One can only guess at the reason why the UN failure to be a presence in the disputed election is not ringing more alarm bells. Is it because the press don't care about countries that aren't oil bearing?
Hundreds have died since the election farce on 28th December.
Now, a close friend of an Olympic Athlete reveals that he was stoned to death after a crowd mistook him for someone else. Which can happen, after all, the world perceives the UN as being an effective body.
Saturday, January 05, 2008
UN Failure sees Kenyans killed and Olympic Athlete Stoned
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Olympic athlete stoned to death by mob
By Tim Cocks
A KENYAN Olympic runner who competed internationally for many years was amongst victims of the country's post-poll violence when a mob stoned him to death this week, a close friend said today.
Lucas Sang, a middle-distance runner, had competed in the 1988 Seoul Olympics as part of Kenya's 4x400 metre relay quartet, and again in the 1992 games in Barcelona.
Violence has erupted in opposition strongholds in the east African nation over a disputed presidential election that saw President Mwai Kibaki just defeat challenger Raila Odinga, amid accusations of vote-rigging.
A close friend of Sang and also a former professional athlete, Martin Keino, said the runner was attacked on Tuesday night by a stone-throwing gang as he walked with a group of friends. He died when a rock hit his head and the gang then burned his body.
"One of the ways they recognised him was there was a piece of his tracksuit still not burnt on the leg," Keino said. "It's really sad. He was very well known and popular."
Eldoret has seen the worst of ethnic clashes many Kenyans can scarcely believe are happening in their country, usually seen as a relatively stable nation in a turbulent region.
Much of the violence has targeted Kibaki's large, economically dominant Kikuyu ethnic group, especially in Eldoret and the Rift Valley region, where about 90 people have been killed and hundreds of homes burned.
Thousands of people have fled town and about 40,000 in the Rift Valley region are internally displaced, aid workers say.
Keino said the rioters mistook the athlete - who hails from the Kalenjin tribe, whose youths have launched many of the attacks in Eldoret - for a Kikuyu.
"It was at night, in the dark. Tensions are high. They mistook him for someone else, I guess. No one would have done this if they knew it was him. He was so respected."
Lying about 2000 metres above sea level on the western side of Kenya's fork of the Great Rift Valley, Eldoret has produced a series of top athletes.
The most famous, Paul Tergat, held the world record for the marathon from 2003 to 2007, until he was beaten by arch rival Haile Gebrselassie of Ethiopia.
Keino said Tergat was a friend of Sang, but he had not yet managed to contact him to tell him. "He'll be very disappointed, very sad," he said.
A funeral will be held in Eldoret tomorrow. Keino said he hoped it would bring people together.
"Hopefully, it's going to make people realise this violence has to stop."
Government rejects call for fresh election
from news.com.au
THE Kenyan government rejected an opposition request for a presidential election re-run within three months, saying the proposal smacked of "blackmail".
"The government will never yield to blackmail. People should stop using violence as blackmail," government spokesman Alfred Mutua said, when queried about the opposition's demand for a fresh election.
On Sunday, the electoral commission declared President Mwai Kibaki the winner of the December 27 election but opposition challenger Raila Odinga rejected the results, arguing they were rigged to re-elect the incumbent.
US envoy starts mediation on Kenya crisis
from news.com.au
US envoy Jendayi Frazer has kicked off her mediation effort in Kenya, where 250,000 people have been displaced and at least 360 killed by post-electoral violence.
The US assistant secretary of state for African affairs held talks with Raila Odinga, the opposition candidate who claims incumbent President Mwai Kibaki rigged his way to re-election in the December 27 polls.
Ms Frazer was also expected to meet Kibaki in a bid to defuse the worst security and political crisis in Kenya, a key US ally and usually a beacon of democracy and stability in the restive east African region.
A statement from the United Nations released Friday said an estimated 250,000 Kenyans had been displaced by the unrest that broke out when the electoral board controversially declared Kibaki the winner on Sunday.
The announcement was made despite growing evidence of fraud in the vote count and sparked a wave of riots and tribal killings, mainly in Odinga's western heartlands.
The world body said between 400,000 and 500,000 people had been affected by the violence and stressed that at least 100,000 of them needed immediate assistance in the western Rift Valley region.
Local aid workers expessed fear an outbreak of diseases in make-shift camps in schools, hospitals and churches, most of which were still out of reach owing to their inaccessibility or safety concerns.
As the country grappled with an unprecedented humanitarian crisis, the violence subsided nationwide, with few incidents reported overnight and police announcing that it the daytime curfew on the city of Kisumu had been lifted.
"The curfew was lifted after the security situation improved,'' a police official told AFP.
More than 100 people have been killed in tribal violence in Kisumu, the country's third city and a bastion of Odinga's Orange Democratic Movement (ODM).
UN chief Ban Ki-moon meanwhile held separate phone conversations with Odinga and Kibaki, his spokeswoman Michele Montas told reporters.
"In both conversations, he discussed the return to calm and normalcy in Kenya and humanitarian needs (and) called upon the political leaders to resolve their issues through dialogue,'' she said.
On Thursday and Friday, police thwarted planned rallies by the opposition which were aimed protesting the election results and declaring Odinga's "the people's president''.
Yet the government and the opposition still disagreed on the way forward, with ODM demanding a presidential poll re-run within three months and Kibaki's camp rejecting the request as blackmail.
Government spokesman Alfred Mutua said the president would accept a court order for a re-run, but Odinga has repeatedly stated he would not resort to a judiciary he charges is entirely loyal to the incumbent regime.
Preparing the ground for Ms Frazer, South African Nobel peace laureate Desmond Tutu had emerged Friday from talks with Kibaki optimistic about possible coalition rule.
British Foreign Secretary David Miliband called on Kenya to let the head of the African Union (AU), Ghanaian President John Kufuor, play a mediating role in the crisis, after Kufuor's scheduled trip was cancelled.
Before Ms Frazer's arrival the government had given the cold shoulder to proposed mediators, initially declaring that Tutu was welcome in Kenya as a "tourist'' and nipping in the bud a joint mediation by the AU and Commonwealth.
"Kenya is not in a civil war that would warrant a mediator,'' Mutua said.
Kibaki, 76, had been praised during the election campaign for preserving Kenya's status as a war-free country and grooming its economy to become an "African tiger'' but calls were growing for a probe into the ballot.
Kenyan Attorney General Amos Wako has demanded an independent audit, a call echoed Friday by Human Rights Watch, which warned the country risked further violence in the absence of a fully transparent investigation.
"Mounting evidence of serious election fraud has helped to ignite violence throughout Kenya,'' the panel's deputy Africa director, Georgette Gagnon, said in a statement.
The crisis has forced the government to delay re-opening of public schools due January 7, saying students and teachers have been displaced. Some displaced people have camped in school buildings in the war-affected zones.
It has also caused chaos beyond Kenya's borders, with fuel shortages disrupting transport and trade in Uganda, southern Sudan, Rwanda and the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo.
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