International Herald Tribune:
Africa & Middle East
Mob burns church in Kenya, killing dozens
By Jeffrey Gettleman
Published: January 2, 2008
NAIROBI, Kenya: Dozens of people seeking refuge in a church in Kenya were
burned to death by a mob on Tuesday in an explosion of ethnic violence that is
threatening to engulf this country, which until last week was one of the most
stable in Africa
According to witnesses and Red Cross officials, up to 50 people died inside
the church in a small village in western Kenya after a furious crowd doused it
with gasoline and set it on fire.
In Nairobi, the capital, tribal militias squared off against each other in
several slums, with gunshots ringing out and clouds of black smoke wafting over
the shanties. The death toll across the country is steadily rising, with
witness reports indicating more than 250 people killed in the past two days in
bloodshed connected to a disputed election Kenya held last week.
The European Union said Tuesday that there was clear evidence of ballot
rigging, and European officials called for an independent investigation.
Kenya's president, Mwai Kibaki, who won the election by a razor-thin margin,
has refused.
Government officials on Tuesday said they would crack down on anyone who
threatened law and order, and they banned all political rallies. The
opposition, meanwhile, vowed to hold a million-person march on Thursday, which
many Kenyans fear could blow up into a bloodbath.
Western diplomats have been urging the political leaders to reconcile, but
the lines between those leaders seem to be only hardening.
Odinga said he would not talk to Kibaki until he admitted that he had lost
the election.
Still, he urge his followers to calm down.
"This is tarnishing our image as democratic and peaceful seekers of change,"
Odinga said.
Odina and Kibaki ran together in 2002, in what was considered Kenya's first
free election. The tribal alliance they built steamrolled Kenya's ruling party
and marked a watershed moment, with the opposition finally taking control. But
the two fell out soon afterward, and diplomats here said that it has been very
difficult now trying to broker a truce.
"We just want them to meet," said Bo Jensen, the Danish ambassador to Kenya.
"But at the moment they're quite far from each other."
The election did not start off badly. A record number of Kenyans, nearly 10
million, waited in lines miles long on Thursday to scratch an X next to their
chosen candidate.
Kibaki, 76, vowed to keep growing Kenya's economy, one of the strongest in
Africa, partly because of its billion-dollar tourist trade. Odinga, 62, ran as
a champion of the poor and promised to end the tradition of Kikuyu favoritism.
Voting followed tribal lines, with the vast majority of Luos going for Odinga
and up to 98 percent of Kikuyus in some areas voting for Kibaki.
Tribes, obviously, do matter in Kenya. But for the most part, the country has
escaped the widespread ethnic bloodletting that has haunted so many of its
neighbors, like Rwanda, Congo, Sudan and Ethiopia. In Kenya, the Kikuyu elite
has shared the spoils of the system with select members of other tribes, which
has helped defuse resentment.
This has led to decades of stability and is a reason why most Kenyans,
including Bujra, the retired professor, do not think their country will end up
like Rwanda, where nearly one million people were killed. Clearly, Kenya is a
long way from that.
"In Rwanda, the conflict was between a small minority and a large majority,"
he said, referring to the history of Tutsis dominating the Hutu majority.
"Here, it is different, because many tribes have a stake."
But election time, especially in a country where politics and tribe are so
intertwined, is often bloody in Kenya. Hundreds of people were killed in tribal
clashes surrounding the 1992 and 1997 elections. The early results showed
Odinga well ahead and more than half of Kibaki's cabinet losing their
Parliament seats and therefore their jobs.
But when Odinga's lead began to vanish as further results were announced over
the weekend, his supporters suspected something was amiss. It was slow-motion
theft to them and they began to riot. And even before Kenya's election
commission declared Kibaki the winner on Sunday, election observers were saying
that the president's party changed voting tally sheets to reflect more votes
than were cast on election day. In some areas, there were more votes for the
president than registered voters.
On Tuesday, Samuel Kivuitu, the election chairman said he had been "under
undue pressure" to certify the results.
Western governments, including the United States, are now calling for Kenyan
officials to re-tally the votes.
"It's the only way forward," said Graham Elson, the deputy chief of the
European observer delegation.
Kennedy Abwao contributed reporting from Nairobi and Matt Wald from
Washington.
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