[NYTr] Kenya rioting death toll at 125

Mon Dec 31 15:18:37 EST 2007

AP via Yahoo - Dec 31, 2007  12:14 pm ET
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071231/ap_on_re_af/kenya_elections

Kenya rioting death toll at 125

By KATHARINE HOURELD

Police fired tear gas and bullets Monday as they struggled to contain
tens of thousands of opposition supporters accusing President Mwai
Kibaki of stealing his re-election. The death toll in the
demonstrations and ethnic clashes rose to at least 125 people, police
and witnesses said.

Three police officers said they had orders to shoot to kill, while
opposition supporters said they would risk death to protest what they
called a stolen election.

The vote ignited smoldering resentment between Kenya's two largest
tribes, with supporters of Raila Odinga, a Luo who officially came in
second, clashing with members of Kibaki's Kikuyu. The head of Kenya's
Red Cross said many of the dead were killed in ethnic violence across
the country.

The Kikuyu comprise the largest ethnic group in Kenya, and are
frequently accused by other tribes of monopolizing business and
political power.

Thousands of people struggling to break out of Nairobi's burning slums
surged back and forth under clouds of tear gas, and were pushed back
with water cannons and baton charges. Police fired live rounds over
their heads. Opposition supporters blocked a road into the city center
with blazing refuse and tried to set a gas station alight.

Alex Busisa, 22, said police shot him and a friend after he walked out
of his home near a demonstration. He spoke from a hospital bed after an
operation for a gunshot wound to the stomach.

While politicians "could afford a plane to fly away ... it is the man
on the ground who suffers, like me," Busisa said.

Odinga compared Kibaki to a military dictator who "seized power through
the barrel of the gun," and he postponed a rally planned for Uhuru Park
after police warned the opposition not to hold it. Odinga instead
called on a million people to gather Thursday in the park — where
protesters demanded multiparty democracy in the early 1990s.

In the run-up to multiparty elections in 1992 and 1997, hundreds of
people perceived to be opposition supporters were killed and thousands
more forced off their land in politically manipulated violence in Rift
Valley and Coast provinces. But there has been little violence on
voting and postelection days in the past.

"We will inform police of the march. We will march wearing black
armbands because we are mourning," said Odinga, who had been ahead in
early voting results and public opinion polls.

Kibaki vowed to step up security across the country to "deal decisively
with those who breach the peace."

Inside Nairobi's Kibera slum, riot police fired shots into the air and
tear gas into homes and businesses.

An Associated Press reporter saw a man who had been shot in the head
being carried out in a blanket. Men around him said he had been shot by
police. Police were not immediately available for comment.

Panicked residents called journalists to report ethnic gangs were
roaming the narrow, sewage-filled alleyways of Kibera, seeking to
avenge members of their tribe killed in overnight violence and setting
homes on fire.

"Why are we burning these shops?" asked 26-year-old Abdi Ochieng as he
watched his Luo neighbors cart away looted sheets of corrugated iron
from smoldering Kikuyu businesses. "Kibaki does not own them. Neither
does Odinga."

The violence has killed at least 125 people since Saturday across the
country, police and witnesses said, although the tally was likely far
higher. The head of the Kenyan Red Cross, Abbas Gullet, said that in
many provinces Kikuyu homes had been attacked and families forced to
seek refuge in police stations.

"They need food, water, blankets, but we cannot access them," he said.
Enraged demonstrators had even demanded to know the ethnicity of Red
Cross workers offering first aid to the wounded, he said.

Kibaki, 76, was sworn in almost immediately after the results were
announced. Within minutes, the slums exploded into violence.

Suspicions over rigging were fueled by the fact that the opposition
took most of the parliamentary seats in Thursday's vote, but Kibaki
still won the election. A ban on live media broadcasts and partial
suspension of the news have spurred the rumor mill, with gossip spread
by text message and shouted from neighbor to neighbor across barbed
wire fences and winding alleys.

Louise Arbour, the U.N. high commissioner for human rights, expressed
concern at the ban on live broadcasts and urged the government to
ensure that journalists were free to carry out their work.

The Kenyan government "must abide by its international human rights
obligations in responding to demonstrations," Arbour said, adding that
"security forces must employ force only in proportion to the actual
threat faced."

Echoing previous statements by the European Union, the United States
said on Monday it was concerned over "serious problems" during the
counting of votes.

The State Department on Monday suggested the U.S. is not ready to
recognize any winner in the questionable election.

"We do have serious concerns about irregularities in the vote count,"
Deputy Spokesman Tom Casey, said. "We call on the political parties in
Kenya, as well as the Kenyan people, to avoid violence."

"I am not offering congratulations to anybody because we have serious
concerns about the vote count," Casey said. "What's clear is that there
are some real problems here and that those need to be revolved in
accordance with their constitution and in accordance with their legal
system."

Britain's Foreign Office issued a travel advisory for Kenya, warning
people against nonessential visits to many parts of the country and
urban centers because of the "serious and continuing outbreaks of
unrest."

Kenya is one of the most developed countries in Africa, with a booming
tourism industry and one of the continent's highest growth rates. Many
observers saw the campaign as the greatest test of this young,
multiparty democracy and expressed great disappointment as the process
descended into chaos.

Kibaki's supporters say he has turned Kenya's economy into an east
African powerhouse, with an average annual growth rate of 5 percent. He
won by a landslide in 2002, ending 24 years in power by the notoriously
corrupt Daniel arap Moi. But Kibaki's anti-graft campaign has largely
been seen as a failure, and the elections have reopened festering
resentment over tribalism and widespread poverty.

[Associated Press writers Elizabeth A. Kennedy, Tom Maliti and Malkhadir
M. Muhumed contributed to this report.]