Raw Democracy
Machete-wielding youths hunt Kikuyus as ethnic bloodletting spreads in Kenya
2 hours, 55 minutes ago
By Katharine Houreld, The Associated Press
KISUMU, Kenya - Thousands of machete-wielding youths set buses and homes ablaze and blocked roads with burning tires Monday as they hunted down members of President Mwai Kibaki's Kikuyu tribe. One driver was burned alive in his minibus because he was Kikuyu.
The death toll from Kenya's disputed presidential election soared over 800.
"The road is covered in blood. It's chaos," said Baraka Karama, a journalist for independent Kenya Television in Kisumu.
A month of ethnic bloodletting triggered by rigged presidential elections gathered frightening momentum in Kenya, spreading from town to town in the western Rift Valley, scene of the worst clashes.
There was no sign of relief from international mediators trying to persuade politicians to resolve the crisis that has erupted over Kibaki's re-election in Dec. 27 balloting that international and local observers say was marred by a rigged vote tally.
Columns of smoke rose from burning homes in Kisumu.
"We wish to find one, a Kikuyu .... We will butcher them like a cow," said David Babgy, 24, who was among 50 young men stopping buses at a roadblock of burned cars and uprooted lamp posts.
The only deaths reported there Monday, apart from the burned bus driver, were people shot by police whom human rights groups accuse of using excessive force.
As youths set buses ablaze at Kisumu bus station Monday morning, police fired tear gas, then opened fire. A morgue attendant said one man whose body was brought in had been shot in the back of the head. A school cleaner was also hit and killed by a stray bullet fired by a police officer, said Charles Odhiambo, a high school teacher.
Fred Madanji, a petrol station attendant, said he saw two other "protesters" shot in the back and killed as they ran away from police Monday afternoon.
In villages around Eldoret, Kalenjin youths used machetes to kill four Kikuyus and stoned two other to death, according to witnesses. A military helicopter tried to land at Cheptiret village but was prevented from doing so by youths who set grasslands ablaze.
In Kakamega, on the edge of a wildlife preserve, gangs looted and set ablaze a downtown hotel and two wholesalers, said Rev. Allam Kizili of the local Pentecostal Church.
Police fired tear gas to try to stop the violence, he added. There was no immediate word on casualties. The ethnic makeup of that violence was not clear.
In Naivasha, Kenya's flower-exporting capital on a freshwater lake inhabited by pink flamingos, some 2,000 people from rival tribes faced off Monday, taunting each other with machetes and clubs inset with nails.
A handful of police holding a line between them periodically fired live bullets into the air. The mobs retreated, only to regroup.
British colonizers seized large tracts of land to cultivate fertile farms in the Rift Valley, traditionally home to the Kalenjin and Masai ethnic groups.
After independence in 1963, then-president Jomo Kenyatta flooded reclaimed farmlands with his Kikuyu people, creating resentment that exists to this day.
Kikuyus also are resented for their domination of politics and the economy, a success cemented by endemic corruption and patronage.
The bloodshed has transformed this once-stable African country, pitting longtime neighbours against one another and turning tourist towns into no-go zones.
Kibaki and opposition leader Raila Odinga blame each other. Human rights groups and officials like Britain's visiting minister for Africa, Mark Malloch-Brown, contend some of the violence is organized by rival political groups.
Malloch-Brown said after meetings in Nairobi on Monday with Kibaki, Odinga, and their mediator, former UN secretary general Kofi Annan, that little headway was being made.
". . . The level of anger between the two sides is just growing exponentially," he said.
Kibaki has said he is open to direct talks with Odinga, but that his position as president is not negotiable. Odinga says Kibaki must step down and only new elections will bring peace.
As the politicians bickered, the toll from weekend violence still was coming in.
In Nakuru, provincial capital of the Rift Valley, 64 bodies were counted Monday at the morgue, said a worker who asked that his name not be used.
In Naivasha, district commissioner Katee Mwanza said at least 22 people were killed on the weekend. Nineteen of them were Luos, Odinga's tribe, chased by a gang of Kikuyus through a slum and trapped in a shanty that they set on fire, said police commander Grace Kakai.
