KENYA: Act Tough to Save Lives, Catholic Bishops tell Government

NAIROBI MAY 8, 2015(CISA) -The Kenya Conference of Catholic Bishops has urged the government to take decisive actions to curb spiraling insecurity in the country.

In a statement read by Archbishop Zacchaeus Okoth, Chairman of the Catholic Justice and Peace Commission, the bishops noted that as a country, we cannot sit back as Kenyans continue to lose their lives due to laxity on the part of our security personnel.

The bishops were speaking on the background of the recent killings in the North rift and the terrorist attack on Garissa University College that left 148 people dead.

“These murders in different parts of the country must stop,” the bishops urged noting that the government had failed to offer permanent solutions to perennial insecurity in the country.

“Kenyans are worried and desperate. The Government, which swore to protect Kenyans, seems hopelessly incapable of offering permanent solutions to perennial insecurity,” the bishops said.

The bishops said that the  local leaders and other ‘untouchables’ who continue arming and inciting communities against each other must be dealt with.

The bishops were speaking at the end of the five-day plenary assembly at St Thomas Aquinas Major Seminary in Nairobi, during which bishop Philip Anyolo of the diocese of Homa bay was elected the new chairman.

The clerics vowed never to “relent in our call to Government to fulfill its constitutional mandate and protect all Kenyans…a Government that cannot protect its own people loses its legitimacy to govern.”

“Dear Kenyans, and people of good will, we, the Catholic Bishops in Kenya, urge you to remain prayerful and vigilant. We want to assure you, that we shall not tire of reminding the Government of its constitutional mandate to protect lives and provide basic services: that is our pledge to you,” concluded the bishops.

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