Diplomatic efforts accelerated on Wednesday to resolve the crisis in Kenya, where post-election violence has threatened to escalate into tribal war, with tens of thousands displaced and hundreds murdered. The dispute over last week’s presidential ballot has triggered Kenya’s worst urban unrest in 25 years.
President Mwai Kibaki’s government accused rival Raila Odinga’s backers on Wednesday of responsibility for an explosion of tribal violence over a disputed presidential poll that has plunged Kenya into turmoil. ”Supporters of Raila Odinga are involved in ethnic cleansing,” said spokesperson Alfred Mutua.
The bitter dispute over the Kenyan presidency could have long-lasting economic repercussions, observers warn, fearing that financial turmoil could quickly derail an, until now, booming economy. Considered an investor-friendly haven of relative stability on its way to becoming an ”African Tiger”, Kenya is experiencing its worst political unrest in 25 years.
Police raids, arson and tribal attacks over the last 24 hours have claimed more than 100 lives in Kenya, police and officials said on Tuesday, bringing the toll for five days of post-election bloodshed to 299. ”At least 30 have burned to death inside a church in the Kiamba area,” a police commander said.
Brutal unrest across Kenya over President Mwai Kibaki’s re-election left about 150 people dead on Monday — some hacked to death — taking the overall toll to at least 185 killed in four days. Police opened fire on some protesters and looters and many people were killed with machetes as ethnic tensions mounted.
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/ 31 December 2007
Close to 130 people were killed in Nairobi and in western Kenya overnight during clashes that erupted following President Mwai Kibaki’s re-election, police said on Monday. The deaths brought the confirmed toll from poll-related violence since Thursday’s ballot to 149.
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/ 30 December 2007
Kenya’s President Mwai Kibaki won a second five-year term on Sunday in a disputed election victory that triggered deadly riots by tens of thousands of opposition supporters. As smoke billowed from protests in Nairobi slums, Kibaki was sworn in on the lawn of State House just an hour after the result was announced.
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/ 30 December 2007
Kenyans waited for the result of their closest-ever presidential election on Sunday, fearing more unrest after a chaotic vote count marred by widespread ethnic violence over accusations of rigging. Several people were killed in tribal disturbances on Saturday across the East African nation, usually seen as an island of relative stability in a volatile region.
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/ 29 December 2007
Kenya’s opposition claimed victory on Saturday in a presidential vote after official figures gave their candidate a four-percentage point lead over President Mwai Kibaki on three-quarters of the count. Delays announcing the results ignited deep ethnic tensions as youths wielding machetes fought, looted and burned homes in opposition strongholds.
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/ 29 December 2007
Kenya’s opposition challenger, Raila Odinga, led on Saturday in the race to govern East Africa’s largest economy but tempers flared over the slow pace of vote tallying in the incumbent’s strongholds. In a third day of ballot counting, Odinga, heir of a wealthy nationalist hero, led President Mwai Kibaki.
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/ 28 December 2007
Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki trailed his main rival on Friday in the race to lead East Africa’s biggest economy for the next five years, according to early tallies by local media. Partial results from three main television stations all gave opposition challenger Raila Odinga a strong lead over his former ally.
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/ 28 December 2007
Early forecasts showed Kenya’s President Mwai Kibaki in a close fight on Friday with his main challenger after an election diplomats praised as smooth, despite sporadic violence and rigging claims by both sides. An exit poll gave Kibaki the lead, but partial tallies compiled by three local broadcasters put his rival, Raila Odinga, ahead in the race.
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/ 27 December 2007
Queues several kilometres long snaked around Africa’s largest slum on Thursday as Kenyans across the country and the class divide turned out en masse to vote in a close presidential election. In all of the East African nation’s previous polls, there was either only one candidate to vote for or only one with a realistic chance of winning.
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/ 27 December 2007
Guarded by police, Kenyans voted on Thursday in a presidential election preceded by violence, tainted by allegations of rigging and likely to be the closest in more than four decades since independence from Britain. President Mwai Kibaki (76) having unseated the country’s 24-year ruling party in 2002, himself faces the possibility of losing power.
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/ 26 December 2007
Two heavyweights of Kenya’s post-independence politics square off in a presidential vote on Thursday after a campaign that has overshadowed Christmas and seen the opposition holding a small lead in opinion polls. The closeness of the vote has raised fears that fraud and intimidation may be used to try to swing results.
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/ 25 December 2007
Kenyan police fired teargas to disperse stone-throwing supporters of the country’s main presidential contenders on Monday after the candidates made a final push to win votes in a race deemed too close to call. Scuffles briefly flared shortly after President Mwai Kibaki and his opposition challenger, Raila Odinga, addressed huge rallies in the capital.
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/ 24 December 2007
Two heavyweights of Kenya’s post-independence politics square off in a presidential vote on Thursday whose run-up has seen the opposition hold a small lead in opinion polls over President Mwai Kibaki. But the closeness of the vote has raised fears fraud and intimidation may be used to try to swing the result.
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/ 21 December 2007
The European Union’s chief election observer on Friday condemned violence that has marred the lead-up to Kenya’s elections, left at least 70 people dead since July and risks disenfranchising 20 000 people. Alexander Graf Lambsdorff was visiting the epicentre of tribal clashes that have been ongoing for months.
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/ 7 December 2007
Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki fell further behind his main challenger, Raila Odinga, in opinion polls on Friday, just three weeks before elections that are expected to be the East African country’s closest. The latest Steadman poll gave opposition leader Odinga 46% to Kibaki’s 42%. Its last poll two weeks ago had the 76-year-old incumbent running neck-and-neck with Odinga.
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/ 7 December 2007
The leaders of Africa and the Europe Union (EU) gathered in Lisbon on Friday for a summit designed to forge a new era in ties, but which is in danger of being overshadowed by the presence of Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe. The two-day summit in the Portuguese capital is set to be dominated by issues such as trade, immigration, the environment and human rights.
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/ 5 December 2007
Land clashes in Kenya’s fertile Rift Valley highlands have killed 16 people, uprooted hundreds and fuelled fears of a bloody campaign ahead of a December 27 election, police said on Wednesday. About 14-million Kenyans are eligible to vote in presidential and parliamentary elections in East Africa’s biggest economy but many are braced for violent skirmishes.
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/ 26 November 2007
More than 8 000 Kenyans have been executed or tortured to death since 2002 when police launched a crackdown on a banned, politically-linked sect, a group of Kenyan lawyers said on Sunday. Security forces launched a crackdown on the Mungiki sect after it was banned in March 2002.
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/ 23 November 2007
Kenya’s President Mwai Kibaki has closed a gap with leading challenger Raila Odinga and is now running neck-and-neck with him ahead of elections in five weeks’ time, the country’s leading poll service said on Friday. The latest Steadman poll gave Odinga 43,6% to Kibaki’s 43,3%.
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/ 19 November 2007
Chinese Defence Minister General Cao Gangcuan on Monday pledged to help Kenya modernise its armed forces during talks with President Mwai Kibaki, an official statement said. Kibaki said the ”support would not only improve the forces’ ability to ensure security along the borders but also enhance Kenya’s role in peacekeeping activities in Africa and beyond”.
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/ 15 November 2007
Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki on Thursday lodged nomination papers with the electoral board, seeking a second and final term of office ahead of polls expected to be the country’s closest yet. Kibaki vowed to crack down on violence in the run-up to the December 27 election, the fourth since pluralism was reintroduced in 1992.
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/ 5 November 2007
Last week Kenya’s newly selected cardinal — and for reasons that are obscure to me, we have not had one in a while — came out to declare that the Catholic Church opposes majimboism. To its supporters, majimboism is a kind of federalism; to its detractors it looks a lot like ethnic regionalism.
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/ 1 November 2007
Félicien Kabuga has a reward of several million dollars on his head, and tops the list of fugitives of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR). Yet, he’s managed to escape justice for years. The ICTR was set up in northern Tanzania by the United Nations in 1995 to bring high-level perpetrators of the Rwandan genocide to justice.
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/ 26 October 2007
Kenya will hold presidential and legislative elections on December 27, the electoral commission announced on Friday, days after President Mwai Kibaki dissolved the Parliament. Commission chief Samuel Kivuitu said 14 248 838 Kenyans have so far registered to vote in the one-day exercise, the fourth since Kenya reverted to pluralism in 1992.
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/ 25 October 2007
Police may have killed hundreds of people in a crackdown on Kenya’s notorious Mungiki gang, a rights group said on Thursday, in a growing national controversy ahead of a presidential election in December. Police are furiously denying the new accusations, calling them an attempt to besmirch authorities.
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/ 22 October 2007
Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki dissolved Parliament on Monday, starting the countdown to what could be the closest election in East Africa’s biggest economy. ”I hereby dissolve the ninth Parliament of the Republic of Kenya,” Kibaki said in a televised speech.
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/ 18 October 2007
A convoy of shiny, 4×4 vehicles roars into the main street of a small town, kicking up dust and scattering people in their way. As traffic grinds to a halt, corpulent politicians emerge from their cars to wave at crowds of mainly young men, some still fingering the small amounts of money and food they have been given to come to the rally.
Two dozen foreign embassies in Kenya on Monday called for ”zero tolerance” on campaign violence as elections loom in the East African nation where national votes seldom pass without bloodshed. With campaigns just beginning to roll ahead of an expected December presidential poll, one rally has already been ambushed by men armed with bows-and-arrows.