Riot police fired tear gas grenades and charged at stone-throwing protesters in downtown Nairobi and across Kenya on Tuesday in the most widespread unrest since at least two dozen protesters died in clashes a week ago.
The nationwide demonstrations signalled that President William Ruto had failed to appease a spontaneous youth protest movement, despite having abandoned plans for tax rises that triggered the unrest last week.
Tuesday’s demonstrations began in ebullient mood but turned violent as the day wore on. In Nairobi’s downtown business district, police wearing helmets and carrying shields and wooden clubs charged at the protesters, and tear gas bombs exploded in the crowds.
A kiosk was set ablaze in the centre of a street. Medics tended to a youth who lay on the pavement with a bloody hand. Police bundled other youths into the bed of a pickup truck. Outside the capital, hundreds of protesters marched through Mombasa, Kenya’s second largest city, on the Indian Ocean coast.
They carried palm fronds, blew on plastic horns and beat on drums, chanting “Ruto must go!” Later, Kenya’s NTV television reported two people shot in Mombasa, showing pictures of cars ablaze. Ruto, facing the worst crisis of his nearly two-year-old presidency, has been caught between the demands of lenders such as the International Monetary Fund to cut deficits, and a hard-pressed population reeling from the soaring cost of living.
Members of the protest movement, which has no official leaders and largely organises via social media, have rejected Ruto’s appeals for dialogue - even after he abandoned his proposed tax rises.
“People are dying in the streets and the only thing he can talk about is money. We are not money. We are people. We are human beings,” protester Milan Waudo told Reuters in Mombasa. “He needs to care about his people, because if he can’t care
about his people then we don’t need him in that chair.”
Other protests took place in Kisumu, Nakuru, Kajiado, Migori, Mlolongo and Rongo, according to images broadcast on Kenyan television. In the southwestern town of Migori, protesters set tyres on fire. Activists blamed Tuesday’s violence on infiltrators they said had been unleashed by the government to discredit their movement, and said it was now time for protesters to disperse.
“Good people. Let’s go home. As usual the government has let goons take over, loot, and burn property again,” one of the most prominent activists, Boniface Mwangi, wrote on X.
The Kenya National Commission on Human Rights (KNHCR) says 39 Kenyans have been killed in demonstrations and clashes with police since June 18. Most of the deaths took place on June 25 when officers opened fire near parliament where some protesters tried to storm the building to prevent lawmakers from voting on the tax hikes.
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