Update Jan 8

I’m glad today’s rally was called off. Hopefully the negotiations will bear fruit though I worry that a flawed electoral process and result might be legitimized in the process.

I’ve received several reports from guys with relatives in Western/Nyanza saying that people who live in Nairobi and have been stuck there since the violence began are scared to travel back by road because of reprisal attacks going on in the Naivasha area – those who have been able to leave are those who can afford to fly out from Kisumu or Eldoret. Can anyone confirm this?

Links for the day:

– Moving videograph of the events in Kenya (thanks Heather).

– The impact on Uganda.

– I should have linked to this earlier – Enough!

For those in the Joburg area, a rally at the High Commissioner’s office is planned for today. The permit for the rally was just issued late yesterday so the details went out late. “Following the current post-election violence in Kenya, we are appealing to all Kenyans and all like-minded compatriots to join the Kenyan Community in South Africa in a peaceful demonstration at the Kenyan High Commission on 302 Brooks Street, Menlo Park, Pretoria on Tuesday 8th January 2008 at 10.00a.m. We petition the international community to intervene now and intensify pressure on the government to:
* Demand that Kibaki steps down, in light of the fact that the Chair of the Electoral Commission, four electoral commissioners and the EU electoral observers have admitted that the tallying of the votes was deeply flawed and that the Electoral Commission was pressured into releasing the results.
* Stop the violence that has taken ethnic tones, and the state counter-violence being carried out by a heavy handed para-military unit (The General Service Unit).
* Lift the ban imposed on the local media which allows the government to carry out terror under the cover of darkness and to keep the Kenyan citizens ignorant.
* Stop the misinformation that the violence is ethnic-based and that the election too unfolded along ethnic lines, and yet statistics of both election polls and the victims of violence across the country undermine this claim, which is clearly aimed at dividing Kenyans.
We wish to stress that this protest is inclusive and open to all Kenyans, and we distance ourselves in very strong terms from the sentiments expressed by a report carried in The Star on January 3rd 2008, which sought to divide us on ethnic lines. We condemn in the strongest terms the so-called ethnic cleansing, and wish to express our sympathy and solidarity with all displaced Kenyan families. We insist that all Kenyans have a right to live anywhere in the country without fear and intimidation.”