Election Sparks Violence in Kenya
Reports Estimate 300 Dead, Thousands Displaced, Riots in Nairobi
Jan 2, 2008
When the results of the last 30 of Kenya’s 210 constituencies were not reported in the hours immediately after the presidential election of December 27, 2007, no one suspected that the new year would be marked in Nairobi with riots, death, and tribal feuding.
Delayed Election Results Hotly Contested
As of Saturday December 29, 2007, CBC News reported that several of Kenya’s constituencies had not yet submitted results from the election two days earlier. Riots had broken out between supporters of incumbent President Mwai Kibaki and supporters of the opposition leader, Raila Odinga.
Election results were announced on Sunday December 30, 2007 and challenged by Odinga and his supporters. Even before Kibaki was sworn in, Odinga’s supporters were looting shops and starting fires in Kenya’s capital city of Nairobi, protesting the delay in counting the votes.
In Kibera - Nairobi and Kenya’s largest slum and Odinga’s main constituency - Saturday saw angry protesters ripping down posters of Kibaki and insisting that he meant to rig the vote. Police were brought in to stop the rioting and, three days later, Nairobi remains barricaded and mostly empty.
Was the Vote Rigged?
No indication of fraud has been made by watchdog agencies, although a joint statement from the U.K. and the U.S. mentions “serious irregularities” in the vote.
Odinga and Kibaki continue to accuse each other of responsibility for the rioting and tribally motivated killings, feeding the fires higher. When asked if he would try to calm his supporters, Odinga has reportedly said, “I refuse to be asked to give the Kenyan people an anaesthetic so that they can be raped.”
He says Kibaki’s party is “guilty, directly, of genocide,” while Kibaki claims Odinga’s supporters are “engaging in ethnic cleansing.”
International pressure continues to rise for a peaceable resolution to the outrage and, according to the BBC, the U.S. and U.K. are pushing for “a government of national unity” and “a spirit of compromise” in Kenya.
Reports of Violence, Deaths, Mass Evacuation
Reuters reports the death toll since Sunday as over 300, 50 of them in a fire that burned down a church in the Rift Valley city of Eldoret in which many – mostly of President Kibaki’s tribe, Kikuyu - were sheltering. As many as 20,000 to 30,000 people are reportedly holed up in churches and police buildings in the Rift Valley.
One Red Cross volunteer on the ground in Nairobi has said the rioting “appears to be the start of a civil war.” According to CBC News, “tens of thousands of Kenyans… have fled their homes” in the wake of the violence and looting.
Hundreds of Kikuyu have crossed the border into Uganda, and more are vying to leave the country any way they can. Transportation and access to fuel and medical supplies is extremely limited in both Kenya and Uganda, which receives petrol through Kenya.
Uganda’s parliament representatives along the border are working to get aid sent to support the refugees fleeing the turmoil.
The Kenyan Red Cross reports that 70,000 people have been displaced from their homes in the Rift Valley.
Sources
With information from Associated Press, BBC News, CBC News, and Red Cross volunteers on location in Nairobi, Kenya.
