The government has deployed the military in areas of the Rift Valley in an attempt to control violence that took on a new high at the end of last week. [updates]
Media reports indicate that Nakuru, where rioters took to the streets, and Naivasha, where about nineteen people have been burnt in a house, were the most affected. These same reports indicate that the violence is retaliatory.
The East African Standard reports that at least 90 people have died over the weekend.
According to Reuters:
Violence since Kenya's Dec. 27 election has now gathered a momentum of its own -- linked to decades-old land disputes, wealth inequities and past British colonial rule -- and taken the death toll to around 800 people.
A Kisumu resident reports:
It was a peaceful morning, I even dropped my son off at school. It is only when I was in the town center that I saw the chaos. I saw youth, young men, barricading roads and flushing passengers out of vehicles. This violence and mayhem, it seems is at the Kisumu bus stage and the roads leading into town and the highways. GSU [the government paramilitary forces- General Service Unit] are literally camped here in Kisumu, there is so many of them. They disperse the youth and as soon as they leave, these young men get back on the streets! Matatus are not running today.
From here [Milimani], I can hear gunshots coming from Nyalenda.
And now the school has refused to release children until everything is calm.
Over the weekend, former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan visited violence-struck areas in the Rift Valley. He later met with both the government opposition leaders.
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Latest reports have Interior Security Minister George Saitoti visiting Naivasha and insisting on equal protections and equal treatment of criminal elements.
In Naivasha, a 1,000-strong group of mainly Kikuyus
brandishing axes, sticks, machetes and hammers confronted
several hundred Luos -- some also armed -- who wanted safe
passage out of town, a Reuters witness said.
A handful of riot police kept the groups apart as they
threw rocks at each other near the Lake Naivasha Country Club,
and a military helicopter kept watch from above.
"We want these Luos to go back home. They chased and killed
our people. Now we want the same thing to happen to them," said
Kikuyu protester Joseph Maina, holding a plank of wood.
Internal Security Minister George Saitoti arrived later and
was booed loudly when he urged people to drop their weapons:
"We shall not tolerate any kind of disorder in the country ...
we will treat Kenyans as Kenyans, not as tribes."
Meanwhile, published here is a report by IRIN on hate speech in Kenyan media. It includes details of inciteful messages from across the spectrum but particularly from vernacular radio stations that may have urged the country towards the present ethnic violence,
Handa
heard Kalenjin callers on Kass FM making negative comments about other
ethnic groups, who they call "settlers”, in their traditional homeland,
Rift Valley Province.
"You hear cases of 'Let's reclaim our
land. Let's reclaim our birthright'. Let's claim our land means you
want to evict people [other ethnic communities] from the place," said
Handa.
One difficulty in monitoring such stations is that the language used is often quite subtle and obscure.
On
Kass FM, there were references to the need for "people of the milk" to
"cut grass" and complaints that the mongoose has come and "stolen our
chicken", according to Kamanda Mucheke, senior human rights officer
with the state-funded Kenya National Commission on Human Rights
(KNCHR), which monitored hate speech in the countdown to the
elections.
The Kalenjin call themselves people of the milk
because they are pastoralists by tradition and the mongoose is a
reference to Kikuyus who have bought land in Rift Valley, Mucheke
said. On another occasion, a caller emphasised the need to “get rid of
weeds”, which could be interpreted as a reference to non-Kalenjin
ethnic groups.
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A close family relatives have been attacked in Naivasha and their house burnt down. The elder son is currently in Kenyatta intensive care undergoing treatment from serious burns.
May God help Kenya.