'Ethnic cleansing' in Kenya: US envoy

0 Comments | AFP, January, 2008

NAIROBI (AFP) — The violence in Kenya triggered by last month's contested presidential elections has involved acts of "ethnic cleansing," the United States' top Africa envoy said Wednesday.

"There was ethnic cleansing in Kenya. I listened to the victims," US Undersecretary of State Jendayi Frazer said on the sidelines of preparatory meetings for an African Union summit in Addis Ababa.

Frazer, who had visited Kenya after violence broke out in the wake of President Mwai Kibaki's disputed re-election, said entire communities had been forced to pack up and leave their homes.

"If they resisted they were killed. That sounds like ethnic cleansing to me," she said.

Her remarks came as Kenyan police were given shoot-to-kill orders in a bid to stem weeks of...