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Muslim protesters dispersed
29/09/2006 18:05 - (SA)
Nairobi - Kenyan security forces fired tear gas on Friday to break up a crowd of Muslims protesting alleged police harassment following the arrests of several members of their community.
At least one tear gas canister was fired into about 500 demonstrators as they neared the Nairobi police headquarters where they had marched, chanting "Don't terrorise Muslims" to present a petition detailing their complaints.
No one was injured and the crowd dispersed peacefully, but vowed to hold another protest next week at the Israeli embassy, which they accuse of ordering the arrests last week of three Muslims by Kenyan anti-terrorism police.
"We have come to demonstrate against the harassment of the police," said Al Amin Kimathi, chairperson of Kenya's Muslim Human Rights Forum (MHRF).
"We demand the dismantling of the anti-terror unit police, we demand the release of the people illegally detained by the terror unit police," he told the crowd through a megaphone as police moved in.
"We are not harassing the Muslims," said Nairobi deputy police commissioner Lawrence Nwadime after the demonstration had been cleared.
'We are treated like second-class citizens'
The protest, called for after Friday prayers at Nairobi's largest mosque, followed the arrests last week of two Muslim women and a man who had lost their way and made a u-turn in front of the Israeli embassy in the capital.
They were followed by police and detained, but later released in what the protestors said was just one in a series of incidents in which authorities had unfairly targeted the Muslim community.
"We are treated like second-class citizens," said demonstrator Jafar Wachira.
"The anti-terror unit must be dismantled and the Israeli embassy has to be relocated far away from Nairobi."
On Tuesday, the MHRF complained that an innocent Muslim businessman in Nairobi had been arrested by the police for alleged involvement in last week's car-bomb assassination attempt on the Somali president in Baidoa.
The group said this "was part of the continued campaign of victimisation of Muslims".
Since extremists hit the US embassy in Nairobi in 1998, Muslims have often complained of harassment by police.
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