Uganda Red Cross Society (URCS) has so far supported over 3, 778 Kenyan families in Malaba and Busia towns with basic non food items like blankets, soap, jerry cans, mosquito nets and cooking utensils. As of January 9, the population of Kenyans at the boarder was put at 3, 115 people. URCS has pre-positioned stocks to cater for 1, 000 households at the border.

We speak in the name of Kenya's governance, human rights and legal organizations, as well as the concerned citizens who have contacted and chosen to work with us over the last week. We strongly condemn the violence that has erupted across the country following the questionable outcomes of the counting and tallying done under the electoral process. We express our deepest sympathy to all those who have been injured, raped or killed and their families, those who have lost property, those who have been internally displaced as well as those who continue to live in fear.

Back in the 1970s, when Eldoret in Kenya was a relatively sleepy town, I was struck by the frontier-type mentality of many of the people I encountered there. Individuals and families came to this part of western Kenya to start a new life, and to try to make their fortune.

I wish to share with you the terror and nightmare we are going through of Ethnic War. I am emailing from Baraton and the situation is bad! It all began soon after lection results were announced! Then several groups of community around broke into war songs. They broke into the shopping center next to the university and looted all the shops that belong to Kikuyus and Kisiis. Then they broke into rented offcampus houses of students.

A crowd of about 1,000 people surged to the university gate and wanted to storm the university. They demanded that all Kikuyus, Kambas, Meru, and Kisii people leave the university within two hours. That was the only way to save the university from being stormed. They remained at the gate until it would be seen done. About three armed policemen arrived and spent time negotiating with the crowd. Finally the police advised us to evacuate the named ethnic groups. We put the faculty and students numbering about 250 into three university vehicles and were taken to Kapsabet Police station under police escort. They are still there as at now. A few of us are on campus!

The Division tried to evacuate those from Kapsabet Police Station to Eldoret international Airport but the next road block was a no-go-zone. Inspite of the police escort, the university buses had to return to Kapsabet. The is no way anyone can get out. One baraton group is holed up at Kapsabet police station while faculty members from Luo and Luhyia community, international workers and students are holed up within the campus. Those at Kapsabet have no food or water The worst fear is not so much of food but possibility of police station being stormed. The police are few and overstretched.

We have been having threats a almost daily at campus. On one occassion, we had to give out a bull for them to slaughter and guarantee us peace. Then they came and demanded milk which we also gave. Then we succeced in pleading with the malitia to allow us transport food to those at police station. They allowed us first day and we transported it on varsity tractor. It took three hours to go through road blocks to reach Kapsabet wich is only 15 kilometers away.

I attended a meeting yeasterday with commaders and malitia leaders who came to meet university adminstration. We confirmed that Malitia had had their own meeting and resolved that on humanitarion ground, faculty with kids and pregnant mothers be allowed to return to campus. They also told us students of other communities should come back. It sounded good news. We shock hands. We asked them to transport food to Kapsabet. They agreed and used their own vehicles. But the food never arrived. The malitia who were escorting the food we beaten and vehicles destroyed. The fact that you negotiate with one malitia group, remember the next and several others groups have their own policy. It is like you need visa to cross several of them. We have about 130 Kisii students and workers stranded at police station but cant leave for home. I know of Mr Obuchi whose wife is pregnant! I know of Pr Elijah Njagi and wife, Nyarangi anf wife, etcThey are sleeping in the grass and some in university bus parked at the police station. There is no food and I have never witnessed this.

As I write this email, have just been informed that a crowd came to university gate 15 min ago and demanded that we go out and join them in mass demonstration in the street. That means we shall be put on front line to meet the armed police. University PRO has negotiated with them and the crowd has now chained the university main gate, locked it and gone with the key. No vehicle an come in or go out. We pray that they dont come to force us out.

It is a nightmare to meet them. All of them are armed with matchets, rungus, arrows and bows. Some are drunk and others baying for blood. I have never seen this! We are fear frozen and prayer takes a new meaning! My home is 100 km from here but how do you pass those road blocks? We have Luo workers who want to get out but we hear the Kisii are grouping to fight Luos on Kisii/Luo border. We are boxed in. The road blocks are manned by not less than 500 people. The road block at Cheptrit has a thousand youth manning it. Police told us that Mosoriot has ten thousand worriers camping there. It is a no-go-zone.

We have no where to buy food, no calling cards available, no fuel! But we are finding a new meaning in prayer. I hope I can keep updating you of what is happening at Baraton. You can get from internet what could be happening in other parts like Eldoret, Kakamega and Kisumu.

I have to leave for a crisis meeting to try and avert any attack on the campus. I hope internet access will remain open so that I can keep updating you. I can see helicopter flying over us but seems to be passing again! American Embassy called yesterday for the sake of their citizens. This is a no-go-zone! We need to be evacuated from here! Promises of safety from some malitia groups cannot be trusted.You need to be here to feel it. Whatever the political arguement, it is a nightmare! The ground issue is not how you voted but ethnic affliation. Some are using it to settle personal scores! There were some leaflets from one group saying that all non-Nandis get ready to leave. Other Militia groups say no. But God still keeps us safe!

* Caesar Wamalika, University of Eastern Africa, Baraton/ELDORET, Kenya

KENYA: Fears rise over plight of displaced

Thousands of Kenyans displaced by post-election violence in the west of the country were taking refuge in police stations and church grounds with little or no access to humanitarian assistance four days into the worst unrest seen in the country since a 1982 failed coup.

Many have no homes to return to, because they were set on fire in the wave of violence that greeted the Election Commission of Kenya's announcement on 30 December that incumbent Mwai Kibaki had won the presidential poll three days earlier. Much of the violence was committed by civilians and generally targetted members of Kibaki's Kikuyu ethnic group and others that support him politically.
Full report

KENYA: Whispering in Swahili - good neighbours in the Rift Valley

Two families found themselves caught up in post election violence in Moi's Bridge, an area between Eldoret and Kitale in western Kenya's strife-hit Rift Valley Province. They told IRIN their stories.

The area is predominantly Kalenjin (an ethnic grouping including the Nandi, Marakwet, Pokot and others). But a significant Kikuyu population also lives there. According to the Kenya Red Cross Society and other sources, the violence in Rift Valley Province mainly pits members of the Kalenjin community against the Kikuyu, the tribe of controversially re-elected President Mwai Kibaki.

On the night of 29 December - the day before the election results were announced and promptly rejected by the opposition, the first attacks on Kikuyu houses and homesteads around Moi's Bridge began, according to residents of both ethnicities contacted by phone from Nairobi.
Full report

"The trouble broke out immediately after the results of the presidential polls were announced; everything changed within 20 minutes," he said.

"Within minutes, my two shops had been burnt down and they took everything - even the doors and windows. I lost property worth 600,000 shillings [about US$9,000] - including the clothes I was wearing."
Full report Full report

"The country has been riddled with insecurity over the last few days and there are many areas we cannot access," Kenya Red Cross Secretary General Abbas Gullet told reporters in Nairobi on 1 January after conducting an assessment by helicopter to western parts of the country.

Video footage shot during this mission showed smoke billowing from homes and farms, crowds of displaced civilians seeking sanctuary in churches and police stations, and usually busy main arteries empty of traffic and dotted with roadblocks manned by gangs.
Full report Full report

No JUSTICE, No PEACE!!
Onyango Oloo Dissects The Wrong-Headed "SAVE OUR COUNTRY" Media Blitz

During my 18 year sojourn in Ontario and Quebec, I became quite immersed in a wide array of social justice struggles-from Indigenous People’s rights, anti-globalization, working class struggles, anti-apartheid to anti-racist movements.

The Canadian anti-racist movement, while different and autonomous from its sister movement south of the 49th Parallel, has been inspired by the African-American led struggles for civil, social, economic, cultural and political rights.

Icons like Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks, Sojourner Truth, Ben Chavis, Jesse Jackson Jr., Fredrick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, Angela Davis, George Jackson, Huey P. Newton are household names in the African-Canadian, Caribbean Canadian and Native Canadian communities.

As many of us know, one of the most ubiquitous rallying cries and chants during anti-racist rallies, protests and demonstrations is the slogan, “No Justice, No Peace!”

I remember the summer of 1989 being amidst angry protestors around the Queen’s Park subway in Toronto, making our way up the street to the Royal Ontario Museum chanting these and other slogans to vent our ire about a racist exhibition at that Museum which really demeaned continental Africans and people of African descent in general.

To some, the phrase, “No Justice, No Peace!” is just another tired slogan, to be grouped with “A People United, Shall Never Be Defeated!” or “An Injury To One Is An Injury to All”.

These cynics are of course obtuse, because they do not appreciate the blood, the sacrifice and the torture which infused the historical origins of those chants. The second phrase emanated from the anti-imperialist and anti-fascist struggles of Latin American women and men confronting the US backed dictatorships of Central and South America. The third slogan is from South Africa where the militant workers in that struggle-soaked nation were right at the frontlines of the South African national liberation movement.

This morning I want to talk about “No Justice, No Peace!” in the contest of the ongoing social and political turmoil in Kenya.

And I am doing it because I have been reeling with DISGUST, recoiling in horror at a new campaign for “Peace” launched primarily by Kenya’s media houses, principally the Nation Media Group, the Standard Group and the folks who run Kiss 100 FM and the Nairobi Star.

Now to be fair to people like Julie Gichuru at NTV and the KTN anchors, they appear sincere and earnest enough. It is good intentions all through.

At least at the surface level.

When you do scratch beneath that surface however, you are confronted with something else- a blatant attempt to restore social control and buttress the class domination of the comprador and petit bourgeoisie in Kenya.

Please stay with me if you are temporarily befuddled.

Most Kenyans know that the spontaneous anti-government insurrections were sparked off by the decision of the Electoral Commission of Kenya to steal the Presidential vote at the behest of Mwai Kibaki and his PNU cohorts. We also realize that criminals and tribalists have hijacked these protests to loot and plunder and attack members of specific ethnic groups.

One would expect that ANYONE interested in a peaceful solution to the crisis in Kenya would begin with where “rain began to beat us” to quote Chinua Achebe for the billionth time.

One would further expect that only a transparent restitution of justice would jump start a sustainable peace and national reconciliation process.

At a minimum, there would have to be some kind of a public acknowledgment that the flawed Presidential election results must be rectified.

That seems to be the consensus in Kenya, and judging by media reports, among the publics of Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda and many other African countries.

The indictment by the EU observer mission would seem to indicate that the capitals of capital have no doubt in their minds that Kibaki stole the elections.

Given the above, one would expect that a "peace process" dubbed “Save Our Country” jumpstarted last night by the main Kenyan media houses who were in the forefront of exposing the anomalies and irregularities would pay attention to the question of justice even as strove to put out all the infernos raging across Kenya.

What has happened instead?

A mealy mouthed editorial piece on peace carried simultaneously across different Nairobi media that insults the collective intelligence of Kenyans.

Sample this:

“Political leaders on both sides must be told in no uncertain terms that they are currently in great danger of losing their credibility in the eyes of Kenyans and the international community because systemic killing of the innocents sweeping Kenya, destruction of the economy and the spread of disaffection throughout the land. No grievance and no cause is worth the innocent blood of Kenyan children. The orgies of looting, burning, rape and wanton, well-orchestrated blood-letting are undermining the moral basis of the politicians’ cause…”

-Excerpt from an editorial jointly run in the Daily Nation and Nairobi Star (Thursday, January 03, 2008)

HELLO?

Since when did “politicians on both sides” coerce ECK to steal the Presidential vote?

The culpability rests solely with President Kibaki. From the fascist diktats of Michuki, Muthaura, Murage and Co. we know that the ODM leadership has NOT had a chance to publicly address their followers and therefore cannot be accused of “orchestrating” or “instigating” anything.

Yes, the blood of innocents is flowing freely with mobs setting alight a church full of women and children and targeting innocent wananchi based on their ethnicity and regional origins.

But who is talking about the orgy of POLICE and PARA-MILITARY EXTRA-JUDICIAL EXECUTIONS?

By yesterday, there were over ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY BULLET RIDDLED BODIES in the New Nyanza Hospital including corpses of INFANTS. Who shot to death those innocent unarmed civilians? The police have been executing ghetto youth in Kibera, Kawangware and elsewhere. Who employs and commands these killers in uniform?

Reports from Kisumu insist that the Kibaki regime may be using crack NRA troops from neighbouring Uganda to slaughter Kenyan citizens. When I first raised this issue online twenty four hours ago, some were quick to dismiss the very possibility. Today the Nyanza Provincial Police Officer is on the defensive, admitting she is aware of these widespread allegations even as she strenuously denies them.

In this regard I must state that I was somewhat disappointed by the public statement released yesterday by Kenyan Nobel Laureate Wangari Maathai.

While I commend her for speaking up and appealing to Kibaki to take charge, I am disappointed that what motivated her was not so much the reality that the whole of Kenya is burning but rather that “her people”, the Central Kenyan communities were being targeted. Surely one can make a very strong case that the Luo communities residing in Kisumu, Migori, Homa Bay and elsewhere are being similarly targeted, this time by THE STATE itself.

In fact, in the letters to editors page of the Standard there is this letter from a Kisumu resident of South Asian heritage which says, inter alia:

“…The recent riots are not Kisumu riots. Even the killings are State-operated to gain political mileage to discredit ODM’s Raila Odinga and his supporters.”

-Mahesh R, Kisumu, p.8. Letter, The Standard, Thursday, January 03, 2008

Raila Odinga has publicly stated that he is ready to meet with international mediator and in fact as I write these lines is meeting with Archbishop Desmond Tutu at Pentagon House. Earlier this morning Amos Kimunya was interviewed by the BBC and he was quoted as saying that the Kibaki regime does NOT see the need for international mediators because they (PNU) can deal with the matter internally- a claim which is mocked by the ongoing protests. The same Kimunya has accused the international observers as being biased towards ODM after the EU team publicly denounced the anomalies in the tallying of the presidential results. President Kufuor of Ghana, the current AU Chairman was scheduled to be in Kenya today, but the Kibaki regime BLOCKED his coming.

Are these guys SERIOUS???!

Let us go back to the editorials. This is a passage from the Standard’s:

“…Employ a reputable international arbiter, NOT to determine who won the presidential poll, but to work out a road-map that will bring Kenya back from the brink and a mutually acceptable proposition for sharing power…Notwithstanding the inflation of figures in a number of areas, both ODM and PNU garnered 4 million plus votes in the presidential ballot, meaning the country is split right down the middle. The position of President is not vacant. Kibaki was declared President whether or not the presidential ballot was flawed…”

-Standard editorial, Thursday, January 03, 2008

It is right in this excerpt that the mask slips to reveal the PNU underbelly of the much ballyhooed “Save Our Country” onslaught.

Huh?

So we should not “determine who won the presidential poll” eh? How then, dear Standard editors, will we work out a road-map that will bring back Kenya from the brink?

Even queasier is the cheesy full page ad by the Concerned Citizens for Peace addressing two men-Mwai Kibaki and Raila Odinga- to do something.

The very content of the ad betrays its elitist, undemocratic character.

The 2007 Kenyan civic, parliamentary and presidential polls was a national affair involving MILLIONS of Kenyan citizens. What is happening in Kenya is NOT a PRIVATE FIST FIGHT involving the Othaya and Lang’ata MPs, but rather a NATIONAL CRISIS that has the future of MILLIONS UPON MILLIONS of Kenyan women, children and men at stake.

To try and lock out the Kenyan people from an urgent democratic impasse and reduce it to a two man tussle is a grave insult to the Kenyan people.

By the way, WHERE is President Kibaki, the apparently “popularly, democratically and fairly elected leader”?

From the look of things right now one would be forgiven if they thought that Major-General Hussein Ali is the acting Head of State with chief government propagandist Dr. Alfred Mutua as his deputy.

In the few times I have seen Kibaki he is holed up at State House flanked with senior military officers giving the distinct impression that he is their hostage.

It is now approximately 12:15 as I keyboard these lines and reports on the television indicate that there are ongoing skirmishes between the police and pro-ODM youths along Thika Road, Mbagathi Way, Kibera, Eastlands and the City Centre. In other words, there is a minor uprising in Nairobi and not just the capital but also Kakamega, Bungoma, Mombasa, Kisumu and elsewhere.

On December 30th I spoke about Kibaki’s Coup.

Four days later the presence of police, para-military and military formations underscores my point about the overthrow of democratic rule.

What is actually laughable is the phenomenon of a horde of PNU election losers led by Kibaki down to his deputy Awori and FORMER cabinet ministers Tuju, Kombo, Kituyi, Shakombo etc MASQUERADING as a legitimate “government”.

Surely, if Kibaki had the mandate that PNU hawks like George Nyamweya claims he has, he should have formed a government by now. He should have by now been addressing his 4.5 million supporters at heavily attended mass rallies by now. Instead, Kibaki skulks stealthily in State House afraid to meet the very Kenyan citizens he claims to lead.

Which brings me back to the slogan:

“No Justice, No Peace!!”

Until we resolve the simple question of who Kenyans actually elected President on December 27, 2007, there WILL BE NO PEACE.

In my considered opinion, the SAVE OUR COUNTRY campaign is a slick, dishonest appeal by the pro-Kibaki comprador and petit-bourgeois business elite hoodwinking Kenyans to ACCEPT the fraudulent election results and legitimize criminal PNU’s civilian coup.

Why should Kibaki or Raila share power?

At the December 27th elections, Kenyans overwhelming voted for a new government:

That government is the Orange Democratic Movement led by its flag bearer, Raila Amolo Odinga.

Once again I say:

NO JUSTICE, NO PEACE!

A PEOPLE UNITED, SHALL NEVER BE DEFEATED!

AN INJURY TO ONE, IS AN INJURY TO ALL!

*Onyango Oloo, a Kenyan political activist and ex political prisoner.

*Please send comments to or comment online at www.pambazuka.org

Civilians fleeing violence in east Democratic Republic of Congo are facing a shortage of medical care as disease outbreaks begin to plague the troubled region,
the charity Médécins Sans Frontières (MSF) said on Wednesday. Fighting between government troops and forces loyal to renegade general Laurent Nkunda have pushed civilians from their homes several times in ongoing flare-ups which have intensified since August.

Floodwaters in central Mozambique have displaced at least 100 families and the death toll in neighbouring Zimbabwe has risen to at least nine as heavy rains lashed the neighbouring southern African countries, according to media reports. Sergio Moiane, administrator of the district of Buzi in Sofala Province, in central Mozambique, told local media at least 100 families had been evacuated from their homes in the low-lying area of Bandua after experiencing consistently heavy rainfall since 7 December. He said floodwater had swept away about 188 hectares of crops, although water levels in the Buzi River had begun to recede.

Fire fighters have so far recovered the bodies of at least 17 people who were killed as a result of three separate explosions in the centre of the capital Freetown. The blasts also caused the hospitalisation of five other seriously injured people. It is not clear what might have cause the explosion which happened in shop belonging to a Lebanese trader jammed with people busy buying second-hand clothing. Early reports said a gas leakage might have caused the blasts. Most Sierra Leoneans depend on gas cookers for cooking.

The UN refugee agency has resumed the repatriation of Sudanese refugees from western Ethiopia after a six-month hiatus due to the rainy season and poor road conditions. A convoy of buses and trucks carrying 610 Sudanese refugees – more than half of them born in Ethiopia – left Bonga Camp on Saturday on a 820-kilometre-long journey to Sudan's Blue Nile state via the border crossing of Kurmuk.

It was before dawn in Zambia's Kala camp when a truck began collecting refugees who had registered for voluntary repatriation. An enthusiastic Marie Kizyala Sandwe headed to the vehicle waiting outside her one-roomed thatched hut, clutching a small bag holding her personal belongings: clothes, kitchen utensils and a sleeping mat. For 32-year-old Marie, the seven years she lived in Zambia under the protection of the government and the UN refugee agency felt like an eternity.

the French Court in Paris postponed a decision on the request of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) to try Wencelas Munyeshyaka and Laurent Bucyibaruta before French courts for their alleged participation in the Rwandan genocide in 1994. The decision was postponed to 30 January on formal grounds. Both are accused of genocide and crimes against humanity and both have been living in France since the genocide.

Government troops in Niger have executed civilians and committed other abuses in reprisal for rebel raids in the Saharan country's uranium-mining north, international human rights organisations say. In separate reports, UK-based Amnesty International and U.S.-based Human Rights Watch denounced rights violations by the army as it confronts a rebellion by the Niger Justice Movement (MNJ).

Democratic Republic of Congo has called a peace summit for Dec. 27 to try to end fighting between Tutsi dissidents, government forces and other fighters in its North Kivu province, officials said on Thursday. Several mediation efforts and military campaigns have failed to end years of fighting in the eastern province, where the presence of Rwandan Hutu fighters accused of leading their country's 1994 genocide has provoked conflicts, including Congo's 1998-2003 war.

With more than 1,400 people having lost their lives this year while illegally crossing the Gulf of Aden, the United Nations refugee agency has started a new campaign in the Horn of Africa to highlight the dangers of making the perilous voyage to Yemen. The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) is distributing colourful leaflets containing drawings and text printed in Somali and in three Ethiopian dialects throughout Somalia’s Puntland region, while radio spots have been broadcast since October.

The Security Council has called on all sides in Somalia to use peaceful means to consolidate peace in the East African nation that has not had a functioning national government since 1991. Foreign Minister Massimo D’alema of Italy, which holds the Council’s rotating presidency this month, read out a statement urging “all Somali parties to reject violence and… to enter into substantial dialogue aimed at achieving a full and all-inclusive national reconciliation.”

Amnesty International has revealed that secret executions have taken place in Nigeria’s prisons. Despite the country’s recent assurances that no one has been executed there “in years”, Amnesty International has uncovered evidence of at least seven executions in the last two years. It is feared that more may have taken place.

Somaliland Human Rights Organisations' Network (SHURO-Net)has learned, with delight that the government of Somaliland released from Mandhera Prison the three political prisoners Dr. Mohamed Abdi Gaboose, Eng. Mohamed Hashi Elmi and Jamal Aydid Ibrahim, the leaders of the newly formed but unregistered Political Party called Qaran, who were imprisoned on 27 August 2007 at 8 a.m. in Hargeisa after the Somaliland government accused them the engaging in an illegitimate political activities because they have established an unlawful political party.

Although Algeria has been affected by large-scale internal displacement caused by the internal conflict that has ravaged the country since the early 1990s, very little information is available on the current situation of the displaced and their numbers. The European Union estimated in 2002 that violence had displaced one million people, while others put the number as high as 1.5 million.

This Amnesty International research guide is intended to facilitate research on selected human rights aspects of the migration-related detention of refugees, asylum-seekers and migrants. This document provides the reader with an overarching human rights framework against which practices in domestic settings can be compared, contrasted and critiqued.