africa.
We responded to social media reports of floating bodies in River Yala. We went to Siaya County and saw 21 unidentified male bodies.We saw 2 more floating in the River. @HakiAfrica has a list of 67 victims of enforced disappearances from 2021 and 8 so far in 2022. #RiverYalaBodies pic.twitter.com/A7yfuepEVj
— The People’s Watchman (@bonifacemwangi) January 17, 2022
River Yala, depository for dead bodies
Residents along the river - from its source on the Nandi Escarpment in the Rift Valley to Lake Victoria - told sad stories of how they lost count of the bodies they discovered while swimming in the river.
The way the bodies were found points to a grim picture of some people using the water supply to hide the murders.
According to Boniface Mwangi, a photojournalist-activist who accompanied HAKI Africa to the Yala River, some of the bodies were found in sacs, some tied, some with polyethylene bags over their heads. He was found mutilated, according to other residents.
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| Haki Africa Director, Khalid Hussein. |
There are more than 20 unknown bodies in the morgue. It was thrown into the river by people using the double cabin and probox,” says Mwangi.
In November 2021, a resident claimed that no week passed without a body being found in the Yala River.
Okero told us there are still many bodies rotting on River Yala. We didn’t believe him but agreed to follow him to the River. In a span of minutes, he had spotted and shown us two bodies. The whole scene was sickening. We told him we had seen enough. @HakiAfrica #RiverYalaBodies pic.twitter.com/EZCp7rgsgO
— The People’s Watchman (@bonifacemwangi) January 17, 2022
I was tagged on quoted tweet last week by @JoelMbirika and l shared it with @HakiAfrica’s director @husskhalid. Khalid requested I accompany him to Yala today. I’m going to do a short thread of what we saw in River Yala and Yala Sub-County Hospital mortuary #RiverYalaBodies https://t.co/0XLGj6NkCK pic.twitter.com/mdY09vcpkG
— The People’s Watchman (@bonifacemwangi) January 17, 2022
“We cannot say that the people we found dead in the river were drowned. Some of them were tied with ropes. David Rabut, a resident of the village of Ndiwo in Bondo, told The Standard that after some of these people were killed for some reason, they were thrown into the river to hide the murder.
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