A sad goodbye to the former Prime Minister of Kenya, Raila Amollo Odinga, was disrupted by a violent police action on Thursday at the Moi International Sports Centre, Kasarani.
After police fired tear gas and gunshots in the air to disperse the crowd of mourners, the area was thrown into confusion.
A safe public viewing turned into a retreat, with clouds of tear gas, gunfire, and people running for their lives. The return of the veteran opposition leader, whose body was moved from Parliament Buildings to a bigger venue due to the large turnout, brought thousands of people to the stadium to pay their last respects.
According to the witnesses, the disorder started when people in the crowd tried to force their way through one of the main gates of the stadium and the police responded with tear gas.
The abrupt noise of people running, the sound of gunfire, and the smoke from the tear gas canisters drove people away from the area in all directions. “Mourning people were shoving each other terribly and some of them started falling over the other ones.
The police aimed their guns in the air and also fired tear gas. It was really scary,” said a mourner who was given slight bruises by the scuffle. In spite of the interruption, a huge number of people kept off from giving up on their desire to have a look at Odinga’s body, with some of them singing his name and holding twigs and palm branches to pledge peace and say goodbye.
The late Raila Odinga, a towering figure in Kenya’s political history and democracy struggles, is set to be laid to rest in his ancestral home in Siaya County later this week.