Kenyan violence ‘ethnic cleansing’
Jendayi Frazer said neither President Mwai Kibaki nor his chief rival, opposition leader Raila Odinga, is doing enough to stop the bloodshed that has claimed more than 800 lives since the December 27 election.
Ms Frazer said the violence she saw during a visit earlier this month to the country’s western Rift Valley pitted the Kalenjin, who support Odinga and his Luo people, against Kibaki’s Kikuyu people.
“The first wave of this violence, it was primarily in the Rift Valley, and it was Kalenjin pushing out Kikuyu. But that may now be spreading to Kikuyus pushing out Luos and Kalenjins,” Ms Frazer told reporters.
“What I was talking about in terms of the ethnic cleansing that I saw was the immediate aftermath of the election, in which there was an organised effort to push people out of the Rift Valley.” Ms Frazer said she did not consider the killings a genocide. Kikuyus were the main victims of the first explosion of violence after the announcement that Kibaki had won the election, which the international community and election monitors agree was rigged.
Hundreds of Kikuyus have been killed, and members of the group account for more than half of the 255,000 chased from their homes, most in the Rift Valley.
Kikuyus, who are Kenya's largest ethnic group, are also resented for their long-standing domination of politics and the economy.
