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Kenyan opposition plans economic
boycott
Xan Rice in Nairobi, Allegra Stratton and agencies
Friday January 18, 2008
Guardian Unlimited
Kenya's main opposition party will lead a mass economic boycott
after today's third and last planned day of street protests.
The Orange Democratic Movement (ODM), led by Raila Odinga, said at
least seven of its supporters had been shot dead by police during
the mass action yesterday.
The party said it was turning to an economic boycott since what
they had planned to be peaceful demonstrations against the
disputed re-election of the president, Mwai Kibaki, had been made
impossible by a security crackdown.
On Wednesday and again yesterday, thousands of ODM supporters were
prevented from leaving low-income estates by riot police armed
with teargas and live bullets. Several deaths were confirmed and
dozens of injuries. The Guardian saw a 52-year-old woman carried
out of the Kibera slum after being shot twice by a security
officer when she stepped out of her house to look for her son.
"Police are shooting innocent civilians at will ... the government
has turned this country into a killing field of innocents," Odinga
told reporters.
His spokesman, Salim Lone, confirmed that today would be the last
day of protests, which were banned by police immediately after
Kibaki's swearing-in on December 30.
"The security forces have caused too much suffering for us to
continue with this form of mass action," said Lone. "We will
instead be proceeding with an economic boycott of companies
connected to top government officials or businessmen who supported
Kibaki's campaign."
Among the companies initially targeted will be Brookside Dairy, a
business controlled by the family of the local government minister,
Uhuru Kenyatta; the Citi Hoppa and Kenya Bus Services transport
companies; and Equity Bank. With much of the economy controlled by
elite members of Kibaki's Kikuyu ethnic group, the opposition
believes that financial damage to their holdings will put pressure
on him to agree to a power-sharing deal.
The seven dead were reported to have been shot in the Mathare slum
and nearby estates in Nairobi as demonstrators tried to make their
way to the city centre.
The toll could not be independently corroborated, but police
confirmed killing two people in Mathare. Another two were shot
dead in the western town of Kisumu.
In Kibera, Nairobi's biggest slum, police and protesters played a
cat and mouse game at the edge of the estate. But in the afternoon
riot police moved inside, firing repeatedly into the air and, at
times, at civilians. As a badly bleeding young man was carried out
of Kibera, police fired teargas towards his helpers. Though there
were police vehicles around, none would take the victim to
hospital, and it was left to a passerby in a pickup truck to help
out.
Amina Athman, 52, was carried out past the police lines. Her son,
Lukuman, 28, who has learning difficulties, wandered out of Kibera
a few minutes later, desperately looking for her. He eventually
found her in the casualty ward at Kenyatta National hospital. She
had been shot in the thigh and the lower back, with the second
bullet lodging next to her spinal cord.
"I was at home when the teargas started coming in the house,"
Athman said from her stretcher. "I went outside to get air and see
where Lukuman was. That's when the policeman shot me. These people
..."
For the government, the opposition climbdown will be trumpeted as
a victory. But Odinga's call for continuous action was always
going to be difficult to sustain. Apart from the threat of injury
or death at the hands of the police, many of his supporters are so
poor that they could not afford to be on the streets rather than
working for more than a day at a time.
With parliament - where the ODM has a majority - prorogued until
at least March, Odinga needs the economic boycott to bite if he is
to keep up the pressure on Kibaki. With anger over the alleged
stolen election still strong across the country, it is likely that
the boycott call will be widely heeded.
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