Monday, June 23, 2008

Some 50 families displaced by post-election violence in Kenya have been turned away by neighbors after trying to return home

The families have been forced back to a camp in the western town of Eldoret. The development is a huge blow to the Kenyan government's plan to resettle thousands of displaced people. Violence following Kenya's disputed presidential elections in December 2007 left some 1,500 dead and 600,000 homeless. Ethnic Kalenjin supporters of Prime Minister Raila Odinga have refused to let members of President Mwai Kibaki's Kikuyu community return home. Samuel Njuguna, one of those forced back to the camp in the Rift Valley town of Eldoret, said a district officer had earlier told the families they could move. But when they arrived and started to unload their possessions they were threatened by their former neighbors, he said. "The people were coming close to us and they started screaming, shouting... 'Just go back to where you come from. We are going to kill you.'" A local pastor said his church would be burned down if the families left their possessions there, he said.

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