Police in the Kenyan capital Nairobi fired teargas and water cannon at thousands of protestors on Thursday as marched towards a banned rally in the city center.
A opposition supporter faces a police truck spraying water during running battles in the streets of Nairobi on Thursday.
While opposition leaders had initially defied police and set off from their headquarters for the rally, a top official of Kenya's main opposition party said on Thursday that the rally had now been canceled and called on supporters to go home. "We are a peaceful people who do not want violence," said William Ruto, a top official of the Orange Democratic Movement. "That is why we are peacefully dispersing now."
Opposition leader Raila Odinga had called the march to protest the disputed re-election of President Mwai Kibaki. He insists that he was the winner and that last Thursday's vote was rigged. The outrage after Kibaki was inaugurated on Sunday erupted into fierce violence, in which 300 people have been killed.
On Thursday riot police thronged the streets and shots were fired in the air in an attempt to beat back the crowds. Marchers heading for the city's Uhuru Park, held branches and white flags, supposed to symbolize peace although some burned an effigy of Kibaki and waved placards denouncing him as the devil.
Smoke from burning tires and debris rose from barricaded streets, not just around Nairobi's huge slums where hundreds of thousands of Odinga's supporters live, but also on the main roads leading into the suburbs where upper-class Kenyans and expatriates live.
The violence that erupted after the disputed election has taken on worrying tribal character as members of Kibaki's influential Kikuyu tribe were targeted by other tribes. So far around 100,000 people have been displaced by the violence and over 5,000 have fled into neighboring Uganda. Human rights groups have warned of bloody repression by the police, while there are also reports of revenge killings, including some by the militant Kikuyu gang, Mungiki.
The rapid descent into chaos in one of East Africa's most stable democracies has been viewed with alarm abroad, particularly in the United States, which considers Kenya a key ally in the fight against al-Qaida in Africa. US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice spoke with Odinga on Wednesday and plans to talk with Kibaki on Thursday in order to urge both men to resolve their differences peacefully.
While Odinga has said he would consider a power-sharing agreement in advance of a re-run of the vote, he does not look like backing down in his insistence that he won the election. International observers have said that there were serious flaws in the Dec. 27 election and the count, which saw Kibaki win by a narrow 200,000 votes.
South Africa's Nobel Peace Prize laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu arrived in Nairobi on Thursday and hopes to mediate between the two men. "This is a country that has been held up as a model of stability," he said after arriving on Thursday. "This picture has been shattered."
The unrest has already had an economic impact by scaring away tourists, Kenya's most important source of income. And it threatens to destabilize neighboring economies, many of which are reliant of fuel and other supplies which are imported from Kenya's Indian Ocean coast.
smd/ap/reuters
Post to other social networks:
Stay informed with our free news services:
| All news from SPIEGEL International | Twitter | RSS |
| All news from World section | RSS |
© SPIEGEL ONLINE 2008
All Rights Reserved
Reproduction only allowed with the permission of SPIEGELnet GmbH
