Outrage at killing of Kenya rights activists
NAIROBI (Reuters) - Two Kenyan campaigners against police killings have been shot dead hours after the government called them a front for a notorious crime gang.
"These two were well-known within the human rights community. Nothing warrants their deaths," Florence Jaoko, chairwoman of state-funded Kenya National Commission on Human Rights, told Reuters.
Unidentified gunmen killed Oscar Foundation director Kamau Kingara and programmes coordinator Paul Oulo after blocking their car on a central Nairobi street following a day of protests on Thursday by the Mungiki gang in central Kenya.
Small demonstrations broke out afterwards, with a student shot dead in the early hours of Friday, students said.
Gathering protests against alleged extrajudicial police killings have added to widespread disillusionment with the poor record of a year-old coalition government formed to end the east African nation's bloody post-election crisis a year ago.
The Oscar Foundation officials had mobilised protests on Thursday against what they said was the illegal killing of 1,721 young people and the disappearance of 6,542 others suspected by the police of being Mungiki members or sympathisers.
Other rights groups, and a U.N. special investigator, put the number killed in a crackdown, mainly in 2007, at around 500.
Five hours before the killing of Kingara and Oulo on Thursday evening, government spokesman Alfred Mutua had called the Oscar Foundation a "front" for Mungiki.
The gang, which draws support from Kenya's young and jobless, is known for its extortion rackets and gruesome killings, including beheadings. It claims to be the successor of Kenya's anti-colonial Mau Mau rebel movement.
Police in Naivasha town, an hour's drive north of Nairobi, said on Friday they had arrested more than 70 Mungiki suspects trying to set up roadblocks overnight.
POLICE DENY INVOLVEMENT
Some civil society activists blamed authorities for the Oscar Foundation murders, but police denied involvement.
"This is a very unfortunate matter, given the fact that there was a (U.N.) report on extra-judicial killings just last week. So you would expect some people to say we can be involved in this," police spokesman Charles Owino said.
"But it would be too cheap for the police to get involved with people involved in protecting rights. We have no reason whatsoever to kill people, even if they are against us. We consider it either rivalry or thuggery, and we are committed to bringing the perpetrators to book."
United Nations special rapporteur on extrajudicial executions Philip Alston, who met both the dead men during a visit to Kenya in late February, called for a foreign-led probe.
"It is imperative, if the Kenyan police are to be exonerated, for an independent team to be called from somewhere like Scotland Yard or the South African Police to investigate," Alston said in a statement from New York.
He called last week for the dismissal of police chief Hussein Ali and resignation of Attorney-General Amos Wako after backing allegations of hundreds of killings by security forces.
Some activists said an eyewitness to Thursday's killings was also wounded in the shooting, and was taken away by police.
A student leader at nearby Nairobi University, who asked not to be named, told Reuters that police had shot and killed a student protesting overnight. "We are worried because there is so much government spying on campus right now," he said.
One Kenyan non-governmental group, the Constitution and Reform Education Consortium, said the two slain activists were targeted for sharing information with the U.N. rapporteur.
"We hold the government spokesman Dr. Alfred Mutua complicit in the two murders for making wild allegations," it added.
Mutua was not answering his phone on Friday.
A spokesman for Mungiki's political wing, Njuguna Gitau, said the Oscar Foundation had no links with Mungiki.
"These people were innocent, but the (police) killer squad went for them," he told Reuters.
(Additional reporting by Frank Nyakairu)
(Editing by Barry Moody)