Violence erupted on Kenya's coast on August 13, 1997, launching weeks of terror in what had been a quiet resort area.
Using the cover of automatic guns wielded by outsiders, local raiders carrying traditional weapons attacked a police station and a police post at the ferry in Likoni, which connects Likoni to Mombasa island.
The raiders killed six officers and stole more than forty guns, then proceeded to carry out a violent rampage in the area, burning market kiosks, office buildings, and killing and maiming people after identifying them as non-locals or people from "up-country."
Many of their targets belonged to the Luo, Luhya, or Kikuyu communities, as well as the Kamba. Some 200 raiders participated in the attack, by the raiders' own count.
When security forces finally appeared the following morning, the raiders retreated to hiding places in the forests. From these bases, they launched more attacks in subsequent days and engaged in sporadic firefights with security forces.
The violence continued for several weeks, with particularly bold attacks taking place again in September, before they subsided.
Intermittent raids continued well into November 1997 and some raiders were active through December of the following year. The impact of the violence was devastating.
Statistics compiled by the police, which provide a conservative estimate, indicate that a total of 104 people were killed in the violence, at least 133 more were injured, hundreds of structures were damaged, and other property was damaged or stolen leading to large losses.
Human rights groups estimate that, in addition to more than a hundred people killed, some 100,000 people were displaced.
Furthermore, the Coast region's lucrative tourism trade came to a virtual stand-still overnight, and the country as a whole experienced a sharp downturn in tourism following the violence.
Conditions in Coast Province in 1997 provided fertile ground for fomenting politically motivated ethnic violence.
Life had long been harsh for the ethnic groups that were traditional inhabitants of the area.
The indigenous Mijikenda people of the Coast (comprising the Digo, Giriama, and other ethnic groups) lived in poverty, surrounded by resort hotels catering to foreign and Kenyan tourists.
The Digos, mostly concentrated south of Mombasa (in the area known as the South Coast), had disproportionately high rates of joblessness, landlessness, and illiteracy in comparison with members of non-local ethnic groups living in the same area, which included so-called up-country people (members of ethnic groups from Kenya's interior, generally viewed as opposition supporters) and residents of Araband Asian descent, many of whom had long family histories in the Coast region.
Beach-front properties and other valuable land, including Mijikenda ancestral land, were in the hands of wealthy foreigners and politically connected Kenyans, some of whom allegedly obtained the deeds irregularly in a practice known as land-grabbing.
Added to their anger over these inequities, many locals were upset over abuse suffered at the hands of police officers, whom they said arrested young men without cause, beat them, and demanded large, unaffordable bribes in order to release them.
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Editor's Note: This excerpt was first published by the Human Rights Watch.