Kenya News Update: Murder of Politician Sets off Violence

Reports put the total dead in post-election Kenya at nearly 1,000 over the last month.

Most recently, Mugabe Were, a young Kenyan politician for the Orange Democratic Movement (ODM), who was organizing a peace march was shot dead, twice in the head, in his driveway today. The murder set off a wave of deadly riots across the country, further increasing violence. Two military helicopters fired rubber bullets into a mob of 600 bearing machetes. (New York Times; Radio Netherlands; Sydney Morning Herald.)

Reports have also been filed of people being burned alive. The brutality and velocity of violence brings to mind the rapidity with which previous large-scale slaughters have come about, namely in Rwanda when ethnic violence gave way to the murder of 800,000 in less than a month. Marie Okabe, the United Nations special adviser on genocide has spoken out, invoking international law.  (ABC News; Reuters.)

Background on the violence: at Wikipedia and the Council on Foreign Relations.

A report from Al-Jazeera English:

Comments

[kofi]

nothing changes in africa. we live off the sweat of the african and the rest of the world does nothing. including the human rights watch and the UN. a big facade.