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Riots have erupted in several
A team of ODM legislators led by Raila Odinga are currently meeting at the house and are expected to issue a statement later.
President Kibaki has sent his condolences and appealed for the public not to rush to any conclusions on the MP’s killing until police investigations are completed.
Riots have been reported in
Chaos were also reported in Dandora and Kayole in the late legislator’s Embakasi constituency.
Tension heightened after paramilitary police visited the late MP’s home and lobbed teargas at a crowd of mourners before chasing them into the house.
The Kilimani police boss Herbert Khaemba later apologized for the police action: “I apologise for what has happened. I did not instruct the officers to throw teargas into the compound or even enter the compound.”
A guard who was manning Mr Were’s gate said he heard the MP hoot followed shortly by gun shots.
“I climbed over the gate and saw two people holding guns. I screamed for help and it was then that they disappeared,” the guard told journalists. He then looked over and saw the MP lying beside his car.
He said assisted Mr Were’s family to rush the wounded MP to hospital but he was pronounced dead on arrival.
Doctors said that the bullets had caught the victim in the eye and chest.
Police spokesman Eric Kiraithe, who addressed the Press following the shooting, said that they would treat it as murder. He said they had not ruled out political motives.
Mr Kiraithe appealed for any member of the public who might have information that would assist detectives solve the murder to step forward and offer it.
The police spokesman said they would allow any interested parties to either join the police or to conduct parallel investigations in the interest of arresting the culprits.
Story by NATION Reporter
Publication Date: 1/29/2008
[...] In a separate incident not believed to be related to the post-election violence, a German tourist and a businessman were battered to death by a gang of robbers who trailed them to their apartment at Kenya's southeast Diana beach resort, police said Monday.
Police said the two Germans were killed after a long struggle with the robbers who used clubs and machetes. [...]
Source: CNN
Yesterday’s killings in Naivasha have triggered a fresh wave of riots in several towns in western
Riots have been reported in Kisumu, Kakamega, Kapsabet, Gilgil, Migori, Busia and Eldoret as residents react to reports that the Sunday clashes in Naivasha targeted their communities.
The chaos broke as Police Commissioner Hussein Ali announced they will soon be charging some 28 people with murder for their roles in the post-election violence. The police chief, however, did not name those to be charged.
In Naivasha, 14 more bodies were found today bringing the toll to at least 28 killed.
The Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Transport, Mr Gerishon Ikiara also reported that 13 long-haul trucks were set ablaze by mobs who had mounted roadblocks along various roads in
In Kakamega, at least a shop and a residential house had been torched as protestors fought with riot police in the morning.
Business in Kisumu and Migori towns came to a standstill as youths lit fires and chanted in praise of the Orange Democratic Movement.
They used burning tyres and other barricades to block the Kisumu-Nakuru and Kisumu-Busia roads. Some mobs went to schools and ejected students from classes shouting “No Raila No school!”.
Most civil servants in Kisumu were forced to run back to their houses for safety as the rowdy youths took over the streets.
In Migori, the police appeared overwhelmed by the hundreds of youths who pulled down sign posts along the main road in the town.
In Eldoret, youths blocked the main roads to protest the killings.
Additional reporting by the Kenya News Agency
Story by NATION Reporter
Publication Date: 1/28/2008
It is meal time for children camping at Cistercian Monastery Church in Kipkelion, on Sunday. They are among people displaced by post-election violence.
A distraught woman passes by the ruins of a house arsonists torched at Ilula in Eldoret.
Riot police comfort fleeing residents of Huruma estate, Nairobi. They also pursued attackers who hacked at least two people to death.
Victims of the Nakuru violence who are recovering at the Rift Valley provincial general hospital yesterday gave heart-rending accounts of their encounters with raiders.
Mr Bernard Owino, 27, said he was walking home on Friday when he met a group of young men along Kanu Street.
“They seized me without any warning, searched my pockets and robbed me of money and my mobile phone.”
He initially thought his attackers were interested in robbing him, but this changed when one of them whipped out a knife and stabbed him in the head, the left arm and leg. Police officers who were patrolling the area arrived almost immediately and took him to the hospital.
“I can’t tell why anyone would want to kill me. This violence should stop at once because we are all Kenyans,” he said.
Mr Bernard Ondiek, 35, was travelling back to Nakuru town from Njoro when a group of young men who had erected a barricade near the Eveready Factory stopped the vehicle. The passengers started fleeing in all directions, but Mr Ondieki was struck in the head by an arrow while another hit his hand.
Like Mr Owino, Mr Ondiek said he could not tell why he was attacked as he did not provoke the attackers in any way.
Mr Peter Gatitu, who sells soft drinks in town, said he was attacked at Shabaab Estate while on his way home from work at about 5 pm on Friday.
The attackers, who were torching houses in the area, slashed him on the head with pangas and threw him in a ditch where he was later found by a Good Samaritan.
Mr David Kioko was hit on the head by a man who was in a group at Free Area yesterday. He was treated at the Provincial General Hospital
Mr Daniel Obiero said that a group of young men raided his house at Free Area at about 10 am on Friday and ordered his family out of the house.
“I dashed out, but one of the attackers cut me on the leg. I managed to flee; I was informed they did not harm my wife and children.”
Story by SUNDAY NATION Team
Publication Date: 1/27/2008
As post-election violence escalates in various parts of the country, thousands of people are each day fleeing their homes to seek safety in makeshift camps, becoming known as internally displaced people, or IDPs.
It is now recognised that women and children are bearing the brunt of the raging conflict, and now the red light is on. Sexual abuse has been thrown into the equation, and these two vulnerable groups are suffering double jeopardy.
First, they have to deal with the trauma of being violently uprooted from comfortable and familiar environments to live under deplorable conditions where their existence is dependent on relief efforts.
Then, it is emerging that sexual violence targeting women and girls is rampant in the camps. It follows that the recovery of women and children already traumatised could be fundamentally compromised.
Reports from the internal refugee camps paint a grave picture indeed, and there is a likelihood that the cases coming to the attention of aid workers could just be the tip of the iceberg.
The cases of sexual abuse recorded by aid workers occur at various levels. On one, women and girls are raped during the actual violence. For instance, in the first two days of the violence, 56 cases of rape were recorded in Nairobi alone.
Similarly, during the first day of mass action last week, the Nairobi Women Hospital admitted eight girls, the youngest aged 12 years.
And these are victims who are lucky enough to obtain assistance from responsible people and members of relief agencies. Many more could be suffering silently.
The next level of sexual violence is taking place inside the camps where circumstances of the moment have thrown strangers–men, women and children–into living communally in school halls and tents. In some areas, women and children are living in makeshift structures that are not secure enough to keep out would-be sex predators. Their safety is further compromised by the fact that most of the informal camps lack lighting, and many of the attacks are carried out in the dark.
At another level, the deprivation that informs the lives of the IDPs has bred a situation where desperately impoverished young girls are sexually exploited in order to get some food or clothing.
Given the foregoing, it is evident that even as efforts to resolve the political crises that has precipitated the violence get underway, the country will soon have to grapple with this problem that is silently ravaging the lives of women and children in camps.
Therefore, there is urgent need for both preventive and rehabilitative measures. These are to minimise the risk of sexual attacks and the management of post attack effects.
In these days of HIV and Aids, sexual assault can be lethal unless the victim seeks medical help within 72 hours and has access to post-exposure prophylactic kits that are critical in preventing victims from contracting the virus.
In a conservative society like ours, rape often goes unreported because victims fear stigmatisation. IDPs need to understand that reporting rape could be a matter of life and death, but this will only happen through provision of relevant information by government departments or humanitarians groups.
Since rape is a crime, law enforcement agencies have the responsibility of securing IDP camps to prevent it. This might involve screening people living the camps to identify and isolate known sex pests.
However, it is most important to bear in mind that the increase in sexual attacks is a direct offshoot of the breakdown of law and order and the consequent collapse of social mechanisms. In our situation, there is no substitute for peace in ensuring women and girls are safe from sexual depredation.
Publication Date: 1/27/2008
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| President Kibaki with chief mediator Kofi Annan at State House, Nairobi, yesterday. Photo/PPS |
Mr Annan also said the ongoing violence had gone beyond the disputed presidential election results.
After visiting some of the violence-struck areas in Rift Valley province yesterday, Mr Annan described the scenes as heart-wrenching and tragic and urged the government to deploy more security forces to spare grandmothers, mothers and children unending pain.
The former UN secretary general appealed to rival political leaders to step in and end the violence which, he said, had assumed catastrophic levels. During his tour, he said, it had become clear that there was gross abuse of human rights, and he called on the government to beef up security in the affected areas.
“What we saw was heart-wrenching. We saw houses burning, grandmothers and children being pushed out of their homes, and people suffering everywhere. What we saw today (yesterday) was rather tragic,” he said at a press conference at the Serena Hotel after flying back from the troubled region.
Members of his mediation team, who include former Tanzanian president Benjamin Mkapa and Mrs Graca Machel, had just toured the Molo and Cherangani areas in the Rift Valley where they witnessed the horrific state of affairs.
“We did get the impression that while the violence may have been triggered by the disputed presidential election results, it is evolving slowly to assume a life of its own. Certain groups are being targeted, and this is totally unacceptable,” he said.
There have been increasing claims that the attacks in the Rift Valley, which also erupted in Nakuru this week, have been propelled by reasons other than the protest against the results of the presidential election. The violence has rocked Eldoret, Kisumu, Kericho, Mombasa and parts of Nairobi.
The government has accused Orange Democratic Movement leaders of being behind the violence — which they have described as genocide — while ODM maintains that the police should be held responsible for killing innocent Kenyans.
“The government must step up security in the affected regions. It must also investigate the killings and hold accountable those behind it. We cannot have a situation where people are indiscriminately killed, and no one is held accountable,” the chief meditor said.
Mr Annan, whose team met President Kibaki at State House later yesterday afternoon, challenged leaders on both sides to make decisions that will restore peace and order in the country.
He said that resolving the political crisis would go beyond striking a deal between President Kibaki and ODM leader Raila Odinga to addressing the fundamental issues behind the killings.
“We are urging the leaders to make hard choices and seek to strengthen institutions that will ensure future elections are held in a free and fair atmosphere. They must address the fundamentals underlying the violence,” he said.
He urged the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) to step in and assist thousands of displaced people who he recommended should be compensated for loss of property and lives.
Mr Annan warned that time was running out for leaders to stop the violence and urged them to reconcile and carry along with them their supporters to the new era of sustainable peace.
While signalling that the mediation team may not stay in the country long enough to oversee the striking of a deal between President Kibaki and Mr Odinga, he pledged that they would set up a mechanism that would guide the negotiations to a successful end.
“We are determined to set up a mechanism for negotiations such that even if we are not here, the leaders go on with the talks until a solution is found. We urge the leaders to understand that time is of essence, and they should expeditiously reach an agreement,” Mr Annan said.
After the press conference he immediately went into a meeting with envoys from the European Union member states.
Mr Annan arrived in Kenya on Tuesday evening. He immediately outlined his mission as one to help the country get out of the current political quagmire.
Mr Annan said he had not come with a solution but would have direct talks with President Kibaki and Mr Odinga for a possible deal.
He took over the mediation efforts from Ghanaian President and African Union chairman John Kufuor. Since his arrival, Mr Annan has held talks with Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, National Assembly Speaker Kenneth Marende, Mr Odinga, President Kibaki and a group of former presidents led by Mozambique’s Joaquim Chissano.
Mr Annan’s team also met the African ambassadors and AU representatives before meeting President Kibaki at State House, Nairobi.
President Museveni, who was in country for two days, left for Uganda on Saturday.
Story by BERNARD NAMUNANE
Publication Date: 1/27/2008
Opposition leader Raila Odinga has ruled out the option of taking up the post of prime minister in President Kibaki’s government as a way of ending the current political crisis.
Speaking a day after the first meeting with the President since the disputed elections, Mr Odinga said the only options on the table for discussion were the resignation of President Kibaki and a re-run of the presidential elections, possibly with formation of a transitional government to take charge pending new elections.
ODM leader Raila Odinga speaks with Mr Ali Treki, the Libyan minister of African Affairs and secretary to the African Union at the Grand Regency Hotel in Nairobi. The minister is in the AU mediation team. Photo/ANTHONY KAMAU.
“I have never said I was considering taking up a position of prime minister under Kibaki,” he said and promised to meet the President again for talks on equal terms.
“I would meet Kibaki again but he should stop making embarrassing remarks like being ‘duly elected’. He should not call himself, the duly-elected and sworn-in president. That is the bone of contention,” Mr Odinga said.
The Lang’ata MP described the meeting between him and President Kibaki on Thursday arranged by mediator Kofi Annan as “useful” but insisted that justice must be done.
Mr Odinga ruled out the prime minister option as the Annan mediation team spent the day trying to understand the electoral process and what could have gone wrong.
Having already received presentations and documents from the Kibaki and Odinga teams, with each side trying to show they won the elections, the former UN secretary general met members of the Electoral Commission.
The team — that includes former Tanzanian President Benjamin Mkapa and Mrs Graca Machel, the wife of former South African President Nelson Mandela — struck a first on Thursday when it succeeded in bringing President Kibaki and Mr Odinga for a face-to-face meeting at Harambee House, Nairobi.
A top UN official attached to Mr Annan’s secretariat at the Serena Hotel told the Saturday Nation that the validity of President Kibaki’s victory was on the table for scrutiny, among other issues. “The validity of the leadership of this country is among the issues that are on the table. It is an issue that is at the heart of the stalemate and the team is interested in it,” said the official.
The issue was placed before the team by Mr Odinga and the ODM Pentagon members on Wednesday. Mvita MP Najib Balala said: “The first thing that we stated was that Kibaki (President) must accept that he lost the elections to our captain (Mr Odinga). We presented all the information we have to justify our position.”
The matter of President Kibaki’s legitimacy came into sharp focus at the meeting on Thursday designed for President Kibaki and Mr Odinga to make a joint appearance, publicly commit to the search for a solution and also call for peace.
Duly elected
The ODM team was annoyed with President Kibaki’s speech which emphasised that he “was sworn in as the duly elected President of Kenya”.
Immediately after the encounter ODM secretary general Anyang’ Nyong’o convened a Press conference and denounced the President’s remarks.
“Mr Mwai Kibaki abused the occasion by attempting to legitimise his usurpation of the presidency. His demeaning and unacceptable behaviour was meant to undermine the mediation and prolong the suffering of the people of Kenya,” he said.
President Kibaki was declared the winner after receiving 4,584,721 votes against Mr Odinga’s 4,352,993. Saturday Nation has also established that President Kibaki and a team of ministers in his reconciliation committee have put up their own case before the Annan team to prove the case that the Head of State was in office legitimately.
President Kibaki and the team led by Vice-President Kalonzo Musyoka met Mr Annan on Thursday morning at State House where they presented documents on the tallying of election results, rigging in some areas and the violence that has rocked the country since the announcement of the election results, which they say was planned beforehand.
Sources at the meeting said the Kibaki team ruled out a re-run of elections on grounds that nearly 500,000 voters displaced and hundreds killed would be denied a chance to vote for their preferred leader. Other sources say that the Kibaki team has also ruled out power sharing, saying they cannot share power with a group they accuse of organising the killings.
Share power
On the disputed vote tally, Mr Annan Friday sought clarification from the Electoral Commission of Kenya team led by chairman Samuel Kivuitu during a morning meeting at Serena Hotel.
But the ECK team said the votes could not be recounted or re-tallied unless in compliance with a court ruling. They assured the Annan team that they were ready to carry out the exercise if ODM went to court.
When he emerged from the meeting, Mr Kivuitu said they had given the mediation team all information on the tallying of the votes at Kenyatta International Conference Centre. “They wanted to expand their knowledge on what happened. We explained how the tallying process went on that day and why we announced the results that we had,” he said.
A source at the meeting said the ECK team took the mediators through the tallying process, the announcement of the results and the advice they have since given to the aggrieved party to seek legal redress.
The commissioners blamed politicians for the chaotic scenes at the KICC during tallying and the continuing mayhem in the country. Mr Kivuitu and his commissioners warned that unless changes were made to the Constitution, the next General Election would be a nearly impossible task.
Announced results
However, Mr Kivuitu dismissed calls for the disbandment of the commission following its admission that the elections results it announced were fraught with irregularities.
“Why should anyone want us disbanded? We did not beat anybody nor harass anyone. We only announced results and we have advised anyone aggrieved to go to court. That is why we have courts in the first place,” he said.
Mr Annan’s team also met leaders of the inter-religious forum who condemned the polarisation in the country and proposed a three-level approach to solving the political crisis.
The former UN boss urged the leaders to use the pulpit to restore peace and work alongside politicians to ensure Kenya’s stability.
“They have told us of the suffering and pain among their congregations. We have pleaded with them to use their churches and mosques to bring peace. Political leaders alone cannot make; all of us will,” he said.
Mr Annan used the occasion to caution leaders against using inciting and inflammatory words in their public pronouncements.
“We have also discussed the use words which can be very soothing. However, words can also create tensions, hatred and hostility. We must watch the words we say and how we use them,” he said.
National Council of Churches of Kenya secretary general Peter Karanja, who spoke on behalf of the religious group, urged politicians to accommodate each other’s views, holding that the country had gone beyond the democratic tenet of winner takes it all. “Kenya is beyond a situation of winner takes it all. They have to accommodate each other although we doubt if they appreciate the current state of issues,” he said.
He was flanked Nairobi Catholic Archbishop John Cardinal Njue, his Anglican Church counterpart Benjamin Nzimbi and Supreme Council of Kenya Muslim’s Hussein Omar.
Story by BERNARD NAMUNANE
Publication Date: 1/26/2008
At least six people were killed Friday in Nakuru town during clashes involving youth from the Kalenjin and Kikuyu communities.
The post-election violence worsened in the volatile Rift Valley region only a day after bitter rivals President Kibaki and opposition leader Raila Odinga shook hands publicly for the first time since the fiercely contested general elections and called for peace.
A fire engine goes up in flames after rioters set it on fire in Nakuru Town yesterday. Inset: Military officers put out a fire at a barricade in the middle of the Eldoret-Nakuru road. Photos/JOSEPH KIHERI
The violence paralysed business in the otherwise peaceful town, forcing the Government to send in soldiers to aid police officers who appeared overwhelmed by the situation.
The rampaging combatants, armed with poisoned arrows, machetes, clubs and other crude weapons, reportedly injured hundreds of people, torched houses, looted and destroyed property.
Consequently, the Government imposed a 7pm to 6am curfew in the Rift Valley town.
Roads in Kenya’s fourth largest town and the main gateway to western Kenya were barricaded by armed gangs bringing it to a virtual standstill in the morning.
Fighting started on Thursday night when Kisima and Kaptembwa estates on the western part of the town were raided and houses torched. The violence spread to the town centre yesterday where a man was lynched at the bus station. Police who rushed to the scene fired in the air, forcing people to flee in all directions.
Some matatu drivers removed their vehicles from the bus station. Motorists also removed their vehicles from parking bays and the streets were clear by 10 am.
Hundreds of hawkers who sell their wares in shop corridors also fled from the town.
A resident of Kwa Ndege area in Lanet who spoke to the Saturday Nation on the phone said he opted to stay at home for fear of running into trouble. About nine houses have been burnt in the area during the last two days.
A resident of Pipeline area said that he had also decided to remain at home for fear of being attacked. Policemen guarded banks whose doors remained open but there were hardly any customers.
Soldiers in three vehicles were deployed to the western side of the town in the morning where they helped to remove barricades erected on the Nakuru–Eldoret highway.
A contingent of GSU men also arrived in the town centre in the morning and took position to prevent looting of shops.
Flames and huge balls of smoke continued drifting into the cloudy sky all day as more houses were torched at Githima and Kaptembwa.
Some residents who had stayed indoors for most of the day tried to walk to the shopping centres to buy food but found the shops closed. Some people were seen slipping pieces of carton boards in under their shirts and dresses to protect themselves from flying arrows near Langa Langa Mwisho area. The Government later imposed a partial curfew that requires residents to remain indoors from 7pm to 6am.
A statement issued by the Rift Valley PC Noor Hassan Noor said that the order was aimed at enabling the security forces to deal with the armed gangs. He said the order will remain in force until the situation calms down.
A similar curfew was imposed on the town by the Government in February 1998 when ethnic clashes flared up in the district.
Mr Hassan said the security forces would be particularly vigilant at Shabab, Free Area, Kaptembwa, Ponda Mali and Kwa Rondah estates.
Among the casualties of the fighting was the town’s only fire engine which was burnt down. The engine, with 1,600-litre water capacity had been acquired by the council only recently.
It was burnt at Githima estate where firemen had gone to save some of the houses that had been torched by arsonists. None of the firefighters was hurt.
Two men were killed in the town in what was believed to be a revenge attack after a driver and his conductor were killed in Mau Narok.
One of them was stoned to death at the town’s main bus terminus, while the other was stabbed at the Shabab matatu stage.
The matatu operators were angered by the killing of their two colleagues at Mauche trading centre as they travelled from Mau Narok on Thursday at about 5.30pm. Some of the matatu crew thronged the Nakuru Municipal mortuary to view their mutilated bodies.
Nakuru Town was a no-go zone for most of the morning as youths barricaded roads leading into and out of the town.
Supermarkets, shops and other business premises remained closed after the youths threatened to loot and burn premises that opened their doors.
Public transport was paralysed within the town, while vehicles leaving or entering the area were also held up as a result of the barricades.
Reports by Kennedy Masibo, Michael Njuguna, Wanjiru Macharia, Kamau Watoro, Noah Cheploen and Cisa
Story by NATION Team
Publication Date: 1/26/2008
Jina langu ni - My name is...
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Wapi? - Where?
Hapa - Here
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Sasa - now
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Kwa sababu - because
Nani? - Who?
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Gani? - Which?
Kweli - true
Na - and
Au - or
Ni - they are
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