Shanty demolitions leave thousands homeless

A local human rights organisation has warned of severe long-term humanitarian and socioeconomic problems in Kenya's coastal city of Mombasa if municipal authorities continue to implement a local cabinet minister's order to demolish kiosks and shanty towns, which so far has left tens of thousands of people homeless and without any livelihood.

The latest demolition of shanties took place on Wednesday in the Tudor and Kaa Chonjo slum villages, leaving more than 5,000 people homeless, hardly a week after the minister, Sheriff Nassir, issued an instruction to clear them, the Daily Nation newspaper reported on Thursday.

The mud and wattle shacks were pulled down on Wednesday morning by a combined force of 30 city municipal workers and hired youths, led by the Mombasa island district officer, Tom Moturi, it said.

Khelef Abdulrahman Khalifa, who runs the Mombasa-based Muslims for Human Rights (MUHURI) organisation told IRIN on Thursday that many of the people displaced by the ongoing demolition were now camping in churches and mosques, where they were receiving temporary shelter and food.

"It is a great shame that the same government which claims to protect the rights of children is the government that breaks down their houses. Many families are sleeping out in the rain," he said. "In the long run, when many people are left without jobs or shelter, it will create a lot of disorder in society."

Nassir - the area MP - had said a week earlier that slum dwellings in Mombasa, popularly known as "Muorotos", would be destroyed in the same way kiosks were brought down a month ago, as part of his campaign to "clean up" the city, the report stated.

However, victims of the demolition raid complained that they had read of the intended demolition only in the press and had received no formal notice to move out of the slum areas, it added.

The demolition of kiosks and shanties in Mombasa began on 22 December, when municipal guards, under Nassir's supervision, destroyed up to 1,000 kiosks on the Mombasa mainland after giving only a 30 minute-notice for kiosk owners to clear their premises, according to news reports at the time.

Just before the New Year, the demolition of roadside kiosks in Mombasa ignited running battles which brought police in riot gear to the streets, claimed one life and left scores injured. Religious and community leaders condemned the chaotic, violent clearance operation.

Prior to Wednesday's demolition, five other slum villages - Kalahari, Fuata Nyayo, Mutaratara, Majengo ya Simba and Mishomoroni- had been destroyed, leaving an estimated 2,000 people homeless, according to the Daily Nation.

Nassir said Mombasa, which recently secured city status, must be rid of illegal structures, which, he said, were being used as dens for thugs and drug peddling. "We have resolved that Mombasa must be clean whether it gets city status or not," the newspaper quoted him as saying.

The demolition of kiosks has caused concern in the tourism sector no less than among human rights groups, with business people arguing that the nature and manner of the demolitions were sending the wrong signals about Mombasa, and Kenya, to potential tourists.

Robert Kinyua of the Kenya Association of Hotelkeepers and Caterers (KAHC) said that, although the authorities could justify the demolition of kiosks, the manner in which the exercise was carried out had dealt a big blow to efforts to portray Kenya as a peaceful tourist destination, the East African Standard reported on 15 January.

Khalifa claimed that the shanty and kiosk demolitions were part of a wider "political scheme by those in power" to affect voting during presidential and parliamentary elections due to take place this year, by creating conditions that would block non-coastal ethnic groups - considered sympathetic to the opposition - from voting.

"There is a political motivation in the whole thing. The goal is to reduce the numbers of non-coastal voters. Unfortunately, those targeted were the poorest members of the society," he told IRIN.

"The government is behind all this. They are trying to spoil votes by displacing voters who have already registered in their respective constituencies. If there were economic reasons to the demolition, as we are made to think, then they should have targeted the very rich and corrupt upper class," Khalifa added.