Annan pushes for peace as Kenyan deaths rise
Daily Dispatch Online, January 28, 2008
Editor’s Note: While the whole world is in an uproar over the “plight of the Palestinian refugees” and the “poor, oppressed, suffering Gazans living under siege,” there is little outcry over the widespread, brutal ethnic violence that is going on in Africa that is killing hundreds and rendering thousands homeless.
KOFI Annan pushed for peace and dialogue in Kenya yesterday as ethnic violence spread in western regions of the country, bringing the death toll since protests erupted over disputed December presidential elections to more than 850.
In the latest outbreak of violence, nine people were killed as gangs of youths wreaked havoc in a slum district of the lakeside town Naivasha, raising the death toll in the western Rift Valley province alone to 116 since Thursday night.
A national police commander said earlier that at least 17 people were killed overnight in the Rift Valley towns of Nakuru and Timboroa.
Bodies in the morgues and hospitals of the provincial capital Nakuru had arrow and machete wounds.
Annan, the former UN chief, met with opposition leader Raila Odinga at a Nairobi hotel as police gathered the charred and hacked remains of victims of the most recent clashes in the west.
Besides the more than 850 people killed in a wave of deadly rioting and ethnic killings, some 260000 people across the country have been forced to flee their homes.
Police confirmed that an unspecified number of people had died in ethnic clashes between youths in Naivasha’s Kabati slums yesterday.
An AFP correspondent counted five charred bodies lying in houses, three others that had been hacked to death, and said one policeman had been accidentally shot dead by a colleague.
“It started when a group of about 100 youths divided into two groups,” said a police commander.
“One group blocked the road and started stoning motorists and another group attacked Kabati slums, torched houses and attacked people.”
In Nakuru, gangs of youths set fire to more houses in Githima slums yesterday morning and bodies lay uncollected on the ground.
Ethnic violence had flared up there on Thursday night between gangs armed with machetes, spears, and bows and arrows.
Latent ethnic and land disputes have fuelled revenge killings in western Kenya between Kibaki’s Kikuyu tribe and members of the Luo and Kalenjin ethnic groups who supported Odinga and who claim he was robbed of the presidency.
A local police officer said a gang of machete-wielding youths had carried out the attacks in Timboroa.
“At first we heard whistles and people chanting war songs.
“They were flashing spotlights and waving machetes as they approached the town, which they eventually set fire to,” he said.
In Nakuru, 11 died in overnight clashes with police in the Manyani slums, the police commander said.
Kenyan newspapers reflected the frustrations of many of the people yesterday.
“For the umpteenth time we again ask President Kibaki and Orange Democratic Movement (party) leader Mr Raila Odinga to work for peace, truth and justice.
“They owe it to themselves, this generation and posterity,” the Sunday Standard said in an editorial.
“Kenya has bled enough,” it added.
On Saturday, Annan said that unrest sparked by President Mwai Kibaki’s disputed re-election last month had led to “gross and systematic” human rights abuses and called for a probe.
“Impunity cannot be allowed to stand,” he said, after visiting the violence-wracked Rift Valley with former Tanzanian president Benjamin Mkapa and Graça Machel, wife of former South African president Nelson Mandela.
Annan, who has said he will not stay in Kenya for “for months on end”, orchestrated a symbolic first meeting between Kibaki and Odinga on Thursday.
The rivals shook hands, called for peace and hinted at a willingness to talk.
But the gesture, hailed internationally, was later undermined by further squabbling, with both sides maintaining their hardline positions.
The crisis has damaged the economy and shattered the east African nation’s image as a beacon of stability in the region and a traditional refuge for refugees from neighbouring conflicts. — Sapa-AFP