/ 7 March 2006

Press freedom in Kenya ‘under siege’

Thousands of angry Kenyans, including prominent opposition politicians, paraded through the country’s main cities on Tuesday protesting a heavy-handed police raid on the second largest media group.

They took part in demonstrations organised by the opposition Orange Democratic Movement (ODM), a coalition of parties opposed to President Mwai Kibaki, and poured scorn on last Thursday’s raid, which saw a Standard Group printing press damaged, thousands of newspapers burnt and its television station taken off the air for several hours.

More than 2 000 people gathered in the capital Nairobi and thousands of others turned out in the Indian Ocean city of Mombasa, the Rift Valley town of Nakuru and the western city of Kisumu as riot police stationed themselves ready to intervene in case of violence.

”We are demonstrating in order to protect press freedom in Kenya. Press freedom in Kenya is under siege,” former roads minister and ODM leader Raila Odinga told the crowd that had gathered outside Kibaki’s office in Nairobi.

”The freedoms of Kenyans and of the media are not favours from the government … A government that does not respect the freedom of speech must go,” said William Ruto, the secretary general of opposition Kenya African National Union (Kanu) party.

”Anybody who is infringing on press freedom must go,” said Kalonzo Musyoka, another ODM member.

The demonstrators carried placards that called for the resignation of Kibaki, whose three-year-old government has been beset by numerous defections and corruption scandals as well as a crushing defeat in a constitutional referendum last year.

”Hitler burnt newspapers … and the Jews,” ”To hell with the snake government,” Operation Kibaki Out,” read some of the placards.

In the four cities, the protestors shouted ”Michuki Must Go” in reference of National Security Minister John Michuki, who, pressed to explain the pre-dawn actions by armed and hooded officers, said it was in defence of ”national security” that had been at stake and police had recovered vital evidence from seized computers.

”We shall not accept our country is dragged back to the yesteryears of darkness and barbarism. Mr Michuki must step aside to save Kenya from tyranny,” a demonstrator, Isaiah Onyango, a demonstrator said in Kisumu, 350km north-west of Nairobi.

Last Thursday’s raid, which the first by authorities on a mainstream media outlet since independence from Britain in 1963 and has already drawn condemnation from the diplomatic corps in Nairobi, was in response to a Standard report that alleged Kibaki had held a secret meeting with ally-turned-foe Musyoka, his former

environment minister.

Both men denied the claim, which was explosive enough to have made the Standard’s front page and has landed three Standard journalists in court, but the Standard has moved to court to declare the raid ”unconstitutional”.

The police commissioner Major General Hussein Ali said he had been kept in the dark over the raid that drew widespread condemnnation by international press watchdogs, with others warning that Kibaki’s divided regime was slowly adopting to repression of the press to silence critics. – Sapa-AFP