Kenya election protests kill 124: TV

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Kenya election protests kill 124: TV

Andrew Cawthorne and C. Bryson Hull, Reuters

Published: Monday, December 31, 2007

 

NAIROBI (Reuters) - Kenyan police battled protesters in blazing slums on Monday after disputed elections returned President Mwai Kibaki to power and triggered turmoil that a local TV station said had killed at least 124 people.

 

Fatal riots convulsed the nation, from opposition strongholds in the west near the Ugandan border to Nairobi's shanty-towns and the port of Mombasa on the Indian Ocean Coast.

 

Reuters reporters estimated at least 70 deaths, based on witnesses and body counts. But broadcaster KTN said by mid-afternoon the toll had reached at least 124.

 

The violence threatens to deter investors from east Africa's largest economy and damage Kenya's reputation as an oasis of relative stability in a volatile and war-scarred region.

 

Much fighting pitched Luos, who back defeated opposition leader Raila Odinga, against Kibaki's ethnic Kikuyu group.

 

In the western town of Kisumu, a hotbed of opposition support, 21 bodies lay in and around a hospital mortuary, witnesses said. Most had gunshot wounds.

 

In Nairobi's Mathare slum, police threatened to shoot people coming out of their homes, witnesses said. "Police are saying on loudspeakers from trucks that anyone found outside will be shot dead," said taxi driver Argwings Odera.

 

Odinga called for a mass rally on Thursday in Nairobi's main Uhuru Park, named for the word freedom in Swahili.

 

"We expect a million Kenyans to attend," he said.

 

"For the last 48 hours the people of Kenya have seen their nascent democracy shackled, strangled and finally killed."

 

In Nairobi's Kibera slum, youths chanted: "No Raila, No Peace!." When they lit bonfires in the road and torched a petrol station, police moved in to fire teargas and bullets in the air. Bodies lay in the dirt alleys.

 

Trying to defuse one of the most volatile moments in Kenya since 1963 independence, the government flooded the streets with security forces and kept a ban on live TV broadcasts.

 

"Africa has had its share of violence and even genocide arising from incitement by media stations," said government spokesman Alfred Mutua. "We cannot forget what happened in Rwanda," he added, referring to the 1994 genocide.

 

"UNDECLARED EMERGENCY"

 

In Nairobi, siren-blaring ambulances and armored cars with water cannon rushed through the streets in the direction of Kibera, Mathare and Kawangware slums, where smoke could be seen rising. Helicopters flew overhead.

 

"We are in an undeclared state of emergency," said a statement from civil society groups. "The consequences of a stolen election must be clear to all Kenyans."

 

Despite a reputation as an old-school gentleman, Kibaki, 76, showed a steely core by swearing himself in within an hour of being pronounced victor in an election rejected by Odinga and questioned by international observers.

 

"The tallying process lacks credibility," chief European Union monitor Alexander Graf Lambsdorff told Reuters.

 

Former colonial ruler Britain expressed concern, and the United States noted "serious problems" in the vote-count in a second statement after originally congratulating Kibaki. But it urged challengers to use the courts.

 

Bewildered tourists, who contribute to an $800 million a year industry that is Kenya's top earner, were stranded by delayed flights at Mombasa airport on the Indian Ocean coast.

 

"We have no fuel to go anywhere. No money either, the cashpoints are dry," said Shilesh Patel, one tourist in a 20-car queue at a fast-emptying petrol station on the coast.

 

As supporters celebrated in his highland homeland, Kibaki urged Kenyans to "set aside the passions" from a vote he won by a narrow margin of 230,000 votes in the nation of 36 million.

 

Kibaki, who turned the dire economy left by his strongman predecessor Daniel arap Moi to an average 5 percent growth since 2002, faces a momentous task to reunite a country where ethnic tension has periodically sparked bloodletting.

 

The ban on live broadcasts was slammed by activists as an attack on press freedom in a nation usually termed one of Africa's most vibrant democracies. The government said it had not put any limit on content, just forced a delay.

 

Having led every opinion poll bar one since September, then taken a strong lead in early results, the opposition Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) was dismayed to see Kibaki pip it.

 

Kibaki took 4.58 million votes to Odinga's 4.35 million -- but the results were marred by accusations of multiple voting, disappeared returning officers and "doctoring."

 

"The electoral process lost credibility towards the end with regard to the tallying and announcement of presidential results," pronounced the Kenya Election Domestic Observation Forum (KEDOF) in its assessment report issued on Monday.

 

(Additional reporting by Nicolo Gnecchi, Bryson Hull, George Obulutsa, Helen Nyambura-Mwaura, Joseph Sudah, Tim Cocks, Duncan Miriri, Wangui Kanina, Katie Nguyen; Guled Mohamed in Kisumu; Arjun Kohli in Mombasa; Editing by Bryson Hull)

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