Kenyan opposition slams counter-terrorism crackdown

Nairobi (AFP) - Kenya's opposition party on Thursday slammed the mass round-up and deportation of ethnic Somalis by police after a week-old counter-terrorism crackdown saw 4,000 people arrested.

The latest sweep, conducted in Nairobi's main Somali district Eastleigh since last Friday, is aimed at weeding out sympathisers of the Al-Qaeda-linked Shebab, but residents say people of Somali origin have been rounded up indiscriminately.

Government figures say several hundred have been detained after their initial arrest, and 82 deported to Somalia after being found to be in Kenya illegally.

The opposition Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) compared the crackdown to two notorious incidents from Kenyan history: the internment of thousands of suspected Mau Mau sympathisers by the British colonial authorities in 1954, known as Operation Anvil, and the 1984 massacre of ethnic Somalis at Wagalla in northeastern Kenya.

"We wish to express strong displeasure at the swoops going on today, which resemble Operation Anvil of the Mau Mau era or the Wagalla operation of the 1980s," ODM top official Anyang' Nyong'o told a press conference.

"We do not think indiscriminate picking of Somalis is the answer. We wish to remind the government that in countries where the war on crime and terror has taken ethnic, racial or religious dimension, the conflict has ended up being more complex and more protracted. We fear Kenya is taking that unfortunate route," he said.

ODM also said the government should draw up a timetable for pulling out of Somalia, where it sent troops in October 2011 to fight the Shebab.

The sending of troops into Somalia sparked a sharp rise in attacks in Kenya, notably on the capital, the predominantly Muslim coastal region and and the east and northeast regions that border Somalia.

"We are not saying we should declare victory and leave. We are not saying we sneak out. We want to see a plan for a systematic handing over of Somalia to its citizens. We reject this chest thumping by the government about how we are in Somalia to stay," Nyong'o said.

He also urged the government to make public its plans for reducing youth unemployment in order to curb the appeal of "criminal networks like the Shebab".