Kenya: Crisis Renewed

By William Minter | 26 March 2009

“I am shaken. I am shocked. And that is, apparently, the intent. For all of us to be shaken. For all of us to be shocked. For all of us to hear the threat, heed the warning. The threat and the warning implicit in last week’s assassinations of Kingara Kamau and John Paul Oulu of the Oscar Foundation.” - L. Muthoni Wanyeki, Kenya
Human Rights Commission

This AfricaFocus Bulletin contains a report of the killing of two human rights activists in Kenya early this month, and excerpts from statements on the recent situation in Kenya, both from the March 6 special issue of Pambazuka News “Kenya: The bomb waiting to go off … again,” One is by L. Muthoni Wanyeki, executive director the Kenya Human Rights Commission, and the other a press statement by Philip Alston, the UN Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Arbitrary, or Summary Executions.

Additional articles, including a more extensive systematic analysis of the current situation in Kenya by Wanyeki, is available on the Pambazuka website at http://www.pambazuka.org/en/issue/422

A March 13 open letter by Kenyan human rights organizations is available at :
http://allafrica.com/stories/200903130663.html

For a variety of current analytical reports on Kenya, including statements from the Kenyan Council of Churches calling for new elections and a survey on public views of corruption from Transparency International Kenya, see
http://africafiles.org/kenya.asp and http://africafiles.org/article.asp?ID=20394

A related report released in February by two London-based organizations, “Kenya and Counter-Terrorism: A Time for Change,” documents Kenya’s collaboration with the United States in rendition of some 150 people of 21 nationalities, seized near the Kenyan border with Somalia during the Ethiopian invasion of Somalia. See
http://www.reprieve.org.uk/documents/KenyaandCounterTerrorism.pdf or http://www.redress.org

For previous AfricaFocus Bulletins on Kenya, from 2008 and before, with excerpts and links of reports during last year’s crisis, and links to relevant recent books, visit http://www.africafocus.org/country/kenya.php

Update: On March 20, President Obama announced his intention to nominate career diplomat and three-time U.S. ambassador in Africa Johnnie Carson as the next U.S. assistant secretary of state for African affairs. Among other posts, Carson was U.S. ambassador to Kenya from 1999 to 2003. See http://allafrica.com/stories/200903240015.html
For an earlier report, with additional background on Carson, see
http://www.africafocus.org/docs09/usa0903.php
See also the February article by correspondent Kevin Kelley in The
East African, at http://tinyurl.com/d85zg6


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