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Show Thursday, TVT . W A' HERALD DAILY January 31, 2008 1 A7 f ITTTT. ifWYrM 111 imiiuimvvuiiij u Kenyan president's Kisumu first city to fall to ethnic cleansing after contested election Katharine Houreld THE ASSOCIATED PRESS known how many Kikuyus may have fled on their own, but it is not believed to be much higher than 20,000. Now only about 150 Kikuyus d third-large- , remain, camping miserably opposite the police station for protection. No buses have been escorted out since Jan. 13, although murderous young men still stop vehicles searching for y : The' KISUMU, Kenya young man hefting a machete at the burning roadblock was i frustrated. He'd been looking for five days, but could riot i find a member of tribe to kill. Members of Kenya's biggest tribe have disappeared in their thousands from Kisumu, makbut perhaps ing it the first not the last city to be ethnically cleansed. ,, "If we find any Kikuyus, we're going to slaughter them or burn them Daniel Odongo said Wednesday. Odongo wielded the machete as a mob of hundreds of young men'with rusty axes and other weapons roared their approval "But there is none in the : houses around here." ' When incumbent President Mwai Kibaki was announced as.winner of Dec. 27 elections by a narrow margin after days of unexplained delays, many in Kisumu took to the streets of the city of 504,000 on the shores of Lake Victoria, looting and setting shops ablaze. The residents, mainly from the Luo tribe of opposition leader Raila Odinga, soon turned their rage on Kibaki's a minority in Kikuyu people the western city resented for their domination of politics and the economy. They set Kikuyu homes on fire and ordered them to leave, or face death. At the local police station, records show that officers escorted out of the city an average of 21 buses per day packed with panicking Kikuyus in the first two weeks of January. That means about 20,000 people fled Kenya's city, leaving about 484,000 people behind them. It is not u Kikip tribe all but vanishes from cily a.. . ': "... .rv i . V. ,k &' '"-I- - i If v4-- victims. . Odongo lamented that the only KUcuyus around were being guarded by police. The Kikuyus trickling into the camp by the police station in the lajt few days are the poorest of the poor, as well as those with the strongest ties to the city. "If this continues, I can say goodbye to Kisumu," Donise Kangoro said sadly. The trader, who had not eaten for two days, has lived here for two decades, married a local woman from the neighboring Luyha tribe, and fathered two children. His wife and children returned to her people, but Kangoro hung on through the madness of the first days, when angry opposition supporters torched the homes of his fellow Kikuyus, and through the tense weekend when news arrived of faraway revenge massacres. But when he saw a howling mob hunting his neighbors through the streets five days ago, he knew there would be no mercy. He ran, leaving be- BEN term with a set definition. Asked if he was disavowing Frazer's comments, McCormack replied: "She said what she said, I am going to stick to what I said." The violence in Kisumu began when protesters started looting and police responded by firing into the crowds. Dozens were killed. Those shot, mainly Luos, were the first victims killed in this city. More than 800 people have died across Kenya, including scores in the Rift Valley this week when members of the Kalenjin ethnic group attacked Kikuyus in the town of Nakuru, and Kikuyus attacked Luos and others in the town of Naivasha. Outside the capital of Nairobi, meanwhile, about 300 unarmed Kikuyus gathered to demand that a scores of Luo Frazer, said Kenya was experiencing "clear ethnic cleansing" in the Rift Valley region. "There was an organized effort to push people out of the Rift Valley," Frazer said. Now after weeks of deadly attacks, hind his money, food, clothes counterattacks and reprisals, and goods to sell. she said "killing may be the There may be a handful of object" In Washington, State DeKikuyus hiding in the houses of the wealthy, he said, but he partment spokesman Sean doubts it. "We are the last KiMcCormack said experts from kuyus left in Kisumu," he said. the department's Office of War Government figures released Crimes Issues were compiling Wednesday said the number of information about the postpeople forced from their homes election violence but had not has risen to 300,000, showing yet made any findings. "If they do document any that ethnic cleansing has not instances of atrocities, we'll diminished, and this threatens to redraw Kenya's once coshave to look at what next steps to take, but at this point we're mopolitan ethnic map in areas like the Rift Valley. not there yet," he said. He also On Wednesday, the top U.S. noted that "ethnic cleansing," unlike "genocide," is not a legal envoy for Africa, Jendayi students were Kikuyus. They began to disappear after the election; now, not one is left, she said In one of the worst attacks, Kikuyus chased 19 Luos into a shanty in Naivasha, blocked the doors and set it ablaze. Babies were among the dead. Odongo said that attack is what set him off on his vengeful hunt for Kikuyus. At the roadblock, where graffiti on a flaming truck reads "We want guns," George Otieno insisted the dispute was not "on a tribal basis." Although he had gone hunting for Kikuyus without knowing how they voted, that was only to put pressure on Kibaki, he said. "This is purely political," he concluded, waving his machete to make his point. people working at the Kenya Research Forestry Institute there leave. They set ablaze a grass field that was part of an animal feed research project, and police escorted a bus full of women and children out of the institute. When the killings began in Naivasha and Nakuru, Dorothy Atieno suspected the cycle of revenge would continue. The murder of an opposition lawmaker in Nairobi on Tuesday was the final straw. "I called a Kikuyu friend and told her to leave immediately or she would be killed," she said quietly, her painted fingernails toying with her pink skirt. "Luckily, she had already gotten out." At Nyamasaria Primary School, where Atieno is a teacher, almost half the 1,200 II 0 . (C jC m 1 CURTISAssociated Press Kenyan man sits in the cab of a destroyed truck used as a makeshift roadblock while a tire burns on the roof, as he and others enforce the roadblock in Kisumu, Kenya, on Tuesday. The town of Kisumu is now almost completely ethnically cleansed of Kikuyus, and mobs armed with makeshift weapons erect burning roadblocks and search for the few Kikuyu targets remaining. A i L, - - n ....i.i ii. 41 in .' .lift it'-.- 1 We've got a new look.... check it out. www. Ih e ira d eirJ ira .com 1 - )iii 'i ilMi-- J |