Protesters in Kenya's capital demand official answers over a blogger's death in police custody
Protesters took to the streets of the Kenyan capital on Thursday to vent their anger over the death of a blogger in police custody.
Albert Ojwang was arrested June 5 in Homa Bay in western Kenya and driven 400 kilometers (248 miles) to Nairobi for what police said was publishing 'false information' about a top police official on social media. He subsequently died at the Central Police Station after 'hitting his head against the cell wall,' police said. Amnesty International and local activists have questioned that account.
The protesters occupied the road in Nairobi leading to the parliamentary building, where the national budget was due to be presented Thursday. At least two cars were set on fire in a street nearby.
Police on Monday fired tear gas to disperse another protest demanding accountability for Ojwang's death.
Authorities have since said an official investigation is underway.
President William Ruto in a statement on Wednesday said Ojwang's death was 'heartbreaking and unacceptable."
'I strongly condemn the actions and omissions, including any negligence or outright criminality, that may have contributed to his untimely death,' Ruto said.
The blogger's death comes almost a year after several activists and protesters were killed and abducted by Kenyan police during finance bill protests. The rallies led to calls for the removal of Ruto, who has been criticized for what some say is his authoritarian streak.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
BBC News
an hour ago
- BBC News
Hiding in the fields - farm workers fearing deportation stay in California's shadows
The women crouch down motionless, kneeling between endless rows of fruit bushes, almost hidden from view."Are you from ICE?" one of the women, a farm worker in a hat and purple bandana, asks us assuring her that we're not with US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), which has been raiding nearby farms and arresting workers over the past week, she straightens her back, rising slightly out of the dirt."Have you seen any ICE vans? Are there patrol cars out there?" she asks, still unsure if we can be trusted and she can woman, an undocumented migrant from Mexico, has been picking berries in Oxnard, California since arriving in the US two years ago. It's a town which boasts of being the "strawberry capital of the world".As her work shift ended on Wednesday, she and her co-workers hid in the fields, waiting to be picked up by a friend and unsure whether it was safe to venture out into the parking the previous day, nine farms in the Oxnard area were visited by ICE agents, say local activists, but without search warrants they were denied entry and instead picked up people on the nearby streets, arresting 35. The workplace raids are part of President Donald Trump's goal of arresting 3,000 undocumented immigrants per day. On the campaign trail he had vowed to deport noncitizens accused of violent crimes, a promise that received widespread support, even among some Hispanics. But in Los Angeles there was a public backlash and street protests that sometimes turned violent, prompting him to controversially send in the military to the second largest city in the US."They treat us like criminals, but we only came here to work and have a better life," says the woman, who left her children behind in Mexico two years ago and hopes to return to them next year."We don't want to leave the house anymore. We don't want to go to the store. We're afraid they'll catch us." Large-scale raids on workplaces in California's agricultural heartland haven't been seen for the last 15 years, says Lucas Zucker, a community organiser in California's Central Coast that seems to have changed this past week."They are just sweeping through immigrant communities like Oxnard indiscriminately, looking for anyone they can find to meet their politically-driven quotas," he than 40% of US farmworkers are undocumented immigrants, according to a 2022 report by the US Department of Agriculture. In California, more than 75% are undocumented, according to the University of California, at farms and businesses that rely on the agricultural industry throughout California, and across the entire country, have ramped up this arrests have raised fears of shortages to America's food supply, if the migrants are arrested or forced into hiding, afraid to come to work. This impact has not been lost on the White House. Despite winning the election decisively after promising mass deportations, Trump on Thursday acknowledged the tough time his crackdown is inflicting on the farming sector."Our farmers are being hurt badly. You know, they have very good workers. They've worked for them for 20 years. They're not citizens, but they've turned out to be, you know, great."Who has been arrested by ICE under Trump?In April, he said that some migrants may be authorised to continue working in the US, on the condition that they have a formal recommendation from their employer and that they first leave the US. The result of one raid on Tuesday in Oxnard, a municipality 60 miles (100km) from downtown Los Angeles, can be seen in a video posted to Instagram by a local flower short clip shows a man running in a vast field of crops, through a haze of thick morning fog, as agents give chase on foot and in trucks. He is then seen falling to the ground, among the rows of plants, as agents move to arrest the BBC visited Oxnard on Wednesday, a US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) truck was seen parked outside an organic produce trucking company. A security guard insisted their visit was not related to immigration, saying: "This is not ICE. We would never let ICE in here."Many tractors and trucks sat idle surrounded by acres of farmland, as an unknown number of workers chose to stay and peril in Newsom's fight with TrumpJesus polished luxury cars in LA - then ICE showed upThe impact is having ripple effects on other businesses. Watching from her family's Mexican restaurant, Raquel Pérez saw masked CBP agents attempt to enter Boskovich Farms, a vegetable and herb packing facility across the her business, Casa Grande Cafe, has only one customer during the normally busy lunch hour, because farm workers have stayed home. She estimates that at least half of her normal clientele are undocumented."No one came in today," says her mother, Paula Pérez. "We're all on edge."Raquel says she's more concerned now for the future of the restaurant - serving chilaquiles, flan, and other Mexican delicacies - than she was during Covid, when her customers continued their work as usual, keeping the nation supplied with fresh foods."They don't realise the domino effect this is going to have," she says about the raids. Other companies around her that rely on agriculture have already been affected. The adjacent business buying and selling wooden pallets is closed, and a local car mechanic too."If the strawberries or vegetables aren't picked, that means there's gonna be nothing coming into the packing houses. Which means there's not gonna be no trucks to take the stuff." A migrant selling strawberries from his truck on the side of the road says the raids have already had a devastating effect - on both his business and his hopes of becoming a legal resident of the US."Fewer people are going out for trips, and they buy less from me," says Óscar, who comes from the Mexican state of Tlaxcala and, while undocumented himself, has children who were born in the US."I'm scared, but I can't stop going out to work. I have to provide for my family," he says.Óscar says he has been working to finalise his immigration status, but with ICE agents now waiting outside courthouses for migrants seeking to process paperwork, he's unsure of what to do next."There aren't many ways left to be here legally."
Sky News
2 hours ago
- Sky News
Why did Ballymena become the latest site of anti-immigration riots?
There have now been five consecutive nights of ongoing violence and disorder on the streets of Northern Ireland, with Ballymena at the focus of the unrest following a serious sexual assault on a teenage girl in the town on 7 June. Two 14-year-old boys were arrested and charged after the incident, and police in Northern Ireland said the pair used a Romanian interpreter to plead not guilty in court. After that, calls for "peaceful protest" from the victim's father were amplified online. Those protests took on an anti-immigration angle and erupted into riots and clashes with police. Analysis of social media messaging has shown there were already rising tensions in the town before the latest incident, following a decade of rapid demographic change. Before the protests On 30 May, eight days before the 7 June incident in the Clonavon Terrace area that triggered this week's violence, police released a statement regarding a different sexual assault in Ballymena, this time of a 13-year-old girl. The offence was alleged to have taken place on a public footpath near the Ballykeel housing estates, during daylight hours on Saturday 24 May. Local media at the time reported the suspect as having "dark-coloured skin, dark brown eyes, and speaking in a foreign language". On 31 May, a far-right news aggregator on messaging platform Telegram was already sharing information related to this incident, saying "Ballymena said to be at boiling point". But the online chatter remained relatively contained until after the police announcement on the evening of Sunday 8 June, that they had arrested the two 14-year-olds charged with the Clonavon Terrace incident. Analysis of posts on X, formerly known as Twitter, shows that there were 114 mentions of Ballymena per day from 3-7 June. It was mentioned 142 times on 8 June, then surged up to 10,300 on 9 June and 78,300 the following day. The majority of posts originated outside of Northern Ireland. Rapid demographic change The descriptions of the alleged perpetrators of the two incidents have contributed to the anti-immigrant sentiment of the violence. Sky News has seen Union flags and signs saying "British household" or "Locals live here" left outside homes of people keen to avoid being targeted, and has also spoken to Bulgarian nationals in Ballymena who say that they are "terrified" and "scared to get out of the house". Speaking in the House of Commons, Jim Allister, MP for North Antrim, which includes Ballymena, said he was "appalled" by the violence. "However", he said, "the government must be aware of underlying tensions produced by uncontrolled and often undocumented immigration. "None of that excuses violence, but it is a matter of concern to many." Analysis of census data shows there has been rapid demographic change in the town since 2011. No other part of Northern Ireland has seen a bigger increase in people who don't speak English/Irish as a first language. At the time of the 2021 census, three in 10 residents of central Ballymena said their first language was something other than English or Irish. One in eight listed Romanian, with a similar number listing other Eastern European languages like Bulgarian, Polish and Slovak. That figure is almost seven times higher than the average across Northern Ireland, and amounts to a trebling over the course of the decade. Almost three-quarters of the total foreign-born population of central Ballymena arrived in the country since 2011. The average is significantly lower for Northern Ireland as a whole, and England and Wales, where the rate of change has been more gradual. Of 621 primary schools in Northern Ireland where data is available, Ballymena Primary and Harryville Primary, both in central Ballymena, had the 7th and 8th highest share of "newcomer pupils". "Newcomer" is the term used by the Northern Irish Department for Education to refer to pupils who don't have satisfactory language skills to participate fully in the school curriculum. How, and when, will the violence end? Sky's Connor Gillies, who has been in Ballymena reporting on the violence and talking to locals for the past few days, said on Wednesday that " the talk here is that this unrest is only just beginning," adding that "it could go on for weeks". Meanwhile, locals have expressed that they don't like the talk from police and politicians that taking to the streets following an alleged sex attack on a teenage girl equates to them being "racist thugs". Police have responded to rioters' petrol bombs and bricks with rubber bullets and water cannon onslaughts of their own. There have been tens of arrests, as well as injuries to more than 50 police officers since Monday evening. Violence and disorder in Ballymena raged across Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, appearing to have largely abated in the town by Thursday. However, the unrest has spread to other areas including Larne, Coleraine, Portadown and Belfast. A senior police officer insisted to Sky News that he did have "a grip" on the unravelling situation when questioned by Sky News, but officers from Scotland, Wales and England have been sent to bolster the forces of their Northern Irish colleagues. Anti-migrant rhetoric From 7-12 June, 39,000 Ballymena-related posts on X mentioned "migrants", with around 95% of them deemed to be negative by social media analysis tool Talkwalker. Well-known far-right activist Tommy Robinson, who thanked X-owner Elon Musk for his support when he was released from prison four months early on 27 May, was the most influential poster. His 14 X posts about Ballymena between 7-12 June reached an average of 1.3 million accounts each.
The Independent
4 hours ago
- The Independent
Demonstrators set to gather for multiple protests in London on Saturday
Demonstrators are set to gather for multiple protests in London on Saturday, according to the Metropolitan Police. A protest against proposals for a new Chinese embassy will take place from 2pm at Royal Mint Court, near the capital's financial district, while pro-Palestinian demonstrators are expected to gather in Parliament Square at the same time. Police have set out conditions for the first protest under the Public Order Act which demands that any person taking part in the procession must not deviate from a specified route and that participants in the static portion of the protest must remain in a specified area. The assembly must conclude by 5pm, the Met added. The Hong Kong Democracy Council, which describes itself as a non-partisan, non-profit organisation for Hong Kong's pro-democracy movement and Hong Kongers, posted about Saturday's protest on its social media. The group shared an image of a poster for the event, which read: 'Say 'no' to China mega embassy'. It also said: 'No more CCTVs from China. No more surveillance from China.' The protest comes days after former leader of the Conservative Party, Sir Iain Duncan Smith, said plans for the embassy have become a 'walk of shame' for the Government. On Monday, he said a response by the Government to the proposed embassy had become 'Project Kowtow', as he criticised the Government for 'one denial after another (and) one betrayal after another'. Sir Iain referred to the warnings reportedly issued by the White House and Dutch government to Downing Street over the plans, which are set to be scrutinised by ministers. The worries stem from the close proximity of the proposed embassy's Royal Mint Court site to data centres and communication cables. The Sunday Times said the US was 'deeply concerned' about the plans, quoting a senior US official. In response, planning minister Matthew Pennycook said he could not give a full response as the matter was still to come before the department for a decision, and any verdict could be challenged by the courts. Sir Iain said: 'Beijing has a recent history of cutting cables and confirmed infrastructure hacks, including embedding malware capable of disabling all that infrastructure.' There are 'currently' no conditions in place for the protest organised by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC), Stop the War and other groups but 'there will be a police presence', the Met said. Organisers labelled the demonstration an 'emergency protest' which will issue calls to stop bombing Iran and stop arming Israel. 'As it commits genocide against the Palestinians Israel is now bombing Iran,' PSC posted on social media. 'Join us to demand our government stop arming genocidal Israel.' Police said they have not been informed of any planned counter protests.
