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Was white Kenyan aristocrat’s conviction fair?
It’s been almost three years since the son of the 5th Lord Delamere, Thomas Cholmondeley, first hopped down from a police truck and entered into Kenya’s High Court to face murder charges over the death of a local poacher on his estate.
Cholmondeley sat as impassively this week as he did that first day in court as the judge convicted him of a lesser charge of manslaughter.
Although the death penalty is off the table, he still could face life in prison.
East African albinos fear witchcraft murders
In Burundi, 11 albinos have been killed since last year. In Tanzania, over 40 have been killed since mid-2007 by people who use their body parts, including hair, limbs and genitals, for witchcraft.
Tanzania is currently holding a secret vote to try to identity those involved in the murders and the trade in body parts. It has also banned traditional healers in an effort to curb the killings.
It is not clear why there has been such an upsurge in murders although Tanzania’s government and albino groups blame people involved in fishing and small-scale mining, an industry that has been booming.
The graves of albinos had long been plundered for the gruesome trade, leading to them being filled with concrete to prevent robbery. The killings are more recent.
Burundi has arrested at least eight people who were found with human bones, saying the killings are being carried out at the behest of people in neighbouring Tanzania. In Tanzania, at least 90 people – including four police officers – have been arrested on suspicion of killing albinos.
Tanzania’s President Jakaya Kikwete has called the killings stupid and superstitious, but some people clearly believe that using the parts of the murdered albinos will help them to achieve success.
Even if the murders can be stopped, how can such beliefs be challenged?
One thing common about Africans, we are rebellious towards change and to things that we think are unusual, being different to the majority does not mean you do not have the same attributes. Being an albino is just a different pigmentation and that does not make them less than a human. Killing them is the same as participating in evil deeds. Let us stop being judgemental and supersitious about things or it will cost us as it has in Haiti.
It appears to me that this trial was blatantly turned into a race issue by certain Kenyan politians and the Judge was under huge political pressure to ensure a conviction no matter what the evidence produced. For the Judge to completly deregard the defence was a scandal in itself. In my opion this man did not get a fair trial and reflects the deep seated corruption in Kenya. Possibly the politians are trying to distract from the fact that they themselves are partaking in a land grab of their own.
I, myself grew up in a country that is predominatly black and was once ruled by the white man, as Kenya was, and I find the black man always seems to dwell on the past. To which the black politicians, who rule, are only too happy to remind him mainly to hind their own greed and misgovernment.
I think Kenyans should be ashamed of their Judicial system and the trial this man received. SHAME ON KENYA.