    
Tonya
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Tonya
Post Number: 6529
Registered: 07-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, January 29, 2008 - 08:01 pm: | 
|
Would-Be Peacemaker Killed in Kenya
By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN
January 30, 2008
NAIROBI, Kenya — Melitus Mugabe Were, a freshman parliamentarian, could have been one of the keys to unlocking Kenya’s crisis, but he never got the chance.
On Tuesday morning, as he pulled up to the gate of his home, Mr. Were was dragged out of his car and shot to death.
“Whoever did this,” said Elizabeth Mwangi, a friend, “has killed the dreams of many.”
Mr. Were was an opposition politician who grew up in a slum, became a businessman and then gave back. He sponsored teenage mothers to go to college, married a woman of another ethnic group and resisted his party’s often belligerent talk. As Kenya slid into chaos this past month after a disputed election, he shuttled between leaders of different ethnic groups and tried to organize a peace march.
The details are still sketchy, but the shooting appears not to have been a robbery but a hit. Word spread fast and violently, with opposition supporters rioting across Nairobi, the capital. The unrest seems to be escalating, and Kenyans are now literally ripping their country apart, uprooting miles of railroad tracks, chopping down telephone poles, burning government offices and looting schools. Militias from opposing ethnic groups are battling in several towns and Kenyan army helicopters fired warning shots on Tuesday to disperse them. There have been reports of forced circumcisions and beheadings.
The economy is paralyzed. More than 800 people have been killed since the election on Dec. 27. United Nations officials are saying that the government has failed to protect civilians, including girls who are getting raped at displaced persons camps.
Many Kenyans fear their country is tumbling toward disaster.
“The police are not in control,” said Maina Kiai, chairman of the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights. “ Actually, nobody is in control.”
Mr. Kiai said he was especially concerned about Mr. Were’s killing because he and other prominent Kenyans have recently received death threats.
“None of us are safe,” Mr. Kiai said.
According to Mr. Were’s guard and family members, Mr. Were had just pulled up to his gate after midnight and was waiting in his Mercedes for the gate to open when another car drew along side him.
“I heard a beep,” said Mr. Were’s wife, Agnes. “And then two loud shots. I ran out and saw my husband bleeding and people were yelling to me, ‘he’s still breathing, he’s still breathing’ but when I got him to the hospital he was dead.”
Mr. Were, 39, whose campaign posters show him smiling with street children, had been shot in the heart and in the eye.
The guard at his house, who was unarmed, said two men yanked Mr. Were out of the car, shot him and drove off, without taking a thing. Family members said he had been followed by suspicious cars several weeks before.
Opposition supporters immediately labeled the killing a political assassination, intended to intimidate Kenya’s opposition movement, which is challenging the election in December that Kenya’s president, Mwai Kibaki, narrowly won, over top opposition leader Raila Odinga.
“We suspect the foul hand of our adversaries in this,” Mr. Odinga said Tuesday.
Police officials say they are investigating closely and ruling nothing out. Some of Mr. Were’s friends said the culprits might have been connected to the other contenders for his parliament seat, who recently filed a petition to challenge the results.
On Tuesday morning, a huge crowd formed in front of Mr. Were’s ranch house and built roadblocks of burning tires and heavy stones. It was the first time that rioters had reached an affluent neighborhood in Nairobi, and it was not just rowdy unemployed youth from the slums who were wreaking havoc.
“This is how we express our outrage,” explained Evans Muremi, a social worker, who stacked burning tires while wearing a jacket and tie.
The election controversy seems to have brought out the worst in Kenya. While the country has been considered one of the most stable and promising in Africa, it is still a very violent place, with carjackings and muggings all too common and mobs routinely stoning to death suspected criminals. Likewise, ethnic tensions have always existed in Kenya, but have never exploded as widely as they have in the past few weeks. Ethnically-driven clashes, fueled by grievances over land and power, have flared in just about every corner of the country.
The problems have laid bare the shortcomings of Kenya’s poorly-paid security forces, who often respond either too harshly or too feebly. Nearly two weeks ago, they shot an unarmed protester at point-blank range in front of rolling TV cameras. On Tuesday, they drove past a crowd of young men pulling down a telephone pole in front of Mr. Were’s house and did nothing.
There is also a crisis of leadership. Kenya’s top politicians have been arguing about who is to blame for the violence more than they have been working together to stop it. Mr. Kibaki, who was considered aloof even before the election, has made few public appearances since his country began to unravel. Western diplomats say he is surrounded by hardliners bent on staying in power.
On Tuesday, Mr. Kibaki began formal negotiations with Mr. Odinga. Kofi Annan, the former United Nations secretary general, has been in Kenya for a week trying to bring the two sides together. So far, neither has budged. Both Mr. Kibaki and Mr. Odinga claim to have won the election, Mr. Odinga, who says the election was rigged, is demanding a new election. Mr. Kibaki has refused and despite talk of a power-sharing arrangement, Mr. Kibaki has already moved ahead and given the most important cabinet positions to political allies. Western observers have said the election was so flawed there is no telling who really won.
Mr. Annan has laid out a framework for the negotiations that are expected to take several weeks and focus on several issues, starting with the violence. In speeches on Tuesday, Mr. Kibaki and Mr. Odinga urged their followers to stay calm and they both deplored the killing of Mr. Were.
According to friends and family, Mr. Were grew up in a Nairobi slum called Dandora. He was friendly and sharp and caught the eye of some Italian missionaries, who helped put him through school. He lived in Italy for a time and then came back to Kenya to start a home-building company. Five years ago he became a councilman for Dandora. He used his own money to build a footbridge and a small soccer stadium in the slum.
Mr. Were was from the Luhya ethnic group and his wife is Kikuyu. But that didn’t seem to matter.
“He was one of the least tribal people I knew,” said Wycliffe McKenzie, a friend.
He seemed to be more moderate than other opposition leaders and avoided their often belligerent talk. He told supporters not to join protests, which have often become violent and destructive.
Friends described him as a bright spot in a gritty place. Ms. Mwangi said she came to him when she was 19 and the mother of two and needed money to finish high school. He stayed in touch with her through the ups and downs of single motherhood and the pressures of school.
“He told me to hang in there. He said one day you’ll be my personal doctor,” Ms. Mwangi said, as she stared blankly at the metal gate where he was shot. “He told me never to give up.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/30/world/africa/30kenya.html?bl&ex=1201755600&en=207d305ba811973c&ei=5087%0A |
Email This Page