PeaceWays

Fall - Winter 2012, Volume 7 Issue 2

Asia/West Pacific: New Work in Nepal

September 2012

By John Michaelis, Co-coordinator, Asia/West Pacific Initiative

I was privileged to travel to Kathmandu twice in 2008 to facilitate the first Alternatives to Violence Project (AVP) workshops in Nepal. Those ranged from a Basic to facilitator training workshops. Subhash Kattel, who was instrumental in the invitation to bring AVP to Nepal, has organized some fifty workshops since then. Recently he was asked by the United Nations Refugee Agency to organize a series of workshops in two refugee camps in eastern Nepal where violence has been on the rise in recent years.

The kingdom of Bhutan, a small country east of Nepal and bounded by India and Tibet has interested me since I learned they base their economy on the GHI (Gross Happiness Index) rather than GDP (Gross Domestic Product). However, my opinion of Bhutan has changed since I learned that seventeen years ago they forced out more than 100,000 of their population, mostly ethnic Nepalese, more than 50,000 of whom are still housed in refugee camps near Damak, in south-eastern Nepal.

As often is the case in such situations, substance abuse in the camps—mainly alcohol consumption by men—has risen to the point where violence against women and children has become a serious problem.

I received a plea from Subhash a month or so ago to drop everything and come to assist in training a facilitation team to work in the camps. The training is now complete. Fifteen new facilitators are keen to practice newly acquired skills.

I followed much of the AVP process I learned from Nadine Hoover in Indonesia. In the Advanced and Training for Facilitators (T4F) AVP workshops, the participants set ground rules they would follow in their daily lives, not just while they were in the workshop. They chose as a goal to live AVP transforming power in their lives. They felt that transforming power as described in the AVP mandala was insufficient for their purpose and, after thoughtful discussion, they defined transforming
power as loving yourself, loving other people as you would like to be loved, and practicing integrity in all aspects of life.

The consensus process in the advanced workshop followed the principles of discernment. We practiced times of silence, listening to each other speak from the silence, recognizing the wisdom of each participant, and seeking the best solution for the situation, regardless of personal interest. We dealt with complex decisions including whether or not to cancel a basic workshop that was scheduled to follow the T4F.

Four facilitators, including Subhash, are now in one of the refugee camps in Damak, facilitating the first workshop there. They hope to complete at least twenty workshops by the end of 2012.

Asia West Pacific Initiative
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www.fpt-awp.org

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Preparing for Elections in Kenya

By David Zarembka, Coordinator, African Great Lakes Initiative

October 2012

Building on the Election Violence Prevention Project initiated during the 2010 Burundian elections by the African Great Lakes Initiative, we are now working with the Kenyan Friends Church Peace Teams (FCPT), training citizen reporters to monitor the situation throughout the election process and report intimidation and violence to the Call-in Center.

Although the next election is scheduled for March 4, 2013, we have already activated the Call-in Center, trained citizen reporter trainers and conducted five citizen reporter trainings.

One area of particular concern is Mt. Elgon, on the border between Uganda and Kenya. From 2006 to 2008, perhaps 600 people were killed and almost 100,000 displaced in a major clash over land.

In 2008, the Kenyan army entered the area and killed the leader of the rebel group and many of his armed followers. But little has been done on the underlying issues that led to the violence. An election will give opportunity for revenge killings.
Since 2008, FCPT/AGLI has conducted a number of Alternatives to Violence Project (AVP) and eight Healing and Rebuilding Our Community (HROC) workshops on Mt Elgon.

In August 2012, we conducted citizen reporter training and within a few days we received alarming text messages to the Call-in Center. Four people were killed by an unknown gang, a school was burned down and threatening leaflets were sent to businessmen stating that they would be attacked if they did not leave the area. There were also reports that the two rival politicians in the area were recruiting youth militias.

Call-in Coordinator Peter Serete and FCPT Coordinator Getry Agizah attended a meeting called by the government chiefs in the area affected, but they felt that the administration was doing little to address the situation.

Consequently, Peter and Getry called a meeting of those people from Mt. Elgon who had attended the AVP, HROC, and citizen reporter trainings for a consultation. The sixty local residents pinpointed a nearby community where much of the violence was originating. FCPT/AGLI is proposing to do a series of civic-education and HROC workshops and to train a group of citizen reporters in that area who will be organized into watch-dog groups.

When reports of incidents are made to the Call-in Center, the center can contact all the citizen reporters in the affected area, communicate with government and election officials, and report to international Quaker organizations. Will this be effective in preventing violence? I don’t know. I do know that we peacemakers should use all the resources and knowledge
we have to do the best we are capable of today.

Will this be effective in preventing violence? I don’t know. I do know that we peacemakers should use all the resources and knowledge we have to do the best we are capable of today.

African Great Lakes Initiative
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www.aglifpt.org

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Peacebuilding en Las Américas: Guatemala

By Saskia Schuitemaker, PLA Guatemala Coordinator

The people of Guatemala endured 36 years of civil war and genocide. The war ended in the 1996 Peace Accords. The trauma of war added greatly to the burdens of mental illness and disability among Guatemalans, particularly in rural indigenous communities who were disproportionately affected by the violence. The government of Guatemala has not adequately addressed the problems. Justice remains elusive for victims of the genocide, human rights defenders continue to be intimidated, and authorities fail to uphold the rights of Indigenous Peoples (Amnesty International report on Guatemala, 2012).

Rape and violence during the war normalized violence against women, which is widespread. The genocide deliberately destroyed the fundamental social fabric of Mayan communities because cohesion in a community is needed for resistance.
It is also needed for healing.

Today, Guatemala is one of the world’s most violent countries and impunity for criminal violence is the norm. Youth under 30 make up more than half of the population. The lack of work and educational opportunities and resulting poverty drive young people into criminal gangs. Fifty-five percent of all murder victims and perpetrators are young people. In Guatemala, a repressive, traumatized and violent society, mistrust is a tangible reality.

In Programa Alternativas a la Violencia (PAV), a series of experiential, small-group workshops of 20 hours, participants develop a special sense of community based on trust and mutual respect. That atmosphere enables participants to explore and reflect on themselves and their lives so that they can access transforming power. They begin healing and strengthening their personal resources for dealing with violence. The workshops are a powerful resource in the lives of participants.

Mildre Azucena Yaxon Sazo, September 2012
PAV Guatemala

PAV Guatemala is a sustainable, locally governed organization that aims to provide a strong PAV workshop program with expanded accessibility, especially for vulnerable youth and women. An interim governance committee has established a PAV Guatemala logo, brochure, and Facebook page. A web site is being developed. The workshops in the past 18 months have trained and mentored 20 new facilitators, with about 50 percent of them being youth between 18 and 30. Established facilitators have also been given ongoing training.

Guatemalans in PAV hope to build peace in their families, communities, schools, and church groups.

Peacebuilding en Las Américas
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Behind the Scenes

Hi. My name is John Kintree. My job title is Accounting Specialist, and I work in Friends Peace Teams’ St. Louis office, which supports all of the FPT initiatives. One deposit and one disbursement at a time, the mission of Friends Peace Teams is advanced by the work I do, and
people’s lives are changed.

In addition to recording income and expenses, I maintain a database of donors, reconcile bank statements, submit periodic reports and payments to the IRS and state and local governments, arrange for printing and mailing PeaceWays, and respond to a variety of requests for information from within and outside of FPT. My job is stimulating and rewarding.

On average, I work 15 to 20 hours per week. Our office is in the basement of the St. Louis Friends Meeting. Members of the Meeting help as volunteers. Janet Heath and others help write thank you notes to donors. Debra Penna-Fredericks takes care of writing checks to pay expenses. Tom Paxson, who now lives in Pennsylvania, arranges wire transfers of funds.

One of the best parts of my job is communicating with the coordinators of the three initiatives. I take pride in making sure that there is clear accounting and reporting of the funds available for their work. Through their work, the efforts of the many people in the communities our projects serve, and the larger circle of generous supporters, I feel as if I am part of a greater whole. It feels good.

Please contribute to the Friends Peace Teams general fund by making undesignated donations to FPT. The general fund provides
administrative support to the initiatives, as described above, publishes PeaceWays, and maintains the FPT web site. Checks may
be made out to “Friends Peace Teams” and mailed to the address at right. Or, donate online at www.friendspeaceteams.org.

Friends Peace Teams
1001 Park Ave.
Saint Louis, MO 63104 USA
314-588-1122
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PeaceWays

Friends Peace Team
1001 Park Ave.
Saint Louis, MO 63104-3720
USA

Karin Kasdin of the Huffington Post writes about her experience with HROC training in her article, "Finding Hope in the Next Generation" .

Report from Kenya #202 – December 19, 2012

Update on Goma

How Someone Can Get 97% of the Vote

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Update on Goma

Report from David Bucura, AGLI Central Africa Coordinator:

On December 12th to 15th, I was in Gisenyi and went in Goma for two days on 13rd and on 14th. I had meetings with committee members and we set criteria how we may give food to chosen families. We agreed on 101 families including rape survivors and displaced people from Masisi. The situation in Goma is better now, but most people I spoke with lost hope because they do not know what will happen tomorrow. Goma is controlled by the police, but I heard that M23 [the rebel group] are not far from Goma, just 5 kilometers away. During the night, there is a lot of shooting, and fear is still there in some places. I was advised not to go to some places as well. But, most people from the committee were present. The distribution was done at CAPP office. It was a nice place because there is a fence. With the funds AGLI sent, we bought 65 sacks of maize (corn) flour and 15 sacks of beans and gave food to 101 families.

The HROC training for Healing Companions started on Monday with 15 participants. Most of them are not staying at Peace Center as they feared to spend a night there because they want to be with their families. Only 4 people from Sake are staying at Gisenyi Peace Center. Theoneste will give you more detailed about it when it is finished.

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How Someone Can Get 97% of the Vote

How is it possible for a politicians to get 97% or more of the vote as Mwai Kibaki did in his home district and Raila Odinga in parts of Nyanza Province in the 2007 election? In the 2012 US election, the highest Barack Obama received was in the District of Columbia with 90.9% of the vote and his second highest total was in Hawaii at 70.5%. Romney’s highest total was 72.8% in Utah. After closely observing a number of African elections, the following are some of the techniques used to ensure an overwhelming vote for the favored candidate.

The first condition is to assert tribal and ethnic solidarity, emphasizing that our group must remain 100% united or our opponents from the other tribes will win and discriminate against us. While this is the ethnic underpinning, it only works if it enforced.

The first tactic is intimidation of anyone who opposes the ethnic candidate. Recently Uhuru Kenyatta and his supporters demanded that the other Kikuyu candidates – Martha Karua and Peter Kenneth – forgo their candidacy to support ethnic unity. His party was rebuffed by these two others saying that he was implementing a dictatorship. I saw a comment in the paper that the minor Luo candidate, Raphael Tuju, had to wear a helmet in Kisumu (Raila’s home area) to protect himself from being hit by rocks. When I was on a speaking tour after the last election, the brother of a Kikuyu candidate who supported Raila instead of Kibaki, told me that he was vilified and even feared for his life as he campaigned for his brother. After the last election a number of prominent Kikuyu -- mostly human rights activists -- opposed what Kibaki did and a “hit-list” of twenty-five Kikuyu “Traitors to the Tribe” was circulated.

At the local level, numerous methods are used. Campaigners for the favorite candidate tell voters that their votes are not secret as they will know how a person voted. Since the voting booths are no more than 3-sided cardboard boxes on top of a school desk – one at the voting station I observed was close enough to the window that someone at the window could see how a person voted – votes can well believe that their votes are not “secret.”. They are also told that if they don’t vote for the appropriate person their kids will not be able to go to school and they will not be able to obtain service at the local hospital. Another tactic is for the politician to hire 100 to 200 youth and have them march down the road, singing the praises of the candidate and waving branches in the air. They block the road and no one tries to pass as, if they hit someone, their car would be destroyed and the driver perhaps killed. I myself have been intimidated by this show of force. These youth group are frequently those who get into fights with youth from other candidates. At night shortly before the election, groups of supporters will travel to people’s houses and “remind” them how they should vote, sometimes leaving them with a bribe. In an election where people are issued with voter cards in order to vote, candidates will “buy” the voter cards in areas where they are weak – the price was a little over a dollar in the 2010 Burundian election where I heard that this happened. Bribes are also given on election day – the going rate in Kenya in the 2007 election was 1000 shillings, then worth about $15. The purpose here, though, is to make sure that the voter actually goes to the poll and votes appropriately.

In areas in Kenya where there are members of minority tribes who might vote for the wrong candidate – in other words, almost everywhere – extra means are used to intimidate them. Just recently our Call-in Center received a report before the 2013 Kenyan elections, Nandi youth cut down the maize (corn) of a Kikuyu farmer who had fled his plot during the 2008 post election violence. This was intimidation, not only for that particular farmer, but all the Kikuyu in the area. A Kikuyu I heard at a recent meeting in Eldoret commented that he would be accused of voting for the Kikuyu candidate even if he hadn’t and of course he had no way of proving it. The solution to this dilemma we heard at a listening session which we just held in Musimbi -- a local village where in the 2008 post-election violence, the Kikuyu had fled to the Lumakanda Township Primary School where I had gotten to know them. The Kikuyu all said that they would refuse to register to vote so that they couldn’t be accused of voting for the “wrong” candidate. In certain areas this is a major reason for the poor registration of voters for the upcoming Kenyan elections.

Election day in Kenya next year is March 4, a Monday and a holiday (hint, hint, America). Minority people from an area will travel back to their home area on Saturday or Sunday to vote -- not where they presently live and work – so that they can safely vote for their preferred candidate. Moreover they will be “out of town” if any post-election violence or intimidation occurs against their minority group. The result, though, is to increase the percentage of total vote for the favored candidate in both the area where the person is leaving and his home area where he will vote.

All then is ready for election day, where everything is calm – the only commotion I saw when I observed one election was when a rich businessman wanted to cut in line because he had work to do, and those in line strenuously objected – he left without standing in line and voting. Elections observers, both local and international, report that everything is fine with people patiently waiting in line, clearly unaware, or unwilling to confront, all the pre-election activity that forces voters to vote for a particular candidate.

Inside each polling station are partisan election observers for each political party who, just by their presence, can intimidate voters. Also elections are every five years so people have forgotten how to vote. Our election observers have seen polling official, who all come from the local area, point to where voters should place their mark as they showed elderly voters how to vote.

Then any post-election violence or intimidation is the prelude for the following election so that voters are intimidated long before the electoral landscape has even been determined.

By these means plus others that I haven’t noticed yet, an almost 100% vote for the favored candidate is assured. Is this a “free and fair” election? I don’t think so.

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If you would like to be added to this listserve, please send your name and email address to This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

Please donate to AGLI's programs by sending a check to the African Great Lakes Initiative of the Friends Peace Teams made out to Friends Peace Teams/AGLI  to 1001 Park Avenue, St Louis, MO 63104 or go to our webpage at www.friendspeaceteams.org to donate by debit/credit card.

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Since 1998, David Zarembka has been the Coordinator of the African Great Lakes Initiative of the Friends Peace Teams. He has been involved with East and Central Africa since 1964 when he taught Rwandan refugees in Tanzania. He is married to Gladys Kamonya and lives in western Kenya. David is the author of A Peace of Africa: Reflections on Life in the Great Lakes Region (available at www.davidzarembka.com).

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David Zarembka, Coordinator
African Great Lakes Initiative of the Friends Peace Teams
P. O. Box 189, Kipkarren River 50241 Kenya 
Phone in Kenya: 254 (0)726 590 783   in US: 301/765-4098
Office in US:1001 Park Avenue, St Louis, MO 63104 USA 314/647-1287
Webpage: www.aglifpt.org