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Thursday, March 15, 2007

Stephen Muiruri Arrest: No Word Yet As Incident Receives Media Black Out

The arrest of one Stephen Muiruri has sent shock waves right across the Kenyan media fraternity, including bloggers who have been pushing the limits of press freedom in Kenya for months now. All are waiting with baited breath to see what charges will be slapped on Muiruri, that is if he gets charged at all.

Actually the arrest of Muiruri, the immediate former Nation newspapers crime editor could not have happened at a worst time. Through blogs many Kenyans who have been in the dark are just beginning to find out startling facts that have a major impact on our lives but have hardly ever been covered by the media. High on the list is the Nation sex-for-promotions scandal that seems to be opening a can of worms with many other Kenyans coming forward and pointing out specific sexual misbehavior in corporate Kenya. Then there is the huge effort by police to tone down and even stop major crime reports appearing in the media. Interestingly this is precisely what put Muiruri on a collision course with police commissioner Ali as the crime editor insisted on reporting in detail on crimes and succeeded in unearthing several incidences of attempted cover up by the police. The most memorable was in 2005 during the November referendum on a new constitution where a child was killed in Kisumu during riots but police covered up and wanted Kenyans to believe that nothing of the sort had happened. Muiruri brought that story to Kenyans and finally the police were forced to admit the truth. There are many other instances.

To get an idea of just how effective the police instigated media blackout on crime has been, this blogger cited an incident at the Mashada site where somebody reposted a Kumekucha article that highlighted the frequent hijackings of matatus in Nairobi which usually ended up with the rape of the women passengers. These hijackings are hardly ever covered in the media and a Kenyan left a very abusive comment at the site calling this writer a liar and insisting that I must have made up the whole story.

Nasty memories of what has been done by authorities against bloggers in countries like Egypt have come to the fore and analysts are wondering whether Kenya will go in the same direction. In Egypt bloggers have been routinely arrested and jailed for what they have written online.

The ultra sensitive government in that country has simply traced the IP addresses of where the "offensive" posts were being made from and in one instance a group of bloggers were leaving an Internet Cyber Café when a police vehicle pulled up and the police had their "culprits" after some brief consultations. Are we headed in the same direction in Kenya?

One thing is for sure, the ruling class in Kenya made up of people who have mostly made their money from corruption have been very nervous about the developments that have been going on in recent times on the web and especially amongst the Kenyan political blogging community.

Was it a mere coincidence that the only media outlet that reported the former Nation crime editors' arrest was Capital FM? Capital FM is owned by a man called Chris Kirubi who like most wealthy people in Kenya mysterious-don't-ask-any-questions past. The man was a transport manager at the government-owned Kenatco in the 70s when the illegal coffee boom was happening. He was a poor ordinary Kenyan then but emerged from the illegal coffee boom an extremely wealthy man. Rumours abound as to how exactly he achieved this Houdini feat. The most persistent says that he used Kenatco trucks to transport the coffee for smugglers to Mombasa for hefty fees that never reached the coffers of the parastatal. Later Mr Kirubi cleaned up his image and was greatly helped by appointments to boards of large multinational companies who wanted to make use of his powerful contacts within the Kenyatta government.

Mr Kirubi's clean image, especially with would-be international business partners surfing the net and Googling an individual (the practice of typing in a person's name at the Google search engine to see what has been written about them) before cutting a deal has been badly damaged by the Kenyan blogging community and chances are that the man would aid with any clamp down in that direction. As far as this blogger knows, no other media outlet has reported the Muiruri arrest. Is this telling us something?


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5 comments:

  1. Current reports indicate that Mr Muiruri has been released pending investigations by the CID. This was reported by Classic 105(fm) in their 3 o'clock bulletin.

    The arrest of Muiruri is very puzzling. Given that he is alleged to have contributed to the leakage of the NMG scandal to the web, I believe that the only legal hurdles he might face are of civil nature, i.e. libel and/or defamation by NMG(company) and by the individuals adversely mentioned. The involvement of the police is, in my opinion, totally uncalled for and of criminal nature. I guess that is why they have decided to release him.

    It is obvious that the charges that might be brought against Muiruri by the state will be thrown out. Muiruri, take heart, be strong and fight on!

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  2. Muiruri's arrest must not be tolerated. It bothers me that KNHRC (Kenya National Human Rights Council) has kept quite on this delicate issue. Where is the vocal KHRC Chairman Maina Kiai?

    Our failure to protect and protest whistle blowers' liberties spells doom to the dream of having accountable leadership in both private and public sectors.

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  3. This Human Rights guys are hypocrites. Maina Kiaki should talk about this. It is true that Nation, Standard and Kenya Times are all going to give the news a blackout, but this is the most stupid thing newspapers should do. When the Standard was raided last year, the entire world, including the so-called gutter press rose to talk about it. Now, someone who has risked his life all this time writing about thieves, criminals and law-breakers is arrested and not a single voice shoots up.
    In fact, TO HELL WITH HUMAN RIGHTS, TO HELL WITH KENYAN PRESS AND TO HELL WITH PRETENDERS IN THE MEDIA.
    Look at Kwendo Opanga, was he not the one who was bribed to scandalise other people and malign them during the YK92 (he admitted moonlighting for Kanu)? Now he earns millions working at the Standard.
    Now an innocent soul is suffering and they all keep quiet.
    Pretenders are worse than murderers!

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  4. The dark days are back with us in avengeace. We can condone errors of commission but such grandiose abuse of our national pride, freedom, must be resisted at all cost.

    Dinosaur leaders rule by borrowing bad political manners from their peers. Down south senile Mugabe is speediliy driving his beutiful country into abyss and up here kibaki may just be taking note.

    We must defend the media and press at all cost lest we lose all that we have gained in the last 15 years. Comparing present freedom to the dark ages of Moi is to feed us on tokenism which we must resist and reject.

    Chris, I suggest we launch a 1000 protest to the governemnt through your blog because we know the power barons read it every morning. They fear the Fr. Wamugunda's episodes and the ilk being exposed. Over to you what do you think. I start with my protest - LEAVE THE MEDIA TO DO WHAT THEY KNOW BEST AND KEEP TO THE STRAIGHT AND NARROW TO AVOID THEIR PEN'S POISON.

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  5. Which also raises the question of who owns the main media houses in Kenya and how far are they prepared to go in reporting the truth without jeopardizing their business interests?

    On the other hand, we must stress on the need for the next government to come up with an elaborate ICT policy and particularly internet access to the population as it is apparent that most uncensored news will only come through this channel in future.

    Meanwhile shame on KNHC, ODM and the likes of NARC-K who can only think of how they will rig their way back into enriching themselves, rather than highlight Muiruri's case!

    ReplyDelete

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