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The protests had been largely peaceful but chaos erupted in the capital Tuesday, with crowds throwing stones at police, pushing past barricades and ultimately entering the grounds of Kenya’s parliament.
Kenya’s capital, Nairobi, erupted in chaos on Tuesday as anti-tax hike demonstrations turned deadly. At least five people were killed and dozens injured in the violent clashes between police and protesters who stormed the parliament building.
“Despite the assurance by the government that the right to assembly would be protected and facilitated, today’s protests have spiraled into violence,” several NGOs, including Amnesty Kenya, said a joint statement that reported the dead and wounded.
As Kenya’s crisis deepened, the White House called for peaceful resolution, while a group of Western countries – including Canada, Germany, and Britain – condemned the “alarming” scenes of violence near the Kenyan Parliament, expressing their shock and dismay.
With the cost of living crisis as a backdrop, a youth-led uprising is gaining momentum, leveraging anger over proposed tax hikes to fuel a rapidly expanding wave of demonstrations that’s putting the government on notice.
“This is the voice of the young people of Kenya,” said Elizabeth Nyaberi, 26, a lawyer at a protest. “They are tear gassing us, but we don’t care.”
Read also: Kenya’s President To Meet Protesters, Considers Tax Reform
“We are here to speak for our generations and the generations to come,” she added.
What began as a peaceful protest movement in Kenya took a dramatic turn on Tuesday, as demonstrators in the capital city clashed with police, breaching barricades and storming the grounds of the national parliament in a shocking escalation of tensions.
The clashes coincided with a mysterious internet blackout, identified by NetBlocks as a “major disruption” to Kenya’s online networks, sparking suspicions of a state-sponsored shutdown aimed at stifling dissent.
As the dust settled, local TV captured the extent of the destruction, revealing ransacked offices with shattered glass, defaced flags, and cars with smashed windows and graffiti-sprayed bodies, a testament to the intensity of the breach, as observed by an AFP journalist.
Just a stone’s throw from the parliament building, the governor’s office in Nairobi City Hall was engulfed in flames, according to footage aired on Citizen TV, with a water cannon struggling to contain the blaze.
Azimio, the main opposition coalition in Kenya, denounced the government’s actions, saying that the use of live ammunition against protesters was a brutal display of force aimed at suppressing the voices of the country’s youth.
