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Kenyan opposition now resorts to strikes
2008-01-19 09:06:18
By By agencies
Their protests weakened by a harsh police crackdown, Kenya`s opposition said yesterday it would turn to economic boycotts and strikes to keep up pressure against President Mwai Kibaki over his disputed re-election.
At least 10 people were killed yesterday when police opened fire on protesters and rival ethnic groups clashed in violence caused by a disputed election.
In a third and final day of protests called by opposition leader Raila Odinga`s Orange Democratic Movement (ODM), police fired tear gas and live rounds in Nairobi, Mombasa port and the southern town of Narok, at demonstrators angry over President Mwai Kibaki`s disputed re-election.
At least 18 people have been confirmed killed in the three days of protests.
The opposition and human rights organisations accuse the police of using excessive force and firing indiscriminately at unarmed protesters.
The police say they have only shot at rioters and looters.
Opposition spokesman Salim Lone said after yesterday`s demonstrations ODM would switch to other forms of action like small strikes and boycotts of companies run by what he called government hardliners backing Kibaki.
Next, the opposition will call for a ``boycott of companies owned by hard-liners who are around Mr. Kibaki,`` including one of Kenya`s biggest banks, a prominent bus company and a major dairy producer. Lone also said they would work with unions ``to organize strikes in selected industries,`` Lone said.
He declined to give details Kenya, exploded in violence after the December 27 election, the tightest race in the country’s history.
Kibaki`s main challenger, Raila Odinga, insists the president stole the vote, and internation al observers and the electoral chief have questioned the results.
The economy is already reeling from the unrest, which has kept away tourists who flock to the East African nation’s primeval wildlife reserves, providing billions of dollars in revenue.
Odinga`s supporters rose up after the results were announced, burning homes, clashing with police and exposing long-simmering ethnic tensions.
More than 600 people were killed and hundreds of thousands were forced to flee their homes, the worst violence since a failed 1982 coup attempt.
Overnight in Nairobi`s Mathare slum, mobs attacked and wounded eight people and killed another, said resident Alice Nduko, 35.
An Associated Press photographer saw the slain man`s body by the side of a road, the back of his head split open.
Nduko fled to a neighbouring air force base with about 200 other people. In a muddy plastic bag at her feet was a neighbour`s severed hand, which she said had been hacked off by a mob.
She said she retrieved it “as evidence.``
``They`ve been killing our neighbours,`` said Nduko, who is an ethnic Kikuyu like Kibaki. ``We came here because we are afraid.``
Despite his call for strikes and more protests, Lone said Odinga was open to dialogue. ``We are completely ready to negotiate in good faith,`` he said. ``Our people are suffering.``
Kibaki`s government has made similar statements, but envoys from the U.S. and the African Union have failed to bring the two rivals together for talks.
Three former African presidents — Tanzania`s Benjamin Mkapa, Mozambique`s Joachim Chissano and Botswana`s Ketumile Masire — were in Nairobi to take over the mediation effort.
We told them ``what we want and they are going to convey that to the other side,`` Odinga said after meeting with the three yesterday. He said the statesmen had also met with Kibaki.
The opposition has called for Kibaki to step down and acknowledge that the election’s vote count was skewed. They have also called for a transitional government.
The United States blamed both Kibaki and Odinga for the unrest.
``There are clashes because of the political deadlock,`` State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said, adding it was ``beyond time`` for the two to reach a political accommodation
Former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan has recovered from flu and will travel to Nairobi on Tuesday to help mediate a political crisis in Kenya, his office said yesterday.
In a statement issued in Geneva, Annan said the purpose of his mission was to help the Kenyan people find a ``peaceful and just solution`` to their post-election crisis.
Annan, a Ghanaian who was named head of a panel of ``Eminent Africans``, was originally scheduled to go to Kenya earlier this week to try to mediate between Kibaki and opposition leader Raila Odinga.
But he was struck with flu just before departing Geneva on Tuesday, and delayed his trip.
He will be joined in Kenya next week by Graca Machel, wife of former South African leader Nelson Mandela, and former Tanzanian president, Benjamin Mkapa, who is already in Nairobi, according to the statement.
Meanwhile two German men and a Dutch woman who entered Kenya as journalists have been arrested on suspicion of terrorism after they were found with photos of ``vital installations``, police said yesterday.
``Although they entered the country as journalists they have been conducting themselves in a suspicious manner,`` police spokesman Eric Kiraithe told reporters.
``We are investigating materials recovered from them. Some of them include photographs of vital installations,`` he added, without giving further details.
Kiraithe said the two Germans — Gerd Uwe and Andrej Hermlin — and Fleur Van Dissel, a Dutch national, were arrested at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport.
He said they raised suspicions after they changed vehicles four times during the trip from central Nairobi to the airport.
But Salim Lone, spokesman for the opposition Orange Democratic Movement (ODM), said Van Dissel had been making a documentary about its leader Ralia Odinga, which was aired on local television a few days before the Dec. 27 election.
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