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NAIROBI: Kenya braced for more violence Thursday as the opposition
vowed to press ahead with a second day of banned nationwide rallies
against President Mwai Kibaki’s disputed reelection.
“The demonstrations are going on and we are
neither going to be cowed or stop at anything until all our aims are
achieved,” Secretary-General Anyang Nyongo of the opposition ODM
party told AFP, a day after police fired tear gas and live bullets
on protesters in opposition strongholds.
Police shot two dead in Kisumu and wounded
several others in the western city and in the capital’s slums in
attempts by hundreds of supporters of opposition leader Raila Odinga,
who claims he was robbed of the presidency, to march on city
centers.
Odinga, who charges that Mwai Kibaki engineered
his narrow victory in the December 27 election through a rigged
ballot count, called the three days of demonstrations after attempts
last week to get the two to enter talks to find a political solution
failed to make headway.
But police cracked down with guns and sticks on
Wednesday, in a grim echo of a week of severe clashes and tribal
killings sparked by the presidential poll, in which some 700 died
and more than a quarter of a million were displaced.
A spokesman for Odinga’s Orange Democratic
Movement (ODM) said in a statement Thursday that they would include
reports of police violence, including images of police beating
protesters captured on local television, in a complaint to the
International Criminal Court in The Hague.
“This killing and other acts of violence
inflicted on peaceful protesters will be part of the case we are
filing,” said Salim Lone in a statement.
Police maintained that the ban on rallies still
held.
“Police will do everything to ensure that the
law is respected,” spokesman Eric Kiraithe told AFP, a day after
police cleared the streets of Nairobi with tear gas and batons.
“Both camps have taken absolutely
irreconcilable positions,” a political analyst warned Thursday.
“We are headed to tough times ahead both in
parliament and outside as both sides harden their positions,”
added Evans Manduku.
-- AFP
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