Kenya protest turns deadly amid proposed tax increase, several dead

To Kenya now and demonstrators are gathering in towns and cities across the country for protests against a finance bill that would raise taxes.

Let me take you to the scene live in the capital Nairobi. There you can see the protesters are out on the streets holding banners and going through the capital. Now police have been trying to disperse the protests outside parliament where those proposals are again being debated. We have seen the police a little earlier fired tear gas where those protests were taking place. Now there is a heavy security presence around parliament and indeed the state house. Now these have been demonstrations that have been going on over the past few weeks as parliament has been debating this bill. As you can see a lot of the people out on the streets are young people.

Now this has been a youth led movement that has started online on TikTok, mainly on TikTok but some of the other social media platforms like Instagram and X. They have been organising these nationwide demonstrations and also they want a general strike to reject these planned new taxes that are being debated in parliament.

Now president Ruto says that the government needs to raise additional revenue to reduce Kenya's debt which is why these new proposed tax increases need to go through.

But a lot of Kenyan lawyers during all of these protests have expressed concern about the arbitrary arrests and what they say is the intimidation of activists that have been taking place during earlier protests. I mentioned that these protests have been going on for a number of weeks. Indeed last week we heard that two people were killed during the demonstrations when thousands of people took to the streets in several cities.

Here you can see the live pictures from Nairobi where a lot of young people are on the streets demonstrating. As I say this is all against a proposed new law that is being debated in parliament that would raise taxes. Now a lot of people who are demonstrating against this say that this would affect the cost of living is already bad in Kenya and the fact that if the taxes are raised then they won't be able to afford to live.

Now as I say while all of these protests are going on outside and as I said we have seen some tear gas being fired in the streets and being debated in parliament as we speak as the protests are going on outside. Now there are, I have seen pictures not only from Nairobi but around the country there have been protests, people holding up placards demonstrating against this.

We have heard that in parliament there are discussions about amendments to this bill taking place at the moment. So while the protests are going on outside the MPs inside are still looking at whether there are amendments to this.

Well indeed the minority leader said that MPs are having to take painful decisions. Now as you can see the situation in Nairobi there has been some tear gas fired. We're going to try and talk to our Africa correspondent Barbara Plett-Usher who is also in Nairobi on the streets but I should say because it is a volatile situation she may have to disappear but let's see if we can bring her in now. Barbara what is the latest where you are in terms of the protests? Well it's very swiftly moving.

We're on the side of the main one of the main streets here Kenyatta Street and the protesters are trying to get up it towards parliament and there are police in riot gear at the different intersections trying to stop the different streams of protesters so it's quite chaotic. Protesters break through lots and lots of tear gas fired.

We've been caught in it a little bit ourselves so it's at the moment it's bedlam with a lot of tear gas and protesters determined as their goal is today as it was last week to get to parliament to make their point about the tax bill. Just remind us what they are angry about Barbara. 

Well this is a finance bill that was set to impose quite a lot of new taxes on Kenyans. It's because the government has a massive deficit and it's because it's already borrowed a lot of money. It has a huge debt loan so it doesn't want to borrow more to do that and so it's trying to raise money.