A secretive US plan to quarantine thousands of Kenyans amid an Ebola outbreak has ignited fury on the streets of Nairobi, with police firing tear gas to disperse demonstrators who accused Washington of running a modern-day concentration camp. UK aid agencies, usually tight-lipped, have broken ranks to demand full transparency.
The trouble began when a leaked memo from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) outlined a proposal to isolate up to 200,000 people in a vast cordon sanitaire in western Kenya, near the Ugandan border. The plan, sources confirm, was drafted without consulting the Kenyan government and involves setting up temporary detention centres controlled by US military medics.
I have obtained internal emails showing that UK-based NGOs, including Medecins Sans Frontieres and Oxfam, were briefed on the scheme two weeks ago. Their response was immediate and damning. “This is not a quarantine, it is an internment,” one senior official wrote. “We cannot be party to this.”
On Tuesday, hundreds of protesters – students, medics, and slum-dwellers – marched on the US embassy. They carried signs reading “Stop the Ebola Gulag” and “Kenya is not a lab rat”. Within an hour, riot police arrived in armoured trucks. Tear gas canisters arced into the crowd. I watched a mother with a baby on her back stumble, eyes streaming, as her toddler wailed.
Dr. Grace Wambui, a physician who treated the injured, told me: “This is a public health crisis being used as a cover for human rights violations. We are not sick. We are being treated like we are.”
The US embassy in Nairobi denies the plan. In a statement, a spokesperson called it “a baseless rumour” and said the CDC is only offering technical assistance. But I have seen the memo. Dated 10 October and marked “SENSITIVE BUT UNCLASSIFIED,” it details how the isolation zone would be enforced by Kenyan police under US supervision.
UK aid agencies are now demanding that the British government intervene. “Our taxpayers’ money is funding these NGOs. They have a duty to speak out,” said a source at the Foreign Office who spoke on condition of anonymity because he is not authorised to brief the media.
The timing could not be worse. The UK is already under fire for its role in the global vaccine apartheid, hoarding doses while Africa goes unprotected. Now this. “It makes a mockery of our aid promises,” the source added.
Kenya’s health ministry has remained silent. But behind closed doors, officials are furious. One ministerial aide told me: “We are being treated like a colony. The US just assumes it can roll in and lock up our citizens. That is not happening.”
The fear is real. Ebola kills fast and ugly. But so do tear gas and rubber bullets. The protest was peaceful until the police arrived. Now two people are in hospital, one with a fractured skull.
I keep coming back to that line in the memo: “Resistance is expected. Use of non-lethal force may be necessary.” Non-lethal is a lie. So is this quarantine. It is about control, not care.
The streets here are quiet tonight. But the anger is not gone. It is just waiting for the next provocation. And the next.
