Kenyans for Peace with Truth and Justice

Statement from concerned citizens and governance, human rights and legal organizations on Safety of Human Rights Defenders

We speak in the name of Kenya’s governance, human rights and legal organizations, as well as the concerned citizens who have contacted and chosen to work with us over the last two weeks.

We have been meeting and organising for the past two weeks in order to understand and make public what happened with the counting and tallying process of our Presidential vote, as well as the nature of the violence experienced across the country since. With respect to the former, it has been our considered and informed opinion that the electoral malpractices—and illegalities—experienced invalidate the swearing in of Mwai Kibaki. With respect to the latter, it has been our considered and informed opinion that the violence being experienced is of four forms—disorganised and spontaneous protest expressed anarchically; organised militia activity first in the Rift Valley and now in Central and Nyanza; disproportionate use of force by the Kenya Police Force and the General Service Unit; and, more recently, retributive communal actions inspired by the experiences narrated by the inflow of internally displaced persons. We have consistently condemned all four forms.

We have also continually reiterated the need for the Kenyan Police Force and the General Service Unit to respect the right of all Kenyans to the freedoms of expression, assembly and association to respond—in a legal and legitimate manner—to both the counting and tallying process of our Presidential vote as well as the violence experienced across the country since. We have supported citizens’ desires to come together to do so while compiling our empirical evidence on the same for imminent release to the public. And we have engaged with interested political actors as well as those involved within the mediation process to seek meaningful ways forward that will secure sustainable peace on the basis of electoral truth and electoral and post-electoral justice.

We stress, in the strongest possible terms, that it is within our rights as individual citizens and within the legally recognised mandates of our various institutions and organisations to have done so—and continue to do so. We therefore note, with the deepest of concerns, information received from no less than four sources within the Kenyan Police Force and the National Security Intelligence Service, that points to the personal safety and security of some of our members now being at risk for having done so—most notably (but not only) that of Maina Kiai, Chair of the Kenya National Commission of Human Rights. We have been advised by these sources of a special unit being formed to consider methods for our neutralisation and warned to be cautious while driving alone or at night as the most obvious of methods would be to mask the deliberate targeting of ourselves as common criminality, such as by carjacking or calculated road accidents.

We wish to stress that we do not take this information lightly. While we may consider our efforts almost insignificant in light of their immediate impact on the bigger goings-on around us, we are aware that in today’s highly charged political atmosphere, the expression of and action on independent opinion is considered politically partisan—particularly when by those of us who have consciously broken away from the ethnically-aligned and near hegemonic positions being propounded by, in particular, political actors aligned with the man sworn in as President.

We therefore take this opportunity to formally inform Major General Hussein Ali, Commissioner of the Police, of this information and to ask that he investigate the information received as a matter of urgency. We also take this opportunity to formally inform the persons sworn in as Minister of Internal Security and Minister of Justice and Constitutional Affairs of these threats and urge them to provide direction to all arms of Kenya’s intelligence and security services that is within the limits of our Constitution and laws. Again, it is within our rights as citizens and as institutions and organisations mandated to be mobilising and organising as we are. And we consider it our patriotic duty to be doing so—in the interest of peace with electoral truth and justice. Our personal safety and security as human rights defenders must be upheld at all times.

Signed:

Africa Centre for Open Governance (AfriCOG)
Awaaz Centre for Law and Research International (CLARION)
Centre for Multiparty Democracy (CMD)
Centre for Rights, Education and Awareness for Women (CREAW)
(CRADLE)
Constitution and Reform Education Consortium (CRECO)
East African Law Society (EALS)
Haki Focus Hema la Katiba Independent Medico-Legal Unit (IMLU)
Innovative Lawyering Institute for Education in Democracy (IED)
International Commission of Jurists (ICJ-Kenya)
Kenya Human Rights Commission (KHRC)
Kenya Leadership Institute (KLI)
Kenya National Commission on Human Rights (KNCHR)
Kituo cha Sheria Law Society of Kenya (LSK)
Media Institute Muslim Human Rights Forum National Constitution Executive Council (NCEC)
Release Political Prisoners (RPP)
Society for International Development (SID)
Urgent Action Fund (UAF)-Africa Youth Agenda