By Andrew Cawthorne
MOUNT ELGON, Kenya (Reuters) - Church leader WycliffeMasibo describes seeing an elderly member of his flock whippedto death during a Kenyan army search for militiamen in hisremote mountain village.
Having made all the men lie on the floor, soldiers kickedand hit them, demanding they tell them where guns were kept andsuspects were hiding, he and others from Chongoywo village onthe slopes of Mount Elgon told a visiting reporter.
"They wanted the brother of Isaac Chele, one of my churchmembers, who is about 60, but the brother had fled," Masibosaid. "They asked him questions, but didn't care about theanswers. They kept hitting him. He died from the whip, I saw."
Authorities deny mistreating locals in a two-week-oldmilitary offensive to flush out members of the illegal SabaotDefence Land Force (SDLF) militia from the caves, forests andvillages around Mount Elgon in western Kenya.
But the Kenya Red Cross has treated 1,800 people forinjuries -- mostly bruising and swelling -- since it started.
Asked what the cause of those injuries were, Red Cross headAbbas Gullet said he could not go into detail, then added: "Itis obvious, my friend."
Refugees fleeing the area give identical accounts ofbombardments from the air and truckloads of soldiers rollinginto villages and beating them en masse.
The Mount Elgon conflict pre-dates the violence in Kenyaafter President Mwai Kibaki's disputed December re-election.
But it shares some of the root causes -- land disputes,ethnic tensions, marginalisation of remote areas -- and issomething of a microcosm of the deep historical problemsbedevilling the east African nation.
Since the SDLF took up arms in mid-2006 to fight for landit says was illegally taken from the local Soy community, morethan 500 people have been killed and 60,000 displaced.
Many locals are unsympathetic, saying the militia quicklyturned into a criminal band, emerging from the forest to lootand kill. The SDLF demands protection money and, at one point,punished drunkenness by slicing ear-lobes, they say.
"They slashed and killed my father, I had to run away,"farmer David Nyongeza, 52, said at a charity's fooddistribution point just outside the military operation zone.
"So I support the operation. It is a good thing."
"WAVE OF TERROR"
Local leaders and rights activists, however, say the armyhas gone too far, inflicting yet more suffering on atraumatised and impoverished local population.
Hassan Omar Hassan, a commissioner with thegovernment-funded Kenya National Human Rights Commission, said
everyone knew in advance when the army offensive was tobegin.
"So the militia fled. And based on the frustration offailure, the soldiers just hit at everyone," he said. "Theymissed their original target then created a wave of terror."
Local member of parliament Fred Kapondi and Mount Elgoncounty council chairman Benson Chesikak accuse the army ofusing torture on many of the more than 1,000 suspects held inthe first round of arrests.
They, and relatives of those taken into custody, spoke oftechniques like making suspects lie face up in the sun all day,walk on their knees, and step on barbed wire.
They also say there have been "tens" of deaths.
Regional police boss Abdul Mwasserah denied that.
"We have not killed anybody. We have not tortured anybody.The security forces are there to help the community, to ridthem of the criminals," he said. "Those who are complaining arenot representative. Most appreciate what we are doing."
Mwasserah said the offensive had yielded 31 AK-47 riflesand 300 arrests, and would go on as long as necessary. "We arenot in a hurry to pull out," he told Reuters.
A dusk-to-dawn curfew has been imposed, and roadblocks barjournalists from the zone of operations. But Red Cross vehiclesgo in and out on dusty, winding tracks across the slopes of thepicturesque mountain in fertile land near the Ugandan border.
Among the refugees, women also allege harassment.
Ruth Chebed, 27, said scores of soldiers swarmed into hervillage, Chelebe, at the end of last week. Some demanded thewomen show where the men kept guns.
"I didn't know, so they beat me here," she said, touchingher ribs. "They took my brother. I don't know where he is."
(Editing by Daniel Wallis and Tim Pearce)
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