Archivo etiqueta «Kenia»
By Michela Wrong, the author of the forthcoming It’s Our Turn to Eat: The Story of a Kenyan Whistleblower (THE TIMES, 18/02/09):
Each morning Wambui Kamau, the personal assistant to a Nairobi-based entrepreneur, boards a matatu taxi bus to get to the city centre. This morning, like every other, it is flagged down at a police checkpoint, where the driver hands an officer 100 shillings.
At lunchtime, Wambui heads to the Ministry of Immigration to pick up a new passport. It miraculously surfaces when she offers the clerk 100 shillings. Heading home, the matatu is stopped at the same checkpoint… Seguir leyendo
By Paul Collier, the author of Wars, Guns and Votes: Democracy in Dangerous Places, which is dedicated to John Githongo (THE GUARDIAN, 12/02/09):
This time last year Kenya was in flames, torn apart by ethnic violence triggered by a flawed election. About a thousand people were killed, and several hundred thousand fled their homes in response to ethnic cleansing. Even prior to the violence, politics was already ethnically polarised. The election pitted a Kikuyu against a Luo – President Mwai Kibaki against Raila Odinga – and about 98% of Luo people voted for Odinga. There was little faith in the… Seguir leyendo
By Wangari Maathai, a Kenyan political and environmental campaigner. She was awarded the 2004 Nobel peace prize (THE GUARDIAN, 06/11/08):
This morning I am going to Uhuru Park in Nairobi to plant a tree. A plaque on it will read: “This was planted to mark the moment Barack Obama was elected president of the United States of America.” It will stand next to the tree that Obama planted when he visited last year, and will be a lasting testament to this historic moment: a wonderful thing for America and the world.
Across Kenya, people are celebrating the fact that a… Seguir leyendo
Por Jaume Ribera, profesor del IESE (EL PERIÓDICO, 26/02/08):
Kenia ha ocupado las portadas de los medios internacionales en los últimos meses con imágenes de una violencia increíble para un país que durante años ha sido un modelo de éxito de democracia en África. La chispa de esta situación la encontramos en las discutidas elecciones del pasado noviembre, en las que el presidente anterior, Mwai Kibaki (del Partido de Unificación Nacional, PNU), se declaró ganador por un margen de 2,5%, dando la vuelta a unos sondeos que pocos meses antes apuntaban a una victoria del opositor Raila Odinga (del Partido… Seguir leyendo
By Wangari Maathai, the 2004 Nobel peace prizewinner and a member of Kenya’s parliament from 2002 to 2007. She is the author of Unbowed: A Memoir (THE GUARDIAN, 22/02/08):
The post-election crisis in Kenya remains unresolved. The damage being done to the country’s economy is severe: tourism, horticulture, and other industries that depend on trade beyond the Kenyan border are reeling. Thousands of livelihoods, along with investments throughout the region, are threatened and collapsing.
As the situation in Kenya escalated – with murders, rapes, burning of property, looting, and the displacement of thousands of people throughout the country – the… Seguir leyendo
By Jonathan Steele (THE GUARDIAN, 15/02/08):
This is a tale of two neighbours: one on the brink of national disaster, unless mediation can prevent a new wave of ethnic killing; the other already in full-scale collapse, with no functioning government or basic services, and 700,000 people driven from their homes. The first is being watched attentively by foreign governments; the second has dropped off the radar, abandoned by those same governments because it all seems so difficult.
I refer to Kenya and Somalia, countries that illustrate the inconsistencies in international policy-making David Miliband failed to reflect in his speech on… Seguir leyendo
By Maina Kiai, the chairman of the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights and L. Muthoni Wanyeki, the executive director of the Kenya Human Rights Commission, a nongovernmental organization (THE NEW YORK TIMES, 12/02/08):
Until December, Kenya was the most stable nation in East Africa. It has long been a willing partner in the Bush administration’s war on terrorism. Yet the United States has mostly stood by as our country has descended into chaos.
More than 800 people have been killed and at least 250,000 driven from their homes since rigged presidential elections on Dec. 27. Two opposition members of… Seguir leyendo
By Simiyu Barasa, a filmmaker and writer (THE NEW YORK TIMES, 12/02/08):
When you find yourself at a wedding discussing how more than 800 people have been killed and more than 250,000 kicked out of their homes for having certain ethnic origins, you know there is something terribly wrong with your country. Living in Nairobi the past few months has been like living in a relatively comfortable glass cave in the middle of hell.
What began in late December as protests against election irregularities has spiraled into killings based on which tribe your identity card and speech indicate you belong… Seguir leyendo
By Andia Kisia (THE GUARDIAN, 31/01/08):
By now, the question of who won the election is almost beside the point. Neither “President” Kibaki nor Raila Odinga should be allowed within sniffing distance of the presidency. The country is imploding, people are dying and destitute, and these two great men have to be coaxed to the negotiating table.The idea of Kenya belonging to all Kenyans and Kenyans having the right to live where they like is dead in the water. For some of the victims of the violence in the Rift Valley, this is the second or third time they have… Seguir leyendo
By Anne Applebaum (THE WASHINGTON POST, 22/01/08):
Blurry video of a policeman beating a demonstrator; a photograph of angry slum-dwellers storming a food depot; headlines featuring the word “violence.” That, more or less, sums up the news from Kenya, or at least the news that has filtered into the general consciousness over the past few weeks. Unless you were paying very close attention, you were probably tempted, as I was at first, to dismiss these events as yet more evidence of Africa’s ungovernability. Uganda, Rwanda, Liberia, Somalia, Sudan, Sierra Leone; tribal enmity plus poverty equals violence; another country evolving into… Seguir leyendo
By Jim Hoagland (THE WASHINGTON POST, 20/01/08):
Other people’s violence is not a deep concern for most of us, particularly if it occurs in remote Africa or overpopulated Asia. But the outbreak of tribal killings and widespread rioting in Kenya hits me where I live.
Rather, it hits me where I lived. The upheaval threatens to put Nairobi on a list of foreign capitals where I once resided or visited regularly but which have become dangerous ground for foreign tourists or business people, journalists and, in many cases, the local population. A curtain of violence and of hostility toward outsiders… Seguir leyendo
By Madeleine Bunting (THE GUARDIAN, 14/01/08):
It will be Kofi Annan’s turn tomorrow to arrive in a tense Nairobi, following in the steps of Archbishop Desmond Tutu and John Kufuor, the Ghanian president and head of the African Union, last week, and US diplomats and the former Sierra Leonean president the week before. As the tourists abandon Kenya’s beaches, the country has tragically become the premier destination for a new type of visitor – the international mediator. But so far, all of them have managed no more than what could be described as a minibreak, hastily repacking their overnight bags… Seguir leyendo
By Aidan Hartley, a columnist for The Spectator and the author of The Zanzibar Chest, a memoir (THE NEW YORK TIMES, 11/01/08):
As I write this, the crackle of gunfire is audible from the veranda of our farmhouse. Warriors of the Pokot and Samburu tribes are fighting a mile away. A bush fire engulfs the horizon. I hear the tally in blood so far is three Samburu warriors killed, while the Pokot have rustled 750 of their cattle.
Today I hope our farm and its workers will be spared the violence. But this was not the case two weeks ago… Seguir leyendo
By M. Steven Fish, a professor of political science at the University of California at Berkeley and Matthew Kroenig, research fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs and Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. They are the authors of The Handbook of National Legislatures: A Global Survey (THE WASHINGTON POST, 09/01/07):
Kenya’s recent presidential election unleashed turmoil that has so far claimed more than 500 lives and displaced thousands of people. Blame has been pinned on Kenya’s ethnic divisions: The Luo tribe of challenger Raila Odinga has disputed the electoral victory claimed by incumbent President Mwai Kibaki of… Seguir leyendo
By Binyavanga Wainaina, a writer in residence at Union College in Schenectady, N.Y. and the editor of Kwami?, a literary magazine (THE NEW YORK TIMES, 06/01/08):
This thing called Kenya is a strange animal. In the 1960s, the bright young nationalists who took over the country when we got independence from the British believed that their first job was to eradicate “tribalism.” What they really meant, in a way, was that they wanted to eradicate the nations that made up Kenya. It was assumed that the process would end with the birth of a brand-new being: the Kenyan.
Compared with… Seguir leyendo