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Photo: Manoocher Deghati/IRIN |
| The government issued a warning by SMS to all Kenyans to beware of inflammatory speech in the aftermath of contested presidential elections in 2007 |
NAIROBI, 23 January 2008 (IRIN) - Inflammatory statements and songs broadcast on vernacular radio stations and at party rallies, text messages, emails, posters and leaflets have all contributed to post-electoral violence in Kenya, according to analysts. Hundreds of homes have been burnt, more than 600 people killed and 250,000 displaced.
While the mainstream media, both English and Swahili, have been praised for their even-handedness, vernacular radio broadcasts have been of particular concern, given the role of Kigali’s Radio-Télévision Libre des Mille Collines in inciting people to slaughter their neighbours in the Rwandan genocide of 1994.
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Photo: Emily Witt/IRIN |
| Children swim at the edge of a flooded road in Mopeia |
MOPEIA, 22 January 2008 (IRIN) - The people who live along the Zambezi River in central Mozambique know that every few years a flood is inevitable. They might lose everything, but the fertile soil of the flood plain, fish to add to their pots, and tradition keeps them returning to the lowlands each spring to plant their crops.
This year, as the Mozambican government rescues boatloads of farmers, many from the same communities that were washed out last year, some residents of the river basin are beginning to question whether that tradition is sustainable. The Zambezi has spilled its banks three times in seven years, creating havoc and claiming lives.
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Photo: Abdullahi Hassan/IRIN |
| Thousands have been displaced by fighting between government troops and insurgents. The African Union has warned that forces opposed to the government have expanded their insurgent activities to areas that were previously peaceful |
NAIROBI, 21 January 2008 (IRIN) - Forces opposed to the Somali government have expanded their insurgent activities to areas that were previously peaceful and could be planning attacks in the Middle and Lower Juba regions, the African Union (AU) has warned.
"Their strategy seems to be to further weaken the TFG [Transitional Federal Government] by destabilising as many areas as possible, fully aware that the government does not, at the moment, have the capacity to deploy significant numbers of troops in all the regions," according to a report by AU Commission Chairman Alpha Konare on 18 January.
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Photo: IRIN |
| Properties on fire during post-election clashes in Eldoret |
NAIROBI, 19 January 2008 (IRIN) - Kenya's breadbasket Rift Valley Province has experienced some of the worst ethnic clashes since December's disputed polls. But there is nothing new to the violence in this volatile region.
More than 220 people have been killed in the province since the elections, according to police figures, including at least 30, many of them children, who died when the church in which they had sought refuge was torched on 1 January in a village near Eldoret.
Hundreds of homes and farms have been set on fire and recently harvested crops stolen.
The violence has prompted almost 170,000 people to flee to makeshift camps and, for those able to do so, to friends and relatives elsewhere in the country. Others have nowhere to go. |
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Photo: Wikipedia |
| The last generation? |
EPUPA FALLS, 18 January 2008 (IRIN) - Asking the local Himba people where on the Cunene River in northern Namibia they would choose to site a hydroelectric dam "is like asking me which of my three children do you want me to kill", a Himba elder told IRIN.
In the event, the announcement by President Hifikepunye Pohamba late last year that construction on "the Baynes hydropower project [on the Cunene River] as soon as possible", was made without consulting the Himba, stirring simmering tensions over land ownership and ethnic chauvinism that first rose to the surface in the 1990s, when the ruling South West African Peoples Organisation (SWAPO) government attempted, but failed, to construct a dam at Epupa Falls.
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Photo: Julius Mwelu/IRIN |
| Demonstrators throw teargas back at the police in the Mathare slums, Nairobi, 16 January |
NAIROBI, 17 January 2008 (IRIN) - Human rights activists in Kenya have dismissed as meaningless police plans to launch an inquiry into the use of live rounds during protests against December’s controversial presidential elections.
On 16 January alone, according to Human Rights Watch (HRW), five people were shot dead in the western city of Kisumu during attempts by supporters of the opposition Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) to stage a rally.
Local television footage from the city showed a policeman pursuing two unarmed protesters, shooting them at close range and then kicking one of them before walking away. One of the men reportedly died.
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