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Riots Draw Ethnic Lines

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By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN, The New York Times

Published: January 29, 2008

NAIROBI, Kenya - Kisumu, Kenya's third-largest city, erupted again Monday as thousands of rioters tore through the streets, burned stores, looted schools and vented their outrage over a spate of ethnically driven killings this past weekend.

It seems that what started out last month as a political crisis has turned into a violent ethnic one, and Kenya's security forces are struggling to keep a full-fledged ethnic war from breaking out.

The trouble in Kisumu began at 8 a.m. when a pack of young men from the Luo ethnic group set fire to a bus thought to be owned by Kikuyus, another ethnic group.

Witnesses said the passengers escaped and the Luos were exacting revenge for what happened the day before when a mob of Kikuyus trapped 19 Luo people inside a house and burned them to death.

That happened in Naivasha, a town in Kenya's scenic Rift Valley that is better known as a tourist destination but has suddenly become a battle zone.

By 2 p.m. thousands of rioters were sweeping across Kisumu, lighting enormous bonfires and looting shops and schools.

Witnesses said a mob cleaned out one primary school, taking desks, chairs, books, doors and windows.

The city is a stronghold of Kenya's opposition movement and was gutted by furious mobs in late December.

"Things are really bad again," said Jacob Otieno Obiero, a Kisumu resident, on Monday afternoon. "There are fires everywhere."

Police officers fired tear gas at rioters, and residents said officers shot several people with assault rifles, killing four.

Witnesses said that gangs of Luos, who make up the majority of Kisumu's population, were prowling certain neighborhoods looking for Kikuyus to kill.

Many members of the Luo and Kikuyu communities have been at each other's throats since Dec. 30, when Kenya's election commission declared the incumbent president, Mwai Kibaki, a Kikuyu, the winner over Raila Odinga, an opposition leader and a Luo.

Western observers have said that there were so many flaws in the vote counting process that it was impossible to tell who really won.

The controversy has awakened other, older, poisonous feelings about land, economic opportunity and political power. About 800 people have been killed and 300,000 displaced since the election.

Much of Kenya is pulling apart along ethnic lines and in many areas it is nothing short of ethnic cleansing. The ethnic group with the greatest numbers has driven out people who belong to other ethnic groups, turning neighborhoods and towns that were once quite mixed into ethnically homogeneous zones.

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