Genital Mutilation in Kenya…

NAIROBI, Kenya - For two terrifying hours, the woman crouched inside her shop, watching as a gang attacked five men in the street, pulled down their trousers and sliced their genitals with rusty machetes.

“The men were screaming and saying, ‘Please don’t kill me, don’t cut me,’” the 35-year-old vendor told The Associated Press, asking to be identified only by one initial, K., because she feared reprisals by the gang.

In the violence that has followed Kenya’s disputed presidential election, a notorious gang has been mutilating the genitals of both men and women in the name of circumcision — inflicting a brutal punishment on members of a rival tribe that does not traditionally circumcise.

The attacks do not appear to be widespread, but they drive home how a fight touched off by opposition allegations that Kenya’s president stole the election has exploded into a broader conflict fueled by ethnic resentments in what had been one of Africa’s most stable nations.

Many of the mutilation victims belong to the Luo tribe of opposition presidential candidate Raila Odinga, say witnesses and even a recruiter for the gang itself……read more