By Khalifa Usman
Kenyan protest organizers called Wednesday for fresh peaceful marches against deeply unpopular tax hikes, as the death toll from nationwide demonstrations climbed to 22, a state-funded rights body said, vowing an investigation.
Tensions sharply escalated Tuesday, as police opened fire on demonstrators who stormed parliament after the mainly youth-led rallies began mostly peacefully last week with thousands marching across the country against the tax increases.
The unprecedented scenes left parts of parliament ablaze and gutted and hundreds of people wounded, shocking Kenyans and prompting President William Ruto’s government to deploy the military.
On Tuesday afternoon, parliament passed the contentious bill containing the tax hikes, which must be signed by Ruto to become law.
But demonstrators vowed to hit the streets again Thursday as they called for the bill to be scrapped.
“Tomorrow we march peacefully again as we wear white, for all our fallen people,” protest organiser Hanifa Adan said on X.
“You cannot kill all of us.”
Demonstrators shared “Tupatane Thursday” (“we meet Thursday” in Swahili), alongside the hashtag #Rejectfinancebill2024 on social media.
“The government does not care about us because they shot us with live bullets,” Steve, 40, who was at the parliament Tuesday, told AFP.
Ruto “victimised innocent people”, he said, adding he would march on Thursday: “I expect more violence and chaos.”
Roseline Odede, chairwoman of the state-funded Kenya National Commission on Human Rights, said “we have recorded 22 deaths”, adding that they would launch an investigation.
“This is the largest number of deaths (in) a single day protest,” she said, adding that 19 people had died in the capital Nairobi.
“We have over 300 injured in our records and over 50 arrests,” she added.
Earlier, Simon Kigondu, president of the Kenya Medical Association, said he had never before seen “such level of violence against unarmed people.”
An official at Kenyatta National Hospital in Nairobi said Wednesday that medics were treating “160 people… some of them with soft tissue injuries, some of them with bullet wounds”.