Violence erupts after disputed election result
KENYA: At least 24 people were killed in Kenya yesterday, including a nine-year-old girl, as outrage over the disputed re-election of President Uhuru Kenyatta unleashed the country’s worst political violence in a decade.
In the slums of Nairobi, police fired tear gas and live ammunition as they attempted to prevent supporters of Raila Odinga, the defeated presidential candidate, from marching on a park in the centre of Kenya’s capital.
With violence also erupting in the west of the country, the opposition - which refused to concede defeat in Wednesday’s election claimed that more than 100 people had been killed.
Laying the blame squarely on the authorities, Odinga’s brother, Oburu, accused the police of carrying out ‘‘the random killing of our people’’.
Stirred to fury by Odinga’s as yet unsubstantiated claim that an elaborate conspiracy had denied him victory, opposition supporters poured on to the streets within moments of Kenyatta officially being declared the winner late on Saturday.
The pop of tear gas canisters, interspersed with volleys of automatic gunfire, has echoed through parts of the capital ever since, although Kenya’s interior minister, Fred Matiangi, denied that any live rounds had been used and claimed that no-one had been killed.
The slum of Kibera, Nairobi’s biggest, told a different story. Blackboards along its main street, charred black from burning tyres, still advertised a match between Arsenal and Leicester City that no one in the football-mad slum had been able to watch.
Down an alleyway off the street, a group of protesters chanting ‘‘No peace!’’ advanced towards the police lines. The officer commanding the area turned to summon helmeted reinforcements from the green army lorries parked nearby. ‘‘Kujeni! Come!,’’ he ordered. ‘‘Action.’’
Within moments the skirmish was over as the overwhelmed protesters scattered down the alleyways to regroup. A community leader, who asked to be identified only as Otieno, said he had been able to confirm four deaths in Kibera, but feared there could have been many more.
‘‘They are gunning down my people but we don’t know exactly how many because they have taken most of the bodies away,’’ he said. ‘‘We have not been given the freedom to demonstrate as guaranteed by the constitution so long as we are peaceful, and yet they are killing innocent people.’’
But the government, whose supporters have also taken to the streets in celebration, called protesters looters and gangsters. ‘‘Let’s be honest - there are no demonstrations happening,’’ Matiangi said. ‘‘They are criminals and we expect police to deal with criminals how criminals should be dealt with.’’
Odinga, who had previously instructed supporters in Kibera to gather at Nairobi’s Uhuru Park, has been conspicuously silent for the past three days, leaving the seething discontent caused by his defeat without leadership or direction.
In a country bitterly divided along ethnic lines, many of his fellow Luos have begun to turn on the President’s Kikuyu tribe, in a disturbing echo of the bloodshed that claimed 1300 lives after Odinga lost an election in 2007. Although the violence of the past 24 days does not remotely compare to that of 10 years ago, Kikuyus and their property have again been attacked.
The vast majority of Kikuyus had already fled Kibera before the results were announced. But Kikuyus did not flee other slums. A hospital in Mathare reported receiving people bearing machete wounds - an indication that their injuries were caused by ethnic, rather than police, violence.
However, the vast majority of fatalities were from gunshot wounds inflicted by police, human rights groups said, estimating a total of 24 including a nine-year-old girl killed by a stray bullet in the Mathare slums. - Telegraph Group