Kenyan referee suspended over protest violence allegation
NAIROBI: Kenya's football association confirmed Saturday it had suspended one of its referees over social media clips appearing to show the official harassing protesters in the capital.
For the latest updates, follow us @ArabNewsSport
Tensions have risen in the east African country ahead of the anniversary of last year's massive Gen Z-led demonstrations, with small rallies breaking out in Nairobi this week.
Demonstrators were attacked by armed thugs known as 'goons' during anti-police brutality protests in the city on Tuesday. The scenes, widely recorded and shared on social media, have provoked fury in Kenya.
Football Kenya Federation's (FKF) county sub-branch chairman Bernard Omondi confirmed to AFP they had 'launched an investigation' against one of their Nairobi-based referees.
The individual, who AFP is not naming but who adjudicates lower league matches, was investigated 'after video footage, which was widely circulated on social media, identified his participation in the aggression against the protesting youth and the police on Tuesday,' Omondi said.
'He will not be allowed to referee any matches,' Omondi said, adding that he would appear before the body's disciplinary committee.
'Further action will be taken against him after a hearing,' he added.
Kenyan football has long been mired in corruption and match-fixing scandals, with players and officials suspended over the years.
In 2021, the government disbanded the national football federation over corruption allegations and sought to prosecute its officials.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Arab News
8 hours ago
- Arab News
Kenyan referee suspended over protest violence allegation
NAIROBI: Kenya's football association confirmed Saturday it had suspended one of its referees over social media clips appearing to show the official harassing protesters in the capital. For the latest updates, follow us @ArabNewsSport Tensions have risen in the east African country ahead of the anniversary of last year's massive Gen Z-led demonstrations, with small rallies breaking out in Nairobi this week. Demonstrators were attacked by armed thugs known as 'goons' during anti-police brutality protests in the city on Tuesday. The scenes, widely recorded and shared on social media, have provoked fury in Kenya. Football Kenya Federation's (FKF) county sub-branch chairman Bernard Omondi confirmed to AFP they had 'launched an investigation' against one of their Nairobi-based referees. The individual, who AFP is not naming but who adjudicates lower league matches, was investigated 'after video footage, which was widely circulated on social media, identified his participation in the aggression against the protesting youth and the police on Tuesday,' Omondi said. 'He will not be allowed to referee any matches,' Omondi said, adding that he would appear before the body's disciplinary committee. 'Further action will be taken against him after a hearing,' he added. Kenyan football has long been mired in corruption and match-fixing scandals, with players and officials suspended over the years. In 2021, the government disbanded the national football federation over corruption allegations and sought to prosecute its officials.
Al Arabiya
9 hours ago
- Al Arabiya
VP Vance says troops in Los Angeles need to stay, blasts Governor Newsom over immigration
Republican Vice President JD Vance on Friday met troops who have been deployed in Los Angeles to quell protests against immigration raids, as he accused Democratic state and city leaders of encouraging immigrants to cross the US border illegally. Vance, who met some of the 700 US Marines and 4,000 National Guard troops recently deployed to Los Angeles by President Donald Trump, also accused the Democratic leaders of failing to support local law enforcement. Trump deployed the California National Guard troops to Los Angeles earlier this month, against the wishes of Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom, to quell protests triggered by immigration raids on workplaces by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents. A US appeals court on Thursday let Trump retain control of California's National Guard. Trump's decision to send troops into Los Angeles prompted a national debate about the use of the military on US soil and inflamed political tension in the country's second most-populous city. Vance said the court's decision made clear that Trump's troop deployment 'was a completely legitimate and proper use of federal law enforcement.' Vance gave no indication of when the Marines and National Guard would leave Los Angeles, and hinted that they might stay in the city for some time. 'The soldiers and Marines are still very much a necessary part of what's going on here, because they're worried that it's going to flare back up,' Vance said. He accused Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass of failing to crack down on people in the city illegally, and of failing to support local and state law enforcement. 'They have treated Border Patrol and border enforcement as somehow an illegitimate force, instead of what they are, which is the American people's law enforcement trying to enforce the American people's laws,' he said. Newsom is tipped to mount a presidential bid in 2028, and could conceivably face off against Vance. Diana Crofts-Pelayo, a spokesperson for Newsom, called Vance's claim 'categorically false.' 'The Governor has consistently condemned violence and has made his stance clear,' she said. She cited posts Newsom made on X, including one on June 9 when he said, 'Foolish agitators who take advantage of Trump's chaos will be held accountable.' Newsom has said Trump's deployment of troops exacerbated the protests, increased tensions and is unconstitutional. Bass, the Los Angeles mayor, speaking at a press conference, said Vance had spewed 'lies and nonsense' and called the deployment of troops a 'provocation' that has spread 'terror and fear throughout our city.'
Arab News
12 hours ago
- Arab News
As the UN turns 80, its crucial humanitarian aid work faces a clouded future
KAKUMA: At a refugee camp in northern Kenya, Aujene Cimanimpaye waits as a hot lunch of lentils and sorghum is ladled out for her and her nine children — all born while she has received United Nations assistance since fleeing her violence-wracked home in Congo in 2007.'We cannot go back home because people are still being killed,' the 41-year-old said at the Kakuma camp, where the UN World Food Program and UN refugee agency help support more than 300,000 family moved from Nakivale Refugee Settlement in neighboring Uganda three years ago to Kenya, now home to more than a million refugees from conflict-hit east African countries.A few kilometers (miles) away at the Kalobeyei Refugee Settlement, fellow Congolese refugee Bahati Musaba, a mother of five, said that since 2016, 'UN agencies have supported my children's education — we get food and water and even medicine,' as well as cash support from WFP to buy food and other year, those cash transfers — and many other UN aid activities — have stopped, threatening to upend or jeopardize millions of the UN marks its 80th anniversary this month, its humanitarian agencies are facing one of the greatest crises in their history: The biggest funder — the United States — under the Trump administration and other Western donors have slashed international aid spending. Some want to use the money to build up national UN agencies are increasingly pointing fingers at one another as they battle over a shrinking pool of funding, said a diplomat from a top donor country who spoke on condition of anonymity to comment freely about the funding crisis faced by some UN pressures, humanitarian groups say, diminish the pivotal role of the UN and its partners in efforts to save millions of lives — by providing tents, food and water to people fleeing unrest in places like Myanmar, Sudan, Syria and Venezuela, or helping stamp out smallpox decades ago.'It's the most abrupt upheaval of humanitarian work in the UN in my 40 years as a humanitarian worker, by far,' said Jan Egeland, a former UN humanitarian aid chief who now heads the Norwegian Refugee Council. 'And it will make the gap between exploding needs and contributions to aid work even bigger.''Brutal' cuts to humanitarian aid programsUN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has asked the heads of UN agencies to find ways to cut 20 percent of their staffs, and his office in New York has floated sweeping ideas about reform that could vastly reshape the way the United Nations doles out workers often face dangers and go where many others don't — to slums to collect data on emerging viruses or drought-stricken areas to deliver UN says 2024 was the deadliest year for humanitarian personnel on record, mainly due to the war in Gaza. In February, it suspended aid operations in the stronghold of Yemen's Houthi rebels, who have detained dozens of UN and other aid say UN aid operations have helped millions around the world affected by poverty, illness, conflict, hunger and other insist many operations have become bloated, replete with bureaucratic perks and a lack of accountability, and are too distant from in-the-field needs. They say postcolonial Western donations have fostered dependency and corruption, which stifles the ability of countries to develop on their own, while often UN-backed aid programs that should be time-specific instead linger for many years with no end in the case of the Nobel Peace Prize-winning WFP and the UN's refugee and migration agencies, the US has represented at least 40 percent of their total budgets, and Trump administration cuts to roughly $60 billion in US foreign assistance have hit hard. Each UN agency has been cutting thousands of jobs and revising aid spending.'It's too brutal what has happened,' said Egeland, alluding to cuts that have jolted the global aid community. 'However, it has forced us to make priorities ... what I hope is that we will be able to shift more of our resources to the front lines of humanity and have less people sitting in offices talking about the problem.'With the UN Security Council's divisions over wars in Ukraine and the Middle East hindering its ability to prevent or end conflict in recent years, humanitarian efforts to vaccinate children against polio or shelter and feed refugees have been a bright spot of UN activity. That's dimming just funding cuts cloud the future of UN humanitarian workAside from the cuts and dangers faced by humanitarian workers, political conflict has at times overshadowed or impeded their the aid agency for Palestinian refugees, has delivered an array of services to millions — food, education, jobs and much more — in Lebanon, Syria and Jordan as well as in the West Bank and Gaza since its founding in claims the agency's schools fan antisemitic and anti-Israel sentiment, which the agency denies. Israel says Hamas siphons off UN aid in Gaza to profit from it, while UN officials insist most aid gets delivered directly to the needy.'UNRWA is like one of the foundations of your home. If you remove it, everything falls apart,' said Issa Hajj Hassan, 38, after a checkup at a small clinic at the Mar Elias Palestinian refugee camp in covers his diabetes and blood pressure medication, as well as his wife's heart medicine. The United States, Israel's top ally, has stopped contributing to UNRWA; it once provided a third of its funding. Earlier this year, Israel banned the aid group, which has strived to continue its work Salem, a single mother of five in her 50s who shares a small one-room apartment in Beirut with relatives who sleep on the floor, said: 'If it wasn't for UNRWA we would die of starvation. ... They helped build my home, and they give me health care. My children went to their schools.'Especially when it comes to food and hunger, needs worldwide are growing even as funding to address them shrinks.'This year, we have estimated around 343 million acutely food insecure people,' said Carl Skau, WFP deputy executive director. 'It's a threefold increase if we compare four years ago. And this year, our funding is dropping 40 percent. So obviously that's an equation that doesn't come together easily.'Billing itself as the world's largest humanitarian organization, WFP has announced plans to cut about a quarter of its 22,000 aid landscape is shiftingOne question is how the United Nations remains relevant as an aid provider when global cooperation is on the outs, and national self-interest and self-defense are on the United Nations is not alone: Many of its aid partners are feeling the pinch. Groups like GAVI, which tries to ensure fair distribution of vaccines around the world, and the Global Fund, which spends billions each year to help battle HIV, tuberculosis and malaria, have been hit by Trump administration cuts to the US Agency for International private-sector, government-backed groups also are cropping up, including the divisive Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which has been providing some food to Palestinians. But violence has erupted as crowds try to reach the distribution private-sector donor or well-heeled country — China and oil-rich Gulf states are often mentioned by aid groups — have filled the significant gaps from shrinking US and other Western future of UN aid, experts say, will rest where it belongs — with the world body's 193 member countries.'We need to take that debate back into our countries, into our capitals, because it is there that you either empower the UN to act and succeed — or you paralyze it,' said Achim Steiner, administrator of the UN Development Program.
