Kenyans Gather for Opposition Rally, Day after Attacks
Thousands of Kenyans rallied Monday for an anti-government demonstration in the capital's central park amid heavy police presence, with political and ethnic tensions high following weekend attacks in which over 21 were killed.
Opposition leader and former prime minister Raila Odinga has organized the rally to address what he says are major government failures, including worsening crime and insecurity, rising living costs, impunity, corruption and allegations of ethnic favoritism in government appointments.
Soldiers and police ringed Nairobi's Uhuru park, or "Freedom" in Swahili, with a several rounds of tear gas fired to disperse chanting protestors making their way through the city center after stones were thrown.
The rally, the culmination of a series of countrywide demonstrations, is held on the July 7 anniversary of protests for multi-party democracy in the 1990s, a date heavy with symbolism and known commonly as "Saba-Saba", or "Seven-Seven" in Swahili.
Tear gas was also fired in Odinga's home town of Kisumu in western Kenya to disperse a crowd of several hundred angry youth.
Police say they have deployed 15,000 officers to ensure the rally passes off peacefully, with the country already on high alert fearing attacks by Somalia's Al-Qaida-linked Shebab gunmen, who have vowed revenge for Kenya's military presence in Somalia.
The Shebab claimed twin attacks in Kenya's coastal region on Saturday night in which at least 21 were killed, the latest in a series of killings they have claimed.
Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta, however, denied that the Shebab were involved and instead blamed "local political networks" and criminal gangs, saying victims had been singled out because of their ethnicity. His comments were widely seen in Kenyan media as being directed at Odinga.
But Odinga has fiercely denied any link to the violence and condemned the attacks.
Tensions in the country are high. Some broadcasters were accused of whipping up ethnic divisions by the national communication authority in a statement printed in newspapers Monday.
"Some broadcast stations are taking advantage of the prevailing political situation in the country to air content containing hate speech," it said, warning individuals that "incitement to violence and advocacy of hatred" online on social media was a crime.
Newspapers have appealed for political leaders to ensure their supporters remain calm.
"The opposition campaign pushing demands for a national conference has already stoked serious tensions and uncertainties," the Daily Nation newspaper editorial read Monday.
"This makes it doubly important that leaders of both the Cord alliance and the ruling Jubilee coalition realize that Kenya could be approaching implosion unless all exercises maximum restraint."
Foreign embassies have urged citizens to stay away from the demonstration, and some Kenyans have returned to home areas fearing violence.
"Life has become too hard, especially for those in the small scale businesses," said protestor Mary Achieng, 23, a hairdresser who works in a small township on the outskirts of Nairobi.
"I support dialogue, and I hope today's rally will bring some changes, such as how to address the issue of insecurity, rising costs of living and tribalism."
Bitter memories are still fresh from 2007, when elections escalated into ethnic conflict in which more than 1,200 people were killed, violence for which Kenyatta and his deputy William Ruto face crimes against humanity charges at the International Criminal Court (ICC).
The 2007-8 violence erupted when Odinga accused then president Mwai Kibaki of rigging his way to re-election, but what began as political riots quickly turned into ethnic killings of Kibaki's Kikuyu tribe, the country's largest single group.
In turn, they launched reprisal attacks, plunging Kenya into its worst wave of violence since independence in 1963.
Despite efforts to heal the wounds of the ethnic killings, tensions still run deep between communities, with many key grievances that fed into the violence -- most notably land ownership rights and claims that minorities are being marginalized -- still unresolved.
Source: Agence France Presse
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