U.S. Envoy Calls Violence in Kenya ‘Ethnic Cleansing'

Anthony Nganga Kimani realises that as a Kikuyu he can never return to live in his village in the violence-gripped Rift Valley.
 
"My father was burned inside the church. So was my wife, when she was with my two-month-old baby," he says.
 
"She knew there was no way out. She threw the baby boy through the window to save him."
 
Ultimately, Anthony's wife also made it out of the church alive, albeit badly burned, and found the baby safe outside. But his father died in the flames. 
Since that early horrific and shocking incident, the violence has spread across the Rift Valley and beyond.

The top American envoy for Africa called the violence in Kenya's Rift Valley “clear ethnic cleansing” against the country's Kikuyu people and said the United States was reviewing all its aid to Kenya.
Speaking to reporters in the Ethiopian capital ahead of an African Union summit, Ms. Frazer described the violence she saw during a visit earlier this month to Kenya's western Rift Valley, where the fighting has pitted Kalenjin people against Mr. Kibaki's Kikuyu. Ms. Frazer said she did not consider the violence genocide.
“The aim originally was not to kill, it was to cleanse, it was to
push them out of the region,” she said. “It is clear ethnic cleansing
in the Rift Valley.”
New York-based Human Rights Watch has said it had evidence that
opposition politicians helped direct and organize some attacks in the
Rift Valley — charges Mr. Odinga has denied, saying the violence was a
spontaneous reaction.

In comments that backed away from an assessment by the top U.S. envoy for Africa, spokesman Sean McCormack acknowledged the situation in Kenya, especially in western provinces, was serious, but had not yet been characterized as ethnic cleansing by the Bush administration. 
"Very clearly, there is a very serious situation, if not crisis, with respect to people being displaced in Kenya," he told reporters. "There may be examples of people being forced from certain areas by groups, being specifically identified to be moved out of certain areas. That a source of real concern for us, we're watching it very closely."
 
McCormack said experts from the State Department's Office of War Crimes Issues were compiling information about the postelection violence but had not yet made any findings.