A Sudanese critically wounded by Kenyan police

January 31, 2008 (NAIROBI) — Kenyan police has shot and wounded a Sudanese in the Kenyan town of Eldoret, a move that raised alarm among the Sudanese community in the country urging Sudanese authorities to rescue them and help for their return to the country.

The ongoing political crisis has cost Kenya its reputation as a bastion of peace in a turbulent region and dented its previously flourishing economy, east Africa’s largest.

This afternoon, at around 3.40pm a Sudanese national named Anyanya Maker Riek was shot and wounded by the Kenya Police in Kapsoya, a residential area on the outskirt of Eldoret town, 310 Kilometers Northwest of Nairobi,

According to the eye witness who sought to remain anonymous, a Kenya Police officer was walking on road next to his house and the children who were playing outside the gate then got scared and ran to the house shouting, ‘police, police.

Within a short time, a pedestrian who was ahead of the police ran and entered the estate. The police therefore followed the pedestrian who varnished in the estate. But as he was searching for him, he entered premises of. Anyanya Maker Riek, a Sudanese national from Yirol County in Lakes State.

The police found Maker in the house with his family members, thus, his wife, sister and two young teenagers and small children. He (the Police officer) asked Anyanya to identify himself and for which Mr. Maker complied by telling him he was a Sudanese but the police glimpsed at him and coked a gun and shot him on the right arm. The bullet entered the stomach and he was rushed to Eldoret Hospital in a critical condition.

Kenya has been embroiled in ethnic violence since President Mwai Kibaki was declared the winner of the Dec. 27 election and opposition candidate Raila Odinga rejected the result, saying the vote had been rigged.

Odinga has said he wants a new election, while Kibaki has made clear he will not negotiate his position as president. In Nairobi, negotiators from the two camps began the first day of talks mediated by former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan Thursday.

Political and ethnic violence has killed 850 people in Kenya since the disputed December 27 re-election of President Mwai Kibaki.

The Sudanese community in Kenya is frightened and asked the government of Southern Sudan to help them out from this fear, said Jervasio Okot, an information officer at GoSS Liaison office in Nairobi.

The attack against the Sudanese national comes at the same time where an opposition member of Parliament, David Too, was killed by a police officer in Eldoret.

In western Eldoret, where Too was killed, angry residents marched on the police station. They fled when paramilitary officers fired into the air, and as the crowd, ran, people began shuttering their businesses.

The instability has shocked neighbouring states and Western donors, and turned Kenya from one of Africa’s more peaceful and prosperous nations into its most urgent crisis.

“Violence continues, threatening to escalate to catastrophic levels,” Ban told the 53-nation African Union summit.

African leaders also voiced alarm. Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade said the continent’s image was at stake.

(ST)