Kenyans riot over president's re-election

[Steve Gardner]

Source: The Guardian

Haroon Siddique and agencies
Monday December 31, 2007
Guardian Unlimited

A bible-toting woman preaches to a crowd of protesters as she stands by riot police in the Mathare slum in Nairobi. Photograph: Roberto Schmidt/AFP

More than 60 people have been killed during violent overnight clashes in Kenya after the ruling president, Mwai Kibaki, declared himself victorious in elections and was sworn back into office almost immediately.

Some of the worst violence was in the country's third-largest city, Kisumu, a stronghold of the opposition. A morgue attendant told the AFP news agency that 46 bodies had been brought in overnight by police, including three women and two children. He said more than 20 of the bodies had multiple bullet wounds

Police in Kisumu admitted opening fire on looters but would not comment on any deaths.

The overnight death toll across Kenya stood at 64, AFP said, with at least 84 killed since Thursday's election. Police today imposed a 6am to 6pm curfew in Kisumu and ordered officers to shoot any violators, a police official said.

The opposition leader, Raila Odinga, refused to accept the result of the presidential election and dismissed the vote as rigged.

Kibaki was sworn in for a second five-year term after the results were announced last night. He had trailed in all opinion polls and all but the final count yesterday.

The declaration of the result triggered violence in Nairobi's slums where protesters clashed with hundreds of riot police.

A witness told reporters that 15 bodies were today scattered in different parts of Nairobi's Korogocho slum, which had been rocked by clashes.

Kibaki was given 4,584,721 votes to the 4,352,993 tally of Odinga.

Odinga, a fiery former political prisoner, rejected the result, claiming massive rigging by the government, and today compared Kibaki to the notorious Ugandan dictator Idi Amin. "There is no difference between him and Idi Amin and other military dictators who have seized power through the barrel of the gun," he said.

Odinga's supporters in Kibera, Nairobi's largest slum, were today trying to march towards the city centre where Odinga was planning to hold a parallel swearing-in ceremony and adopt the title of "people's president".

Police warned he faces arrest if he goes ahead with the ceremony and officers in riot gear surrounded the park where it was due to take place.

A joint statement by the British Foreign Office and the Department for International Development cited "real concerns" over irregularities, while international observers refused to declare the election free and fair.

The European Union's chief observer, Alexander Graf Lambsdorff, said that in one constituency his monitors saw official results for Kibaki that were 25,000 votes lower than the figure subsequently announced by the electoral commission. "Because of this and other observed irregularities, doubt remains as to the accuracy of the result of the presidential election as announced today," he said.

But the US, which cooperates closely with the Kibaki government on anti-terrorism matters, congratulated the president on his re-election and said it supported the electoral commission's decision. Robert McInturff, a state department spokesman, said: "The United States congratulates the winners and is calling for calm, and for Kenyans to abide by the results declared by the election commission"

Kibaki, who was sworn in less than an hour after the result was declared, said: "I call upon all candidates, all Kenyans, to accept the verdict of the people. With the election now behind us it's time for healing and reconciliation."

Odinga called for the president to step down. "It is a shame that a few people are robbing Kenyans of the democratic progress they have achieved," he said. "The train of democracy in Kenya is unstoppable, like the flow of the Nile."

[Steve Gardner]

...hundreds shelter inside

Source: International Herald Tribune

Opposition supporters taunting members of the police, Monday, during riots in the Kibera slum in Nairobi. (Karel Prinsloo/The Associated Press)

Reuters, The Associated Press
Published: January 1, 2008

NAIROBI: A mob attacked and burned a church where hundreds of people had taken refuge from post-election violence, killing at least 10 people Tuesday, a police officer and local reporters said, as the Kenyan president came under increasing pressure over the disputed vote.

Ethnic clashes have rocked Kenya since President Mwai Kibaki's disputed re-election Sunday. At least 213 people have died nationwide since Saturday, according to accounts from the police, morgues and witnesses.

"I saw about 10 to 15 bodies crammed in a corner. They were charred, I could not look at the scene twice," a local reporter who visited the scene said from Eldoret town, about 300 kilometers, or 185 miles, from Nairobi.

"There was a part of the church where I could not access but the death toll could be about 25."

The reporter said about 200 people had been seeking refuge at the Kenya Assemblies of God Pentecostal church, about 8 kilometers from Eldoret in fertile Rift Valley Province.

He said the victims were mostly Kikuyus from Kibaki's ethnic group, who fled homes in the area in fear of their lives.

"Some youths came to the church. They fought with the boys who were guarding it, but they were overpowered and the youths set fire to the church," he said.

Another local journalist in Eldoret who spoke to witnesses said up to 30 bodies lay in the church, and four were outside.

A Red Cross volunteer on the scene who counted the bodies and helped the wounded said at least 50 people had been killed.

A police officer who was not authorized to speak to the media confirmed that several people burned to death at a church in Eldoret.

The area is ethnically mixed but traditionally dominated by the Kalenjin tribe. It suffered ethnic violence in 1992 and 1997 when hundreds of people - mainly Kikuyus - were killed and thousands more displaced in land clashes.

A senior security official in Rift Valley said a mob had burned down the church, adding that as many as 15,000 people were sheltering from the latest violence at churches and police stations in Eldoret town.

Elsewhere on Tuesday, the country was mostly calm, although skirmishes were still reported in the Nairobi shantytowns that are home to tens of thousands of opposition supporters. Much of the capital was a ghost town, with residents hunkering down in their homes and riot police manning roadblocks.

In Britain, Prime Minister Gordon Brown urged President Mwai Kibaki, sworn into office for a second five-year term, and opposition leader Raila Odinga to hold talks.

"The violence must be brought to an end," he said Tuesday in London.

Opposition leaders set the stage for more turmoil by calling for a million people to rally Thursday against Kibaki, who had been trailing Odinga in early election results and opinion polls before pulling ahead.

The government banned the demonstration but opposition leaders said they would forge ahead anyway.

The bloodshed has exposed tribal resentments that have long festered in Kenya, where Kibaki's Kikuyu people - Kenya's largest ethnic group - are accused of turning their dominance of politics and business to the detriment of others. Odinga is from the Luo tribe.

Anne Njoki, a 28-year-old Kikuyu, said she fled her home in the slums after she saw Kikuyus being attacked and their homes looted. She was camped out near a military base with her sister, 3-year-old nephew and 7 year-old niece.

"They have taken our beds, blankets, even spoons," she said of the looters. The children hadn't eaten for days, she said.

The Kenyan Red Cross said gangs were even checking on the tribal affiliations of aid workers trying to help the injured.

Riots also have been raging in opposition strongholds in western Kenya, the tourism-dependent coast and the Rift Valley. In Nairobi's Mathare shantytown, Odinga supporters torched a minibus and attacked Kikuyu travelers, witnesses said Tuesday.

"The car had 14 people in it but they only slashed Kikuyus," said Boniface Mwangi. Five were attacked by the machete-wielding gang, others robbed, he said.

In Nairobi's shantytowns - home to a third of the city's population - parents searched for food with many shops closed because of looting.

Winnie Nduku, 34, said she and her three young children hadn't eaten in three days and the family had no money because her husband, a minibus driver, had been unable to get to work.

"My eldest daughter keeps asking what am I going to do and the small one is crying from hunger," she said.

The widespread violence and gathering international pressure could pressure Kibaki to find a way to compromise with the opposition.

The European Union and the United States have refused to congratulate Kibaki, and the EU and four top Kenyan elections officials have called for an independent inquiry.

The discrepancy between the parliamentary and presidential results, unexplained delays in vote tallying and anomalies that included a 115 percent turnout in one constituency fueled suspicions of fraud.

"The 2007 general elections have fallen short of key international and regional standards for democratic elections," chief EU election monitor Alexander Graf Lambsdorff said in his formal assessment.

Four of the country's 22 top electoral commissioners called for an independent inquiry, commissioner Jack Tumwa said.

In London, Brown urged both Kibaki and Odinga and find a compromise.

"What I want to see is them coming together. I want to see talks and I want to see reconciliation and unity," he said Tuesday.

Odinga said he spoke twice by telephone with Brown.

"'We are ready to talk to Kibaki on one condition: that he owns up publicly that he was not elected president of Kenya,"' Odinga said he told Brown.

Kibaki, 76 - won by a landslide in 2002, ending 24 years in power by Daniel arap Moi - is praised for turning the country into an east African economic powerhouse with an average growth rate of 5 percent. But Kibaki's anti-graft campaign has been seen as a failure, and the country still struggles with tribalism and poverty.

Odinga, 62, cast himself as a champion of the poor. His main constituency is the Kibera shantytown, where about 700,000 people live in poverty, but he has been accused of failing to do enough to help them in 15 years as a member of parliament.

[Steve Gardner]

Source: CNN

NAIROBI, Kenya (CNN) -- Opposition leader Raila Odinga on Sunday rejected Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki's offer to form a unity government amid continuing violent unrest following last month's disputed presidential election.

Kibaki made the power-sharing offer following talks Saturday between the Kenyan president and U.S. diplomat Jendayi Frazer, who flew in a day earlier to try to broker a solution to the crisis.

But Odinga told a news conference on Sunday that Kibaki "cannot offer us anything because he did not win the election," The Associated Press reported.

"There cannot be peace without justice," said Odinga. He said he would only sit down for talks with Kibaki in the presence of an international mediator.

"We want a properly negotiated settlement, not a coalition government."

A senior U.S. official told CNN that both parties were prepared to meet with the African Union to find a solution to their political stalemate.

Ghanaian President John Kufuor, who chairs the African Union, is expected to arrive in Kenya in the next several days to mediate between the two leaders, the official said.

The official said the United States sees a power sharing arrangement in the country as "an option" but said Kenyans would have to decide what shape such an an arrangement takes.

The official did not directly respond to whether the United States applied strong pressure on both sides, saying only that "both sides value our relationship and see the U.S. as a neutral player."

Following the president's meeting with Frazer on Saturday, a Kenyan government spokesman told CNN Kibaki was ready to work with "like minded parties."

"We do want a strong opposition, otherwise we would have a one-party state," Mutua added.

Meanwhile, new figures have revealed the humanitarian cost of a week-long spate of violence.

According to the United Nations, some 250,000 Kenyans are now estimated to have been displaced by rioting and looting that accompanied the result of the Dec. 27 election.

The U.N. said that in total, between 400,000 and 500,000 people had been affected by the unrest. Around 300 people are reported to have died.

The humanitarian crisis came after rioters went on the rampage following Kibaki's narrow victory, which was disputed by Odinga's party. The ODM accused the president of election fraud while international election observers have cast doubt over the conduct of the vote.

The violence that has plagued Kenya in the last week appeared to have abated Saturday, with CNN's Kim Norgaard saying Nairobi was quiet as inhabitants went about their normal business.

In the western town of Kisumu, the scene of some of the worst unrest, the police lifted a curfew imposed earlier this week, aid workers in the town told CNN.

Kenyan police said that more than 1,000 arrests had been made in connection with post-election unrest.

In a statement released Saturday police said that 451 of those arrested had already been charged and a further 70 are still in police custody.

The charges are for offenses including arson, unlawful assembly, robbery and murder, the statement said. The highest number of arrests took place in the coastal region, it added.

The Kenyan Red Cross, meanwhile, is appealing for $15.4 billion in aid for those forced from their homes by the crisis.

Kenyan Red Cross spokesman Anthony Mwangi said the biggest concern was getting food to those in remote areas.

The World Food Program said it would shortly provide food through the Kenya Red Cross for 100,000 people displaced in the northern Rift Valley.

The U.N. food agency said the movement of food through western Kenya and the rest of the region -- including Uganda, Sudan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) -- ground to a halt for days due to the unrest.

[Steve Gardner]

Source: The Guardian

Monday January 7, 2008
By MICHELLE FAUL
Associated Press Writer

NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) - The vote count from Kenya's election was rigged, but both parties could have been involved, the chief U.S. envoy for Africa said Monday, declining to blame either President Mwai Kibaki or the opposition leader who ran against him.

The opposition leader, Raila Odinga, canceled nationwide protests, saying Monday he wanted to avoid new violence and give mediation a chance to resolve the election standoff that has killed nearly 500 people in political and ethnic bloodletting.

``Yes, there was rigging,'' the U.S. envoy, Jendayi Frazer, told The Associated Press. ``I mean there were problems with the vote counting process ... both the parties could have rigged.''

She said both rival parties could have been involved and that she did not want to blame either Kibaki or Odinga.

Frazer, who has spent three days negotiating with Kibaki and Odinga, said at an earlier news conference that Kenyans ``have been cheated by their political leadership and their institutions.'' In particular, Frazer said, the electoral commission was flawed and needed reform.

The commission chairman has admitted that he is not sure Kibaki won the vote.

Reports of ethnic killings continued to stream in from the countryside, with an official in neighboring Uganda confirming 30 Kenyan refugees were thrown into the border river by attackers, and were presumed drowned.

Two Ugandan truck drivers carrying the group said they were stopped Saturday at a roadblock mounted by militiamen who identified the refugees as members of Kibaki's Kikuyu tribe and threw them into the deep, swift-flowing Kipkaren River, said Himbaza Hashaka, a Ugandan border official.

The drivers said none survived, Hashaka said.

A statement Monday from the Ministry of Special Programs put the death toll at 486 with some 255,000 people displaced from their homes. The toll, which did not include the drownings, was compiled by a committee of humanitarian services set up by the government which toured areas most affected by riots and protests.

Odinga told Sky News television that Kibaki's ``rigging'' himself back into power caused the violence and therefore ``Mr. Mwai Kibaki must bear responsibility ... for the deaths we are seeing in our country today.''

But a government spokesman said officials were investigating ``premeditated murder'' of people warned beforehand that they would pay if they voted for Kibaki.

Such targeting of certain communities ``can ultimately result in serious crimes under international law such as crimes against humanity and genocide,'' said the spokesman, Alfred Mutua.

He did not say who could be charged.

Odinga called off protests planned for Tuesday after meeting with Frazer, who later said that the turmoil had not shaken U.S. confidence in Kenya as a regional hub. Kibaki's government, accused by Odinga of stealing the Dec. 27 election, had said the proposed Tuesday demonstrations were illegal and could provoke violence.

Attempts to hold opposition rallies last week were blocked by police who fired tear gas, water cannons and live bullets over people's heads. Human rights groups accused police of excessive force and unjustified killings in the crisis, but police Commissioner Hussein Ali insisted Sunday that ``we have not shot anyone.''

For Frazer, Monday was the last day of a three-day mission in which she has won an offer from Kibaki to form a coalition government and a concession from Odinga that he would negotiate without insisting that Kibaki first resign.

The United States, Britain and the European Union have urged Kibaki and Odinga to negotiate. The East African nation is considered an ally in the fight against terrorism.

State Department spokesman Sean McCormack told reporters Monday that Frazer is working with both leaders ``to try to get them to open up lines of communication. It's critically important for Kenya and the Kenyan people that these two leaders find a way to bridge whatever differences there are between them.''

Meanwhile, thousands of tourists have canceled vacations at the beginning of the high season.

``Hotels have been projecting an occupancy of 80-90 percent of capacity. But today, as we speak, that has dropped down to less than 40 percent. That's a huge loss for the economy,'' Mohammed Hersi, general manager of Whitesands Hotel in the coastal city of Mombasa, told AP Television News.

Schools were to reopen after the holidays on Monday, but the government postponed that for a week. Many are being used by refugees.

The level of violence eased over the weekend, though ethnic attacks continued, pitting Odinga's Luo and other tribes against Kibaki's Kikuyu people, the largest among Kenya's 42 tribes.

Nearly 1,000 Luos were chased Sunday from their homes in one small town, Limuru, 30 miles west of Nairobi, the capital. Some with furniture and bundles of clothing, others with nothing, they huddled around the compound of the local police station.

George Otieno, 30, said about 100 men armed with machetes, hammers and sticks attacked his home and smashed his head with a hammer.

``They said, 'You have to go back to your place,''' meaning the Luo's native lands in western Kenya, said Otieno, whose head was bandaged and shirt marked with dried blood.

About a mile away, more than 500 Kikuyu refugees were at a Red Cross compound, forced from their homes in the remote Western Province that is a Luo stronghold. Thousands of Kikuyus are fleeing western Kenya under armed police escort.

Francis Waweru said he had arrived three days ago with his wife and four children, fleeing a mob of hundreds who torched his shop and home in Timboroa. He showed a leg wound where he said he was shot with a bow and arrow.

``They said, 'No Raila, no peace,''' Waweru said.