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19 Burned to Death in Violence
in Kenya
January 28, 2008
By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN
NAIROBI, Kenya — Ethnically driven violence intensified in Kenya
on Sunday, and police officials said at least 19 people, including
11 children, were burned to death in a house by a mob.
Even the Kenyan military, deployed for the first time to stop
antagonists from attacking one another, has been unable to halt
the wave of revenge killings.
More than 100 people have been killed in the past four days, many
of them shot with arrows, burned or hacked with machetes.
It is some of the worst fighting since a disputed election in
December ignited long-simmering tensions that have so far claimed
at least 750 lives. The fighting appeared to be spreading Sunday
across the Rift Valley region, a particularly picturesque part of
Kenya known more for its game parks and fancy lodges.
The Kenyan government is now threatening to arrest top opposition
leaders on suspicion of orchestrating the bloodshed, but
opposition leaders are in turn accusing the government of backing
criminal gangs.
According to police officials in the Rift Valley town of Naivasha,
fighting erupted Sunday morning between gangs of Kikuyus and Luos,
two of Kenya’s biggest ethnic groups, who have clashed across the
country since the election. Witnesses said mobs threw flaming
tires and mountains of rocks into the streets to block police
officers from entering some neighborhoods. The mobs then went
house to house, looking for certain people.
Grace Kakai, a police commander in Naivasha, said a large crowd of
Kikuyus chased a group of Luos through a slum, trapped them in a
house, blocked the doors and set the house afire. Police found 19
bodies huddled in one room, and Ms. Kakai said some of the
children’s bodies were so badly burned that they could not be
identified.
“All I can say is that they were school age,” she said.
The episode was similar to one on Jan. 1, when up to 50 women and
children seeking shelter in a church in another Rift Valley town
were burned to death by a mob. The victims in that case were
mostly Kikuyus, and Kikuyus across the country seem to have been
attacked more than any other group.
In the past few days, many Kikuyus have organized into militias,
saying they are now ready for revenge.
“The situation is very bad,” Ms. Kakai said. “People are fighting
each other and trying to drive them out of the area. We have to
evacuate people.”
Thousands of families are streaming out of Naivasha, Nakuru, Molo,
Eldoret and other towns across the Rift Valley, which has become
the epicenter of Kenya’s violence. The province is home to
supporters of both Mwai Kibaki, Kenya’s president, and Raila
Odinga, the top opposition leader, and the site of historic land
disputes between members of rival ethnic groups.
Mr. Kibaki is a Kikuyu and Mr. Odinga is a Luo, and the disputed
election, in which Mr. Kibaki was declared the winner by a narrow
margin despite widespread evidence of vote rigging, set off the
ethnically driven violence.
The Kenya of today is almost unrecognizable compared with the
Kenya that until recently was celebrated as one of the most stable
and promising countries on the African continent. On Sunday night,
local television stations showed menacing young men waving
machetes and iron bars at roadblocks along one of the country’s
busiest highways. The men threw rocks at buses, with one large bus
run off the road, as police officers stood by.
The Kenyan Army was assigned early this month to help evacuate
people from conflict zones, but on Friday, for the first time,
soldiers were ordered to intervene between warring groups. That
did not seem to make much of a difference, and witnesses said the
soldiers had been as ineffective as the police.
A dusk-to-dawn curfew has been imposed in several Rift Valley
towns, including Naivasha and Nakuru, but witnesses said violence
continued to rage in the countryside, with bands of armed men
burning down huts and attacking ethnic rivals.
Many Kenyans have said the most distressing aspect is that the
opposing politicians, instead of cooperating to stop the bloodshed,
continue to bicker over who started it.
That is exactly what happened on Sunday after news of the Naivasha
killings spread. Salim Lone, Mr. Odinga’s spokesman, sent out a
cellphone message calling the killings “ghastly” and saying that
they were the work of criminal gangs backed by police officers and
“part of a well orchestrated plan of terror.”
“The government is doing this to try to influence mediation
efforts,” the message said, referring to the continuing but so far
fruitless negotiations led by Kofi Annan, the former secretary
general of the United Nations. “After stealing the elections from
Kenyans, Kibaki now wishes to deny them justice and peace.”
Alfred Mutua, a government spokesman, called the accusations “ridiculous.”
“What is really happening is a continuation of the ethnic
cleansing that Raila’s people are doing to kill the president’s
people,” he said.
Mr. Mutua said the violence would stop “when we indict the leaders
responsible for this.”
“We are working on indictments,” he said Sunday night. “That will
happen very soon.”
Western diplomats have said there is a debate raging within Mr.
Kibaki’s inner circle about the wisdom of arresting top opposition
figures, with some advisers pushing for it, while others fear that
the violence will only get worse if the leaders are jailed because
their supporters will go on an even more intense rampage.
Kenyan newspapers reflected the gloom. “For the umpteenth time, we
again ask President Kibaki and Orange Democratic Movement leader
Mr. Raila Odinga to work for peace, truth and justice,” said an
editorial in The Sunday Standard. “Kenya has bled enough.”
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