Tensions rise over Chinese engagement in Kenya after restaurant’s co-owner said Africans posed security risk and needed to be kept out after 5pm
Date: Tue, 24 Mar 2015 21:00:53 +0100
'No Africans' Chinese restaurant owner arrested in Nairobi
A construction worker on a railway project near Makueni, Kenya has witnessed an extraordinary rise in Chinese economic engagement over the past decade. Photograph: Pan Siwei/Xinhua Press/Corbis
The owner of a Chinese restaurant in Nairobi that operated a “no Africans” policy has been arrested after media reports about the establishment triggered an outcry on social media.
Zhao Yang was charged with operating a restaurant without a valid licence only hours after the Daily Nation, Kenya’s biggest newspaper, published a front-page story about the restaurant.
Co-owner Esther Zhao told the newspaper that Africans posed a security risk and needed to be kept out after 5pm. “We don’t admit Africans that we don’t know because you never know who is al-Shabaab and who isn’t,” she said, referring to the Somali-based terror group blamed for a number of attacks in Kenya in recent years.
“It is not like it is written on somebody’s face that they are a thug armed with a gun.”
Staff were quoted saying the restaurant’s security detail were under strict instruction not to let in any Africans in the evening, although one or two “loyal customers” were allowed.