Two-year-old boy beheaded
From correspondents in Nairobi, Kenya
July 12, 2007 03:42am
A TWO-year-old boy was beheaded and chopped up in a Kenyan capital slum today, police said, amid a fierce crackdown on an illegal sect blamed for a string of murders and decapitations.
The boy's mutilated torso was discovered in a maize farm and his head 500m away at a river bank in capital's Nairobi's crime-prone Korogocho slums, police commander Paul Ruto said.
The remains had no limbs, the chest was lacerated and the genitals chopped off, raising speculation that the body parts might be used in rites by the politically-linked Mungiki sect.
“The boy has been identified positively by his father who says he went missing two days ago,” Mr Ruto said.
"We have recorded statements from several people and are now searching for the killers."
The remains were discovered hours after police said they had killed 12 people in a crackdown on organised crime gangs in Nairobi, including members of Mungiki.
Once a religious group of dreadlocked youths who embraced traditional rituals, Mungiki has morphed into a ruthless gang blamed for criminal activities including extortion and murder.
Since March, the sect - which was banned in 2002 - has been blamed for the murders of at least 43 people, 13 of whom were beheaded, mostly in Nairobi slums and central Kenya.
The group also has alleged historic ties to the Mau Mau independence uprising, and is said to perpetuate customs such as female excision.
The police crackdown against it comes ahead of December general elections.
So far, it has resulted in the deaths of at least 79 Mungiki members and more than 3000 arrests nationwide.
Police said 11 of the 12 suspects killed were linked to a foiled carjacking and robberies in three Nairobi suburbs.
At least three of them were members of the Mungiki sect, they added.
“We have intensified the crackdown on all organised gangs, including Mungiki,” said another police commander, Julius Ndegwa.
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,22 ... 09,00.html
Two-year-old boy beheaded(Nairobi, Kenya)
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http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/10/world ... ref=sloginNov 10 2006
Chased by Gang Violence, Residents Flee Kenyan Slum
By: JEFFREY GETTLEMAN, from The New York Times
(Evelyn Hockstein for The New York Times
A man carrying his possessions fled Mathare, a Nairobi slum, while other residents rebuilt a house that had been destroyed in gang violence.)
NAIROBI, Kenya, Nov. 9 — In the past five days, more than 10 people have been killed and 600 homes burned to the ground in an unusual burst of violence between Nairobi gangs.
The fighting has emptied out an entire slum in central Nairobi, and on Thursday, women fleeing with mattresses on their backs slogged through the streets, while men with hammers knocked down the metal shanties that used to be their homes, selling their very walls for scrap.
The bloodshed began with a bootlegging dispute, but it has been fueled by ethnic rivalry. The epicenter is Mathare, a cluster of slums with approximately 500,000 people, crammed between downtown Nairobi and an affluent neighborhood where many ambassadors live. Mathare is a landscape of rust — thousands of shacks squeezed together with rusted metal roofs and rusted metal sides, and the occasional rusted metal bridge between. Even the mud here, where not a blade of grass grows, is rust red.
The area is notorious as a pocket of anarchy in a relatively orderly city, a place where street gangs levy taxes and teenage boys with machetes and dreadlocks shake down people at checkpoints. Most days, the police are nowhere to be found. Residents say it has been like this for years.
“You pay security, you pay electricity, you pay for toilets and what do you get?” said Morris Odek, a father of three. “Nothing.”
On Sunday, violence erupted between the gangs fighting for control of this impoverished turf. One gang is the Mungiki, a secretive, quasi-religious sect whose members cut out their enemies’ navels and worship a leader who says he came from a ball of shining stars. The other is a band of vigilantes who call themselves the Taliban, even though they are Christian and have nothing to do with the original Taliban group that imposed a harsh brand of Islam in Afghanistan.
“They just wanted a name that sounded tough,” said George Wambugu, a youth counselor for a soccer league in Mathare. The Mungiki and the Taliban have clashed before, but not like this. According to residents, the Mungiki tried to impose a higher tax on brewers of chang’aa, an outlawed homemade liquor with a kick stronger than that of vodka.
The brewers resisted and enlisted the help of the Taliban to fight back. That led to a cycle of street rumbles, shanty burnings and reprisal killings. Most victims were hacked to death with machetes, though some apparently were shot.
Like so many of Africa’s conflicts, this one has an ethnic dimension, with most Mungiki from the Kikuyu tribe, one of Kenya’s biggest, while the Taliban are primarily Luo, another prominent tribe.
“That’s why this won’t end,” said Daniel Opiyo, a shoe seller whose home was burned down. “It’s tribal, and it will go on and on.”
The police flooded into Mathare on Tuesday, but the killing continued. On Wednesday, the Kenyan government sent in soldiers with machine guns and declared a dusk-to-dawn curfew.
On Thursday, the soldiers prowled the muddy streets, seemingly grabbing at random the few young men left.
“See this guy,” one soldier said, laying a thick hand on a boy with a string of beads around his neck. “Mungiki.”
After the boy explained that he was Borana, a tribe from northern Kenya, he was let go. Other boys, though, were marched through the streets with their hands tied behind their backs and tears in their eyes.
Thousands of people have been streaming out of Mathare, creating a refugeelike crisis in the middle of Nairobi, Kenya’s capital.
On Thursday, as shiny Mercedes-Benzes drove by, along with packed minibuses heading downtown, a crowd of Mathare residents huddled outside a nearby air force base. Beds, tables and rolls of soggy clothing were piled around them. Because it is the rainy season, many people have been sleeping on wet ground. Residents said several babies had died of exposure.
“But nobody really cares,” said Angelina Okumba, a 52-year-old mother of 11 children.
Kenyan officials have tried to reassure residents that the fighting is finished.
“It’s time to go home,” said J. K. Ndegwa, a police commander. “There’s no problem here.”
On a smoldering hillside, children played among shattered teacups while their parents packed the last of their things. The smell of char stung the nose, and though it had been pouring all week, the fires still burned.
http://multicultural.syr.edu/home.php?i ... ils&id=219
