As It Happens6:31Tear-gassed on CNN, Auma Obama says she stands in solidarity with Kenya's youth
Asked about the mood on the streets of Kenya this week, Auma Obama said: "I think it can be expressed with one word — and that's rage."
Obama runs Sauti Kuu Foundation, a charity that helps impoverished youth in Kenya, and has been taking part in protests against tax hikes in the African country. She's also the half-sister of former U.S. president Barack Obama.
She was in the streets of Nairobi, Kenya's capital, on Tuesday, when she was tear-gassed half-way through a CNN interview.
"All I did was walk peacefully, and get tear-gassed," Obama told As It Happens host Nil Koksal. "And it happened to be on air with a camera."
That's just one example, she says, of what has been a violent and deadly crackdown on protesters. And it's why she says the demonstrations have continued even after Kenyan President William Ruto withdrew the tax bill that drove people onto the streets to begin with.
"When they demonstrate, they are now being beaten by the police, they're being tear-gassed, they're being shot at," she said. "So how are the young people going to trust you?"
WATCH | Barack Obama's sister tear-gassed on CNN:
The protests first erupted on Tuesday in opposition to a bill that would have raised taxes on internet data, fuel, bank transfers, bread, diapers and more in an effort to pay down the country's national debt and access more international financing.
After Ruto withdrew the bill Wednesday in a televised address to the nation, the protests got smaller, but did not stop.
On Thursday, people in Nairobi, Mombasa, Kisumu and other cities continued to march in the streets, calling on Ruto to step down.
Kenya calls in armyPolice fired tear gas at dozens of protesters in Nairobi and blocked off roads to the presidential palace, The Associated Press reported.
In the town of Homa Bay in western Kenya, police said officers shot at protesters who tried to torch police vehicles, and that seven people were admitted to the hospital with gunshot wounds.
WATCH | How Kenyan protesters got their demands met: After a week of violent demonstrations over tax hikes, Kenya's president William Ruto said he would concede to protesters' demands to withdraw a contentious finance bill that would've imposed significant tax increases on goods and services, affecting virtually every Kenyan. Andrew Chang explains what led to this major victory for the youth-led protest movement.The Standard, a Kenyan newspaper, said two people had been killed as police clashed with anti-tax protesters looting two supermarkets in Ongata Rongai, a town on the outskirts of Nairobi. Police did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Volunteer group Medics for Kenya said some of its staff were been hit by tear gas, and that it condemned in "the strongest terms possible, violence meted out on our volunteer medical teams."
Reuters reporters saw army vehicles on the streets after the government deployed the military to help police.
"It's not good for the military to get involved in this civilian matter. We are not at war," motorbike taxi driver John Ngugi said. "We are peaceful."
'They really have nothing to lose'Obama says the protesters are, by and large, young people, which is no surprise in a country where, according to government figures, 80 per cent of the population is under 35, and 38.6 per cent of people live in poverty.
"They really have nothing to lose. They've done everything right, and at the end of it, they come away with nothing," she said. "And then there's a finance bill that is going to indebt them because they're going to be taxed even though they're jobless."
Paramedics assist a protester on Thursday in Nairobi, where people continue to march in the streets to decry the police killings of anti-tax protesters earlier in the week, and call on Kenya's president to resign. (Monicah Mwangi/Reuters)She says she doesn't consider herself an activist, but felt a duty to stand in solidarity with the protesters because she works for an organization that is staffed by and serves young Kenyans.
"They are fighting my fight, and they're fighting it fearlessly, and they're fighting it peacefully, and they are the ones who are taking the brunt of the violence," she said. "This is wrong."
She called on older Kenyans to take up the fight, too.
"We've created a debt that we are leaving our children and our young people to deal with," she said. "They were not consulted. They were not sitting at the table to make the decisions about what happens with our economy."
Those comments were echoed by protesters on Thursday, who said they were fighting for an entire generation of young Kenyans.
"We are only coming here so that our voice can be heard, us as Gen Z, us as Kenyans, we are one," protester Berryl Nelima said in Mombasa.
Kenya anti-riot police arrest a protester on Thursday in Nairobi. (Brian Inganga/Reuters)The International Monetary Fund (IMF), the Washington-based global lender that has been urging the Kenyan government to cut its deficit in exchange for more funding, said it was "deeply concerned about the tragic events in Kenya."
"Our main goal in supporting Kenya is to help it overcome the difficult economic challenges it faces and improve its economic prospects and the well-being of its people," the IMF said in a statement.
Ruto, meanwhile, says Kenya must cut the debt that's squeezing the nation's currency and making it hard to borrow. He vowed to start a new dialogue with Kenyan youth and work on austerity measures, beginning with cuts to the presidential budget.
But Obama says Kenyans don't trust the government to pull them out of financial crisis. For years, she says people have lived with underfunded infrastructure and public services, while watching political leaders live in "opulence."
"In particular, the young people of the majority, they do not see the gain in those loans," she said. "They do not see the gain in the taxes that they already pay."
With files from Reuters and The Associated Press. Interview with Auma Obama produced by Kevin Robertson.
