Comments on: UPDATED: Door to Door Raids and Police Brutality Leave Five Injured and one dead in Kibera

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By: Owen

Owen — Sun, 20 Jan 2008 17:16:10 +0000

I happened upon this article from my wired news RSS feed and was wondering if there is a brief overview of what is happening here. I haven’t been real involved in “world politics” and would like to become more so. Could anyone give me just a brief overview of what is being reported? i subscribed to the RSS feed here and am now fallowing it. Thanks for your help.

By: admin

admin — Sun, 20 Jan 2008 07:29:05 +0000

Hi Rusty,

Thank you for your comments. That pictures is still there on this post: http://vigilantejournalist.com/blog/archives/250 . sometimes if you scroll down before the pictures have fully loaded, one or two don’t appear.

Peace

By: Rusty

Rusty — Sun, 20 Jan 2008 02:58:45 +0000

Hi Anne, thank you for bringing this awful situation to light in such a powerful way. I chanced upon your page January 18 linked from the Andrew Sullivan site and you originally had a photo of a boy who had apparently been shot in the eye, and was lying on a concrete floor face down, in assumed agony. Even though the image is not there now, I can’t get that one image out of my mind, in spite of the many images being horrific. I keep asking myself “what can I do to help that kid” and I feel so powerless to make a difference when the problems there seem so vast.

By: admin

admin — Sat, 19 Jan 2008 11:47:29 +0000

Thank you for your comments Simon and for stopping in. All the best and perhaps we’ll meet one of these days.

Warm Regards,

Anne

By: Simon C

Simon C — Sat, 19 Jan 2008 10:36:01 +0000

I’m living in Kenya right now. Actually Anne, I’m in JavaHouse at Adams (with the free internet) typing this. I just want to say that any photo has been and will be perceived as biased by somebody. Photos of police brutality? The reporter must be anti-Kibaki! Photos of rioters and hoodlums scraping pangas on Ngong road? Must be anti-Raila. You get the point. Anyways, thank you Anne for your bravery and reporting of the facts.

Simon

By: admin

admin — Sat, 19 Jan 2008 07:28:41 +0000

I’m sorry, Ethan, but it’s very poorly placed for you to deem those who risk their lives to report what’s happening vultures. Aid agencies call me desperately several times a day to report the numbers, sometimes asking for total anonymity because they fear for their own lives and prefer to remain neutral. None of this is tribal in our heads. It is simply what is happening today. When things settle down, and hopefully they will today, there will be time to report on other issues. I have been planning to get to the Kikuyu refugee camps, but these last three days have been very active elsewhere. What you have to understand is that there are really only a very small group of people who are willing to head into the slums and get the story from inside. What the television reports is not my business. I don’t even own a television. I am simply reporting what I saw where I was. It’s only part of the picture as I can’t be everywhere.

One thing I can say is this: it’s very easy for people to sit in their arm chairs and make comments about what we do, we being those of us who come home with blood on our clothes, shit and mud on our pants, lungs full of smoke and tear gas, after having dodged bullets and rocks, weathered volatile crowds who may or may not turn on you at any given moment, regardless of tribe, just to file pictures with an agency or paper who decide what to do with them without asking you.

I have refrained from expressing my opinions about the political situation as I do not feel I am informed enough to intelligently comment. I have a few questions I would like to ask, however. First, why are the streets of downtown Nairobi devoid of ODM supporters? Where are the crowds standing for what they believe in to support their man in a suit in his office making calls for mass action? Why are the poor and destitute in the slums of Nairobi and elsewhere the ones paying with their lives, and will they see any benefit from this when all is said and done? I do what I do, and I call this site vigilante because I operate outside the press structure as it is because I don’t like the way things are reported or sensationalized. If BBC is getting its figures from ODM they are going to the wrong guys. Thursday evening I went to have a drink with some friends after a long day in Kibera only to see Odinga fumble with numbers on the television, annoucing several dead in Kibera. That number was inflated since I had just come from the hospital with all the injured, and only one person had died. It seemed to me that doing such a thing will only insight more anger, not to mention that it’s false information. And who will pay? The poor and powerless.

By: robert ethan

robert ethan — Sat, 19 Jan 2008 00:43:37 +0000

The Council of Churches has issued a very strongly worded statement concerning the ODM culpability in the slaughter that preceded the events you arrived to chronicle. The place to protest election results is in the cCourts and not in the streets. The Churches also condemned the partisan nature of foreign based journalists like youself who arribed late like vultures to feed off the misery. Odinga wants foreign intervention in Kenyan politics and that has rpoven inflammatory to this point. From using the endorsement of his American Cousin Barack Obama, to the foreign advisor Obama provided for his campaign, Dick Morris, to the role of various European activists, Odinga has relied on outside intervention from individuals who are not conversant with the whole picture of Kenyan politics. It may be his only chance to escape a war crimes trial concerning the organized nature of the slaughter and displacement of the Kikuyu.

By: admin

admin — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 23:56:12 +0000

Robert,

I’m not sure where you see opinion stated in this article. The crowd wanted to go and loot a store. They were met by police, and the battle ensued. This piece is pretty standard, almost wire service-like, simply reporting the facts. I don’t side with anyone, least of all the police. For the last three days, which is when I began reporting from Kenya, the confrontations have mostly been between police and ODM supporters. I have made no statements here about what happened prior to my arrival in Kenya, and I try to report only on what I have myself witnessed, or what has been relayed to me by very credible sources on the ground in neighboring parts of Nairobi.

Thanks for stopping by and sharing your thoughts.

By: Richard

Richard — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 23:28:30 +0000

I AM HORRIFIED AT THIS SENSELESSNESS. THE BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE OF KENYA MUST REALIZE THAT VIOLENCE IS NOT THE ANSWER. MARTIN LUTHER KING WAS A CHALLENGER OF RIGHTS AND HIS ACTIONS ARE ABOUND TODAY IN A CULTURE THAT DID NOT RECOGNIZE HIS VERY BEING. PLEASE STOP AND LOOK AT WHAT THE REAL PROBLEM IS. IT IS NOT THAT ONE TRIBE IS DIFFERENT THAN ANOTHER, BUT YET A THIRD PARTY THAT WANTS THE TWO TO BELIEVE THAT LIE.

By: robert ethan

robert ethan — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 21:39:41 +0000

You present a very one sided view. When the police didn’t intervene earlier in the dispute, many hundreds of Kikuyu were slaughtered by Odinga’s supporters. Would you want a repeat of that?