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Title : One killed, eight wounded in anti-government protest in Kenya
By :
Date : 08 July 2004 0117 hrs (SST)
URL : http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/afp_world/view/94454/1/.html

NAIROBI : An anti-government protester was shot dead by police, eight others were wounded and more than 100 arrested, police said, as demonstrators flooded into the streets in the western city of Kisumu to press for rapid constitutional reforms.

"One person was shot dead, eight people wounded -- including two school children and a policeman -- when my officers moved in to disperse hundreds of demonstrators who were asking for a new constitution," Nyanza provincial police chief Omar Bakari Jambeni told AFP by phone.

Jambeni said "more than 100 people have been arrested either for looting and destroying property or taking part in the unlawful demonstrations" in Kisumu's poor Nyalenda residential district.

"They were shouting that they want a new constitution at the same time throwing stones using slings. It forced us to use tear gas canisters and batons," he added.

A new Kenyan draft constitution was completed in March that reduced the president's powers in favour of an executive prime minister, but wrangling among ministers and subsequent court orders have delayed the document being debated in parliament.

The clashes come a day after President Mwai Kibaki urged his ministers -- drawn from different parties -- to seek consensus in the stormy constitutional review exercise.

The unrest follows similar weekend demonstrations in Kisumu and Nairobi, where riot police used water cannon, tear gas and batons in street battles with hundreds of people in the first and worst street clashes against Kibaki since he swept into power in December 2002.

The latest clashes erupted early on Wednesday when hundreds of youthful demonstrators armed with leather slings and stones started burning tyres, blocking streets and destroying property while yelling that the government should enact a new constitution soon, he explained.

The protestors blocked the key highway linking Kisumu to Uganda, while others looted property from hawkers and stalls along the roads, another police office on the ground, told AFP.

Riot police had been instructed to use minimum force to disperse the demonstrators, but the intensity of the demonstration forced them to fire live bullets, he said.

But the officer who had shot and killed the demonstrator has been arrested, according to police spokesman Jasper Ombati.

In the Kenyan capital Nairobi there was high security in the streets as a political rally planned by Saba Saba Asili failed to take off. Instead, up to 100 human rights activists gathered in the capital's Uhuru Park and planted trees at a corner called Freedom Corner.

Saba Saba Asili, political movement was launched after police clashed on July 7, 1991, with demonstrators in favour of multi-party democracy, is also pushing for a new constitution.

Last Saturday, at a rally organised by Katiba Watch demonstrators defied a ban on the gathering, clashing with police in Nairobi. Katiba is a swahili word for constitution.

The lobby groups are backed by Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), a key partner in the ruling National Rainbow Coalition (NARC), that was sidelined by President Mwai Kibaki when he reshuffled the cabinet last week.

Katiba Watch, meanwhile, said it had called off a number of political rallies it had planned to hold across the east African nation starting on Friday.

"We are calling off the countrywide rallies, scheduled for Friday and Saturday, because we are being infiltrated by other groups sympathetic to the National Alliane Party of Kenya (NAK)," Katiba Watch Chairman Leslie Mwachiro told AFP.

- AFP



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