Kenyans honor victims of Garissa University massacre one year later

Hundreds gathered at Kenya’s Garissa University on Saturday carrying candles, singing hymns, and sharing memories, to mark the one-year anniversary of the terror attack that killed 148 people, many of them Christians.

The event shed light on the pain and fear many still live with and the ongoing frustration over the government’s response to the attack.

On April 2, 2015, four gunmen from al-Qaeda affiliate al-Shabaab stormed the campus early in the morning and killed some students during their morning prayers. They attacked the dorms next, with one sniper standing outside to shoot anyone who tried to flee. Kenya became a target for extremists after it deployed troops to Somalia in 2011 to battle al-Shabaab’s insurgency in that country.

“I am here to bury my past and heal myself,” said Paul Wekesa, a second-year education student who survived the massacre. “I am here to show respect to my three close friends, Agnes, Edward, and Cherop—I managed to escape but they didn’t.”

At Moi University, a parent campus for Garissa, the Fellowship of Christian Union Students (FOCUS) also remembered the victims with a program that included a tree planting, procession, and prayers.

Garissa University reopened on Jan. 4, nine months after the attack. But the impact of that day is still evident on the campus. Only 150 of the university’s 700 students returned. Many transferred to Moi University to complete their studies. Universities across the country continue to live in fear of possible attacks, and false alarms have resulted in several stampedes in which hundreds have been injured and two have died.

“It has led to flight, we don’t have our own teachers,” the university’s former principal, Hassan Sheikh Ali, told Al Jazeera. “It has left more mess in the country. It has led to more fear, more suspicion between us, so literally we are in a quagmire.”

Since the attack, the government has stationed additional troops at the university and in the forest that borders Somalia. But many say they expect more from the local authorities. Wekesa said the two weeks of counseling provided by the government was not enough, and the government needs to offer some compensation to the affected families.

“That is the duty of the government,” agreed Shukran Gure, Garissa county women’s representative.

Kenyan authorities have started to build a 435-mile wall along the Somali border in an effort to keep terrorists out. But locals view it as an expensive project that fails to tackle the problem—terrorists already within the country.

“We know that walls are not effective ways of dealing with problems,” said Peter Aling’o, a terrorism expert with the Institute for Security Studies in Nairobi, Kenya. “We must be able to have a solution where the government looks at this politically to find homegrown solutions that can enable the government to effectively deal with this from within, and from Somalia, the external threat.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.