TOM MALITI
January 2, 2008
Though much of Nairobi was quiet Wednesday, shots rang out in the city's sprawling Mathare slum, where police escorted terrified families to safety as fire raged through shacks.
"All you do here is come to pick up bodies," Boniface Shikami, a bystander, shouted at police.
Opposition leader Raila Odinga claims President Mwai Kibaki's re-election in the Dec. 27 vote was a sham, and his massive rally in Nairobi could bring hundreds of thousands of supporters and their rivals onto the streets of the capital.
The government has banned the march, setting the stage for clashes between security forces and Odinga's supporters.
Mr. Odinga told The Associated Press on Wednesday his peaceful rally was meant "to communicate to our people, to inform them where we are coming from, where we are and where we want to go."
U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice spoke by telephone Wednesday with Mr. Odinga and had a call scheduled with Mr. Kibaki to ask the pair to resolve their differences peacefully, the State Department said.
Spokesman Sean McCormack declined to say whether the United States recognized Mr. Kibaki's victory as legitimate but said Washington had "concerns" about accusations of electoral malfeasance that must be addressed within the country's legal system.
Though both sides say they are ready to talk, the Mr. Odinga and Mr. Kibaki camps have mostly traded accusations the other is fuelling ethnic violence.
Mr. Odinga says he will not meet with Mr. Kibaki unless he concedes he lost the presidency, something Mr. Kibaki is unlikely to do.
The Kenya Human Rights Commission urged Mr. Kibaki to agree to an independent review of the disputed ballot count, saying in a statement: "Kenya will not survive this moment unless our leaders act like statesmen."
Confusion has surrounded the disputed vote count. The head of the country's electoral commission, Samuel Kivuitu, said he was pressured by both sides to announce the results quickly. The Nairobi newspaper The Standard quoted Mr. Kivuitu on Wednesday as saying: "I do not know whether Kibaki won the election."
Government spokesman Alfred Mutua said clashes had only affected about three per cent of the country's 34 million people. "Kenya is not burning and not (in) the throes of any division," he said, adding that security forces had arrested 500 people since skirmishes began.
Vice-President Moody Awori said over a local television station that the unrest was costing the country $31-million daily. Neighbouring Uganda says many gasoline stations there have shut down because of shortages of fuel, most of which is imported by road from Kenya's Indian Ocean coast.
The independent Kenya Human Rights Commission and the International Federation for Human Rights said in a joint statement more than 300 people had been killed countrywide since the Dec. 27 vote.
The Norwegian Refugee Council estimated more than 100,000 people have been displaced. Around 5,400 people have also fled to neighbouring Uganda, said Musa Ecweru, that country's disaster preparedness minister. Several hundred people have also fled to Tanzania, officials there said.
The bitter dispute has shattered Kenya's image as an tourist-friendly oasis of stability in a region that includes war-ravaged Somalia and Sudan.
It has also revealed ethnic rivalries under the surface of this regional economic powerhouse. Members of Mr. Kibaki's powerful Kikuyu tribe, influential in politics and business, were clashing with Mr. Odinga's Luos and others.
In one of the worst attacks, a mob set fire to a church Tuesday in a town about 300 kilometres northwest of Nairobi where Kikuyus had taken refuge. There were conflicting accounts about how many people died. The Kenya Red Cross said in a statement it retrieved 17 bodies from the smouldering church, but other witnesses put the toll at up to 50.
Among the displaced was Ruth Mwihia and her two-year-old daughter, who had spent three days trying to reach the airport in Eldoret.
"When they closed all the routes out and surrounded us the idea was to kill us," she said Wednesday after reaching Nairobi on a chartered flight. "Will the whole community pay for one person's mistake?"
Source: AP, Jan 02, 2007