ICC Note: Somali Islamic terror group al-Shabaab has ravaged eastern Kenya. From Mandera in the north, to Garissa, to Lamu County along the coast, the militants have carried out attacks, especially targeting Christians. Survivors from different attacks often tell the story of gunmen separating Christians from Muslims and murdering Christians like they did on April 2 when militants attack Garissa University College, killing 148 people, mostly Christians. But the untold toll of Christian persecution in Kenya and the insecurity that comes with it is the cost for education in the region. Al-Shabaab has murdered teachers and scared many others out of the area, due to their constant attacks and terror they wage against the Christian Church.
By Isma’il Kushkush
6/3/15 MANDERA, Kenya (New York Times) — In a small classroom at Mandera Academy, a private school, posters with numbers, Swahili and English letters, and geometric shapes hung on the walls as dozens of students crammed together on small wooden desks.
Bilan Abdi, 9, stood up and spoke about her teacher, Violet Muranga, who was shot dead last year as she was dragged out of a bus with other victims while traveling to visit her family.
“We learned a lot from her,” Bilan said softly. “Songs like ‘Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.’ ”
Kenya has suffered mightily at the hands of the Shabab, a Somali Islamist extremist group whose deadly attacks have left a painful void in this region’s schools.
Many of the 28 people killed on the bus, including Ms. Muranga, were teachers in the area heading home for Christmas break. Their deaths came around the same time as an attack at a mine in this northern corner of the country, where dozens of workers were separated by religion, forced to lie face down and shot dead.
Farther south, nearly 150 people, most of them students, were killed this year in April when militants stormed a university in the town of Garissa. It was the nation’s worst terrorist attack since the 1998 bombing of the United States Embassy in Nairobi.
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