Red Teargas in Nairobi ?

 

Red Teargas in Nairobi ?

Police in Nairobi have always used teargas to disperse demonstrators, hawkers, thiefs, rioters and generally members of public. I was walking from office on this years valentine afternoon. I felt a chocking gas that was choking and making me cough. I learnt it was a teargas from a couple who were walking before me. Despite being a valentine day, the police used white teargas to disperse The 14^th February 2014 Civil Society Demonstration to Parliament of Kenya. Maybe would have been more romantic to use red tea gas. The National Security Advisory Committee (NSAC) said the disperse was on the allegation that US Government through  its International Agency for Development (USAID) is using activists to undermine the Kenya Government.

The initial teargas was at Nairobi’s Uhuru Park  but had spread all through City hall. The demonstration was led by activist Boniface Mwangi Reverend Timothy Njoya and musician Eric Wainaina. The police sealed off the grounds to prevent the demonstrators from accessing the park. The demonstrators were protesting against the high cost of living, insecurity, corruption, impunity among other issues facing the country. Hussein Khaled one of the protest leader and executive director Haki Focus, said Kenya has not made enough progress,

"We are still the same spot. Police are operating with impunity, police operating like a police state breaking the law with impunity," Khaled said, adding later: "We don't want to bequeath the same country we inherited from our parents."

2013

On  the same date in the month of December last year, Police had to use teargas to to disperse curious onlookers before  and cordoning off the blast scene. This was after an explosion inside a bus at Pangani area in Nairobi. The explosion is said to have occurred inside a Number 9 matatu plying Eastleigh route, a few metres from Pangani Girls School, and about 100 metres from the Pangani Police Station.
Ms Florence Ngina from St Johns Ambulance, who were one of the first responders, says she saw police evacuate about ten bodies from the scene of the blast. Even on this noble rescue mission , police had to use teargas to send away onllokers.  The explanation was that a possibility of another explosion once there are more people on the scene.

2012

Anti-riot police used teargas to disperse residents of Nairobi's Kiamaiko area who took to the streets Sunday (December 30^th 2012) to protest rising insecurity across the city.The crowd, led by Kiamaiko slaughterhouse chairman Wario Agan, started the protest after a businessman was killed that morning on his way to dawn prayers at a mosque. More than 10 people have been killed and more than 20 injured in criminal acts in the area in the past two weeks, residents said.

"We want Kiamaiko to have peace and enough security just like other areas in this country. There are a lot of businesses in this area that are being affected," said resident Liban Jillo. "They attack people very early in the morning or late in the evening. If you do not have money, they stab you with a knife or shoot you."

This followed Mondays protest where, anti-riot police also clashed with residents of Nairobi's Dandora area, who protested after armed robbers killed two residents and injured a third Sunday night. The protestors want police to do more to maintain security in the area by arresting suspected criminals and investigating crimes.

The explanation behind the sdisperse wat that Police are investigating the death of the businessman and the two residents. They said members of public should not interfere with their investigations.

2011

A civil rights activist says police have tear gassed several hundred protesters marching toward the offices of Kenya's president and Prime Minister to demand action over a growing hunger crisis. The Kenyanya civil society political activists were protesting in front of the central police station in Nairobi, Kenya  on July 7, 2011, against rising food prices and the minister of education, Sam Ongeri, for misusing free education funds. Images of children with skinny, malnourished bodies became commonplace in the Northern part of Kenya. Thousands of families walk for days in search of food while hundreds already have died.

Dinah Awuor Agar, the president of a group of low-wage workers known as the People's Parliament, said Thursday that the demonstrators were holding a peaceful procession when riot police confronted them. Agar said police chased down demonstrators, beat them with batons and arrested them despite the fact Kenya's new constitution allows peaceful demonstrations. Charles Owino, a police spokesman, says police dispersed the protesters because the demonstration is illegal.

2010

In another occurrence on 15^th January 2010, Police charged at rioters, surrounded Jamiah mosque in Central Nairobi and used water cannon and tear gas canisters to repel at hundreds of stone-throwing protesters as an ambulance picked up injured people. The Kenyan Muslim protesters took to the Nairobi Central Business to demonstrate over the arrest of radical Jamaican Muslim cleric Sheikh Abdullah al Faisal. They were demanding the release from police custody of the preacher, who had been in detention in the country after the Kenyan government had earlier failed to deport him.

A chaotic violence soon ensued as the anti-riot police engaged the protesters in running battles that caused heavy traffic snarl-ups and caught most Nairobi residents returning to work unawares. Police fired live rounds and teargas canisters to disperse the youth, who in turn pelted the officers with stones, as a huge pungent smoke engulfed and billowed the air in the central business district. The riots claimed one life and left scores injured, while huge business incomes, estimated at Sh350 million ($4.6 million) were lost.

2009

Kenyan police fought hundreds of protesters in trouble spots across the country on Wednesday, killing three as the opposition defied a ban on rallies against President Mwai Kibaki's disputed re-election. In the western towns of Kisumu and Eldoret, in the capital Nairobi and on the coast, security forces clashed with youths, some of whom set up roadblocks and burnt tyres. Police in Kisumu, an opposition stronghold, fired in the air and used teargas and batons to disperse a 1000-strong crowd. Three men were shot dead, witnesses said.

In Nairobi, police chased protesters through the central business district, firing teargas and live rounds in the air. Three youths were shot in the back of the leg as they tried to run from officers in the city's sprawling Kibera slum, one of Africa's biggest, a hospital administrator said.  Deep in Kibera's muddy alleys, women and children coughed and spluttered as police fired teargas to drive back crowds. ODM leaders tried to lead some demonstrators to Nairobi's central Uhuru (Freedom) Park - but also faced teargas.

 Police also dispersed several hundred protesters in Eldoret, in the Rift Valley area worst hit by violence, while officers in the coastal resort of Mombasa battled smaller crowds.  The explanation for these disperses was to stop PEV2008/2009. This was because Kenya's crisis was denting its democratic credentials, angered donors, scared off tourists and hurt one of Africa's most promising economies. Police h banned three days of protests called by the ODM. Shopkeepers boarded windows, traffic came to a standstill in parts of Nairobi, and many Kenyans stayed at home.

2008

It was reported on 11 January 2008 that Police fired tear gas to scatter women opposition supporters marching through Nairobi Central Business District on Thursday calling for peace and justice, and civil rights groups demanded officials be prosecuted for allegedly falsifying election results. Kenyan citizens were mobilizing as their leaders continued to deadlock in a dispute that has killed some 500 people and displaced more than a quarter of a million in violent clashes across this once-peaceful east African nation.

 “We are calling for truth about what happened to our votes and the votes of Kenyans,” said the chairman of the party’s women’s league, Jacqueline Oduol.

Kenyans for Peace with Truth and Justice, an umbrella for civil groups formed after the elections, presented police on Thursday with a long list of alleged charges against electoral commissioners and some staff, including forgery, subverting the rule of law, making out false certificates and abuse of office.