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June 23, 2007

Kenya’s secret society sows dread

Filed under: global islands,kenya — admin @ 5:14 am

NAIROBI: These days, Charity Bokindo, the district commissioner of Nairobi North, is taking no chances. Wherever she goes, she carries not one but two pistols and she always travels with armed guards.

“The Mungiki,” she whispered, “they threatened to circumcise me.”

Kihara Mwangi, a member of Kenya’s Parliament, recently revealed that he had been kidnapped by the Mungiki, a secret society that is part Sicilian mafia, part Chicago street gang, with a little local cultism sprinkled in.

“These guys are devil worshipers,” he said. “And no one knows what they want.”

The Mungiki mystery is sweeping across Kenya, and taking a lot of lives with it. In the past month, more than 50 people have been killed in a crime spree and brutal police crackdown related to the shadowy outfit.

Police officials said the Mungiki were trying to destabilize the country before presidential elections in December and blamed them for some downright ugly acts: chopping off legs, skinning heads and guzzling jerry cans of blood. Government officials accused them of running a vast extortion empire and hacking up victims as a scare tactic.

The Mungiki Menace, as the local papers have dubbed it, plays straight into many of Kenya’s sore spots: tribal frictions, political shenanigans, poverty and crime. The flash point is Mathare, a giant slum and mountain of rust near central Nairobi, the capital, where 500,000 people are crammed into a warren of corrugated metal shanties.

On a recent afternoon, John Kinywa, a 17-year-old vendor of passion-fruit juice, trolled his patch of Mathare, shaking a plastic bowl for donations for a friend’s funeral.

“Just a shilling. Can’t you spare a shilling?” he asked passers-by, who, by the look of their ragged clothes and chopstick legs, probably could not spare it.

Kinywa said police officers shot his friend, who he insisted was innocent, in a raid against the Mungiki in early June after two police officers were gunned down in Mathare. With grubby fingers, he counted out several other people he knew who had recently been zipped into body bags.

There may be a lot of death in Mathare’s muddy alleyways, but there is also a lot of life: reggae rap thumping from blown-out speakers; women sitting on the ground and braiding hair; boys pushing impossibly overloaded carts; goats nibbling grass; little chicken wire barbecues cooking up corn.

Mathare is one of the countless slums in Kenya that the government does not reach. There are no police stations here or fire hydrants or roads. There are few toilets and the hillsides reek of fresh waste.

Many of the dented metal kiosks advertise in dripping hand-painted scrawl paraffin for oil lamps, because despite the palatial homes in the neighborhood next door that light up like soccer stadiums at night, most Mathare dwellers do not have electricity.

“These people live like beasts,” said Bokindo, one of the government officials in charge of Mathare.

The Mungiki did not start here. They came from the Kikuyu highlands north of Nairobi, that carpeted green, straight-off-a-postcard “Out of Africa” side of Kenya.

Hezekiah Ndura Waruinge, one of the Mungiki’s founders, said the group began as a local defense squad during land clashes in the late 1980s between forces loyal to the government, which was dominated by the Kalenjin tribe, and farmers who were Kikuyu, a rival tribe.

The Mungiki, which means “multitude” in the Kikuyu language, modeled themselves after the Mau Mau, Kenya’s independence fighters who sprouted dreadlocks, took secret oaths and waged a hit-and-run guerrilla war against British colonizers.

By the late 1990s, the Mungiki went urban, Waruinge explained, taking over the city’s minibus trade. Then they diversified into garbage collection, building materials and eventually the protection racket.

“It was beautiful,” Waruinge said. “We had 500,000 members and millions of shillings coming in every day.”

But then the Mungiki made a mistake, Waruinge said, and dabbled in politics, supporting losing candidates in the elections of 2002 and falling on the wrong side of the government.

Top Mungiki leaders were rounded up and charged with inciting violence. The Mungiki went underground, although they continued to levy protection taxes, electricity taxes and water taxes. They even gave receipts.

“They’re not such bad people,” said Dominick, who runs a lunch stall in Mathare and employs two Mungiki members to pour tea and bake chapati. Even though he had little bad to say about the Mungiki, Dominick declined to give his last name because, he said, “these guys drink blood. You never know what they might do to you.”

Dominick, along with several others, said that Mathare had been infested by muggers and drug dealers until the Mungiki came along and established a rough sense of order.

But that order began to unravel last autumn when the Mungiki tried to raise taxes on bootleggers who brew a toxic form of homemade alcohol, called chang’aa, on the banks of the smelly Mathare River.

The bootleggers armed a rival gang called the Taliban (no Muslim connection – the gang members just thought the name sounded cool) and the fighting between the two sides killed more than a dozen people and drove thousands away.

In May, the Mungiki were suspected of beheading four defectors. Then the two officers were ambushed. The police responded by storming Mathare with machine guns and tear gas. More than 30 people were killed and hundreds arrested.

Before the smoke had even cleared, the political accusations began to fly. Opposition members blamed the government for allowing the Mungiki menace to spin out of control. Government ministers fired back by threatening to arrest opposition leaders, including a presidential candidate.

Bokindo admitted the government was very worried about the Mungiki.

“They almost overwhelmed us,” she said.

The Mungiki seem to be in a dormant phase now, with little sign of them along Mathare’s mud boulevards. But several residents said that was not necessarily a good thing. Apparently, the muggings are back.

‘Sect violence’ rocks Kenya capital

Filed under: global islands,kenya — admin @ 5:09 am

Armed police recently raided Nairobi’s slums in a crackdown on the Mungiki.
At least 11 people have been killed in violence around Nairobi that police blamed on members of a banned sect that is powerful in the Kenyan capital’s slums.

Police said on Friday that the Mungiki sect killed three people overnight whose mutilated bodies were dumped in the Banana shopping centre, 20km north of Nairobi.

“Two people were slashed to death and dumped there. About a kilometre away, a man was beheaded. We suspect the killings were carried out by Mungiki,” a police official said.

Mungiki members were also suspected of involvement in a gun and grenade attack on a bar in which eight people died.

Other reports put the death toll for the night’s violence at as high as 22.

Mau Mau influence

Once only a religious group who embraced traditional rituals such as female circumcision, the Mungiki sect has fractured into a politically linked gang.

Mungiki claims to have thousands of adherents, all drawn from the Kikuyu, Kenya’s largest tribe.

The group, whose name means “multitude” in the Kikuyu language, was inspired by the 1950s Mau Mau rebellion against British colonial rule.

In recent years, it has been linked to extortion, murder and political violence.

The group’s founder, Maina Njenga, who has publicly denied links to Mungiki recently but who is widely believed to still be a guiding force, was sentenced to five years in prison Thursday on gun and drug charges.

Banned in 2002 following deadly slum violence, the gang is notorious for criminal activities including extortion and murder.

Leaflets circulated by the group call on Kenyan youth to join up and prepare for an uprising against the government.

“Arise! Arise! Arise!” one of the leaflets says. “Stand up for your rights now.”

Hundreds of people fled a shantytown in Kenya’s capital earlier this month, where at least 33 people were killed during a police crackdown on on the Mungiki group.

Political control

Meanwhile, a Mungiki leader said the government crackdown has done nothing to stop the secretive group, which makes money by demanding protection payments from minibus drivers.

It also controls illegal businesses that produce homemade alcohol or provide electricity to slum areas by rerouting the circuits.

The minibuses, known as matatus, are the main form of public transportation in Kenya.

“Nothing has changed,” the leader told the AP news agency, insisting his name not be published because he is wanted by police.

“Most politicians in this area are affiliated with us in one way or another.”

June 22, 2007

Filed under: Film,General — admin @ 2:02 pm





Sri Lanka under fire over Internet censorship

Filed under: General,global islands,media,sri lanka — admin @ 5:05 am

Media rights groups attacked Sri Lanka’s government for blocking domestic access to a website favouring the Tamil Tiger rebels and for saying it would like hackers to disable the site.

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) said Colombo should immediately unblock the Tamilnet.com website.

“Sri Lanka’s Internet service providers have been blocking access to the website on the government’s orders since June 15,” RSF said. “The government must put a stop to this censorship and restore access to the site at once.”

A local rights group, the Free Media Movement (FMM), also criticised government spokesman Keheliya Rambukwella over comments in which he said he would “love” to hire hackers to pull down Tamilnet.

The FMM said Rambukwella’s statement was “tantamount to government sanctioned cyber-terrorism against websites that do not toe its line.”

“The FMM seeks urgent clarification from the government as to whether Minister Rambukwella’s comments are indicative of official government policy to shutdown, disrupt or censor content and websites on the Internet.”

But Sri Lanka’s Media Minister Anura Yapa insisted his ministry had nothing to do with preventing users of Sri Lanka Telecom, the country’s main Internet service provider, accessing Tamilnet.

“It is unreasonable to level charges against the government,” Yapa told reporters here. “We have nothing to do with this.”

Military spokesman Prasad Samarasinghe said the security forces had not ordered the blocking of Tamilnet either.

“Security forces have not asked the Tamilnet to be blocked,” Samarasinghe said.

Despite the denials, Sri Lanka Telecom’s Internet service help desk told callers that the “government has asked to block Tamilnet.”

“You can access any other site, but you can’t access Tamilnet,” callers are being told.

The government owns just under 50 percent of Sri Lanka Telecom, which is run by NTT of Japan.

A Colombo-based editor of Tamilnet, Dharmaratnam Sivaram, was shot dead by unidentified gunmen in April 2005. The killing remains unresolved.

Some Internet service providers, who have their main offices abroad, still allow access to the website.

Tamilnet is an influential source of Tamil views on the island’s separatist conflict, which has claimed more than 60,000 lives in a 35-year campaign by rebels for a separate homeland for minority Tamils.

June 21, 2007

Filed under: belize,General,global islands — admin @ 6:27 am

Filed under: Film,General — admin @ 6:14 am

1000 Acre Old Spice Farm for Sale

Filed under: belize,General,global islands — admin @ 5:52 am

Price: $350.00/ acre
District: Belize Dist
Contact Phone #: (501) 222-4256 / (501) 610-3910
For Sale By: Agent
Land Size: 1,000

Description:
This acreage of land is located on the Old Northern Highway. It was originally planted with over 300 all spice plants and is naturally rich with hardwoods such as mahogany and zericote, as well as many other beautiful and precious species plants as most of this property remains covered with virgin forest. It is not far from the sea docking facilities at Bomba, and only a few miles from the Mayan site of Altun Ha. The well known Maruba Resort is a short rider further up the same road.

This site was originally the home of a well known local family, so there are some buildings on the property as well as a couple ponds. However, they have not lived there for some time and have decided that it is no longer very practical for them to hold onto it although they still consider it a precious part of their lives. They are prepared to sell to someone who will make better use of it.

It would be suitable for a farm, resort, or some other type of development/project needing a large parcel. The asking price is $350.00 USD per acre
Location / Directions:
Mile 29 Old Northern Highway near Maskall Village

Man In Thailand Selling Last Private Island In San Francisco Bay

Filed under: General,global islands,thailand — admin @ 5:45 am

SAN FRANCISCO — If you’ve ever wanted to own a piece of San Francisco Bay, now’s your chance. Red Rock, the only privately owned island in the bay, is up for sale.

A Bangkok gem dealer and attorney, David Glickman, wants ten million dollars for the 5.8 acre, uninhabited island in the shadow of the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge.

Glickman, who is 78, says he isn’t going to live much longer and wants to leave his wife in good shape financially.

Red Rock Island, which gets its name from the reddish-brown color of its soil, was privately purchased in the 1920s. After a few owners, Glickman, then practicing law in San Francisco, bought it sight unseen in 1964 for $49,500.

It is about eight miles north of San Francisco’s Fisherman’s Wharf at a point where the San Francisco, Marin and Contra Costa counties converge.

Any new owner who wanted to develop the island would also have to spend extra money and go through an approval process involving state agencies in one or more of the three counties that have jurisdiction over the island.

June 20, 2007

Filed under: Film,General — admin @ 7:28 am



Monsoonal floods hit Bangladesh, trapping thousands in villages

Filed under: bangladesh,global islands — admin @ 5:47 am

Dhaka — Monsoonal torrents touched off the summer’s first floods in Bangladesh, wiping out scores of villages and trapping thousands of farming families in inundated homes, rescue officials and witnesses said Tuesday.

Heavy rains dumped since the weekend swelled the Borak River and its tributaries, the Surma and Kushiyara, in the north-eastern region of Sylhet.

Officials in the Food and Disaster Management Ministry said 6,000 families were left stranded in the flooded hamlets in Zakiganj county, which also faced tropical storms overnight.

About 80,000 flood-stricken people were evacuated or left their homes in the Maulvibazar district as the flooding intensified with water gushed from across the Assam hills in eastern India, submerging more areas in Bangladesh.

Nearly 150 villages were washed away as the rush of water from the bordering Indian state of Tripura engulfed rice farms in the Comilla region in eastern Bangladesh.

“The flood situation is likely to worsen in the coming weekend with more seasonal rains expected in the next few days,” said Ataur Rahman of the local flood-monitoring centre of the Water Development Board.

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