Kenyan protesters dead, parliament on fire as thousands storm compound

Kenyan protesters dead, parliament on fire as thousands storm compound

Police opened fire on demonstrators trying to storm Kenya’s legislature on Tuesday, with at least five protesters killed, dozens wounded and sections of the parliament building set ablaze as lawmakers inside passed legislation to raise taxes.

In chaotic scenes in Nairobi, protesters overwhelmed police and chased them away in an attempt to storm the parliament compound. Flames could be seen coming from inside.

Police opened fire after tear gas and water cannons failed to disperse the crowds.

A Reuters journalist counted the bodies of at least five protesters outside parliament. A paramedic, Vivian Achista, said at least 10 had been shot dead.

Another paramedic, Richard Ngumo, said more than 50 people had been wounded by gunfire. He was lifting two injured protesters into an ambulance outside parliament.

“We want to shut down parliament and every MP should go down and resign,” protester Davis Tafari, who was trying to enter parliament, told Reuters. “We will have a new government.”

Opposition to rising taxes

Police eventually managed to drive the protesters from the building amid clouds of tear gas and the sound of gunfire. The lawmakers were evacuated through underground tunnels, local media reported.

Protests and clashes also took place in several other cities and towns across the country, with many calling for President William Ruto to quit office as well as voicing their opposition to the tax rises.

Parliament approved the finance bill, moving it through to a third reading by lawmakers. The next step is for the legislation to be sent to the president for signing. He can send it back to parliament if he has any objections.

Ruto won an election almost two years ago on a platform of championing Kenya’s working poor, but has been caught between the competing demands of lenders such as the International Monetary Fund, which is urging the government to cut deficits to access more funding, and a hard-pressed population.

Kenyans have been struggling to cope with several economic shocks caused by the lingering impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, the war in Ukraine, two consecutive years of droughts and depreciation of the currency.

The finance bill aims to raise an additional $2.7 billion US in taxes as part of an effort to lighten the heavy debt load, with interest payments alone consuming 37 per cent of annual revenue.

Festival-like atmosphere turns

The government has already made some concessions, promising to scrap proposed new taxes on bread, cooking oil, car ownership and financial transactions. But that has not been enough to satisfy protesters.

Tuesday’s protests began in a festival-like atmosphere but as crowds swelled, police fired tear gas in Nairobi’s Central Business District and the poor neighbourhood of Kibera. Protesters ducked for cover and threw stones at police lines.

People clambered over police vehicles stalled in the downtown streets.

Police also fired tear gas in Eldoret, Ruto’s hometown in western Kenya, where crowds of protesters filled the streets and many businesses were closed for fear of violence.

Clashes also broke out in the coastal city of Mombasa and demonstrations took place in Kisumu, on Lake Victoria, and Garissa in eastern Kenya, where police blocked the main road to Somalia’s port of Kismayo.

In Nairobi, people chanted “Ruto must go” and crowds sang in Swahili: “All can be possible without Ruto.” Music played from loudspeakers and protesters waved Kenyan flags and blew whistles in the few hours before the violence escalated.

Police did not respond to Reuters requests for comment.

Days of protests

Thousands had taken to the streets of Nairobi and several other cities during two days of protests last week as an online, youth-led movement gathered momentum.

Whereas protests in Kenya have typically been called for by political leaders who have been amenable to negotiated settlements and power-sharing arrangements, the young demonstrators have no official leader and have been growing increasingly bold in their demands.

On Sunday, Ruto praised the protesters, saying they had been peaceful and that the government would engage with them on the way forward. But while protesters initially focused on the finance bill, their demands have broadened to demand Ruto’s resignation.

The opposition declined to participate in the vote in parliament, shouting “reject, reject” when the house went through the items one by one. The bill will then be subjected to a third and final vote by acclamation on the floor of the house.

The Finance Ministry says amendments would blow a $1.56 billion US hole in the 2024/25 budget, and compel the government to make spending cuts or raise taxes elsewhere.

“They are budgeting for corruption,” said protester Hussein Ali, 18. “We won’t relent. It’s the government that is going to  back off. Not us.”

Published at Tue, 25 Jun 2024 13:39:00 +0000

China’s Chang’e 6 lunar probe returns to Earth with first samples from moon’s far side

China’s Chang’e 6 probe returned to Earth with rock and soil samples from the little-explored far side of the moon, in a global first.

The probe landed in the Inner Mongolian region in northern China on Tuesday afternoon. 

“I now declare that the Chang’e 6 Lunar Exploration Mission achieved complete success,” Zhang Kejian, director of the China National Space Administration, said in a televised news conference after the landing. 

Chinese scientists anticipate the returned samples will include 2.5-million-year-old volcanic rock and other material that scientists hope will answer questions about geographic differences on the moon’s two sides. 

The near side is what is seen from Earth, and the far side faces outer space. The far side is also known to have mountains and impact craters, contrasting with the relatively flat expanses visible on the near side.

The probe had landed in the moon’s South Pole-Aitken Basin, an impact crater created more than four billion years ago. The samples scientists are expecting will likely come from different layers of the basin, which will bear traces of the different geological events across its long chronology, such as when the moon was younger and had an active inside that could produce volcanic rock. 

While past U.S. and Soviet missions have collected samples from the moon’s near side, the Chinese mission was the first to collect samples from the far side.

“This is a global first in the sense that it’s the first time anyone has been able to take off from the far side of the moon and bring back samples,” said Richard de Grijs, a professor of astrophysics at Macquarie University in Australia.

A growing rivalry

The moon program is part of a growing rivalry with the U.S. and others, including Japan and India. China has put its own space station in orbit and regularly sends crews there.

Chinese Leader Xi Jinping sent a message of congratulations to the Chang’e team, saying it was a “landmark achievement in our country’s efforts at becoming a space and technological power.”

The probe left Earth on May 3, and its journey lasted 53 days. The probe drilled into the core and scooped rocks from the surface.

The samples “are expected to answer one of the most fundamental scientific questions in lunar science research: what geologic activity is responsible for the differences between the two sides?” said Zongyu Yue, a geologist at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, in a statement issued in the Innovation Monday, a journal published in partnership with the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

In recent years, China has launched multiple successful missions to the moon, previously collecting samples from the moon’s near side with the Chang’e 5 probe.

They are also hoping that the probe will return with material that bear traces of meteorite strikes from the moon’s past. That material could shed light on the solar system’s early days. There’s a theory that the moon acted as a vaccum cleaner of sorts, attracting all the meteorites and debris in the system’s earlier era so that they didn’t hit Earth, said de Grijs, who is also executive director at the International Space Science Institute Beijing. 

China has said it plans to share the samples with international scientists, although it did not say exactly in which countries. 

Published at Tue, 25 Jun 2024 14:46:32 +0000