It is now emerging that senior managers at the Nation media group organized for CID officers to pick up and harass former crime editor Stephen Muiruri without having a shred of evidence against him.
Knowing how the police work in this country, Kenyans cannot help but ask, did they pay for the services? And if they did, how much did they pay to get the CID off important and urgent cases involving escalating crime (where the lives of Kenyans are at stake) to handle what would at worst be a civil matter?
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Also published today;
How the rich and influential use the police to harass ordinary Kenyans
Police harass Kitui rights activist
We told you about Moi's powers and antics months ago
Washington Post Article Gives Inspirational Case Studies Of Ordinary People Making Money Online
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Only God knows how many times the giant media house has used the CID department over the years to harass and intimidate Kenyans so as to meet various objectives, both personal and corporate.
In the year 1999, this blogger was running a budding newsletter that was extremely popular in Nairobi. Several times I received warnings from friends and other persons who were more streetwise than I was that my commercial activities were affecting the operations of the media giant. I laughed off the suggestions. How could a tiny operation like mine selling a popular newsletter dealing in social issues for Kshs 10/- affect a major newspaper in the country. My advisors insisted that using my unique system of sales where I had hired my own vendors, when a person purchased my 10 bob publication, chances of then purchasing a daily newspaper were slim. It looked plausible but I still bushed aside the advice. I lived to deeply regret it.
It started with the harassment of some of my vendors that started being regularly picked up and thrown into police cells by city council askaris for all sorts of trumped up charges. One vendor was charged with urinating on a side street close to our offices, which he denied and I found strange because we had toilet facilities in our offices a few metres from where the alleged offence occurred. Still I did not suspect anything believing that the notoriously corrupt city council askaris were just sour because I had a policy of NOT bribing them and always chose the more inconvenient policy of having my vendors charged in the council courts. I would then pay the fines on their behalf and the matter would end there. How naïve I was in those days not to have suspected a thing until it was too late!!
One afternoon several CID officers burst into our premises armed and like they were arresting a very dangerous armed criminal and demanded to see a "registration certificate" for our publication. According to the rather complex Books and newspapers act no such certificate exists. They gathered printing plates and also picked up one of my employees who was then used to look for me all over town (cell phones had not yet arrived then). They even burst into the church where I had been attending a prayer meeting moments before in search of me (I had left only minutes before they arrived on hearing news of the arrest and had headed to CID headquarters, Nairobi area.).
To spare you the details, the CID officers wasted a lot of our time before we finally proved to them with copies of several documents that our publication was actually duly registered. To this day I have no idea why the CID or those who sent them did not bother to go to the AGs chambers for what would have been a 5-minute search at most, that would have immediately told them whether or not we were registered. Technically there is no such thing as registration, all a publication has to do is file surety bonds for the publisher and printer and make annual returns. Instead the CID officers chose to harass and intimidate us. I will not go into the strange telephone conversation that I overheard between the CID boss running this entire operation and somebody on the other end of the line that they were apparently "reporting to."
But what was very strange is that at the time, there were numerous other "copycat publications" that were trying to replicate our unique door-to-door vendor system at the time. None of them were registered and none of them received any visit from the CID officers.
It will interest you to know that finally whoever it was at the Nation who wanted to fix me and my popular newsletter finally achieved their objective, albeit without the help of the CID. Some ingenious street tactics were used. But I digress.
I have a simple question to ask. Judging by the way the senior managers have used the CID to hit back at Muiruri, should Muiruri not look for money and use the same officers to pick up the offending senior Nation editors and have them harassed for harassing him? Is that the way law and order is supposed to work in Kenya?
Many people don't know it, but there are plenty of genuine jobs and business opportunities available online. Get details on how you too can make money on the Internet or even earn a living. It does not matter whether you live in the remotest village in Kenya or anywhere else, all you need is a computer connected to the Internet. Read Kumekucha's fascinating report; Ways To Make Money Online
The Real Reason Why married women have affairs
Monday, March 19, 2007
Injustice In Kenya: How The Rich And Influential Use Cops To Harass And Intimidate
A friend of mine told me a heart-rending story of how he owed someone Sh 1,500 but ended up paying Sh 4,000 after he was arrested by police and thrown into the cells for three harrowing days through the instigation of his debtor. He later learnt that the debt had been raised so as to cover bribe money for the police and other "expense."
Under such circumstances, the creditors' friends and relatives will raise the money as a matter of urgency as nobody wants his kin to spend time in police cells which are notorious for several nasty things starting from terrible skin diseases, to assaults and even deaths of inmates
This is just one of the hundreds if not thousands of similar cases that happen in this country every year as police are 'hired' by the rich and influential as well as anybody with the cash to spare, to do dirty work like debt collecting, extortion, framing an innocent person and so on as law enforcers look into ways of supplementing their meager income.
It is this same police force that is expected to be out there hunting down the dangerous criminals that are killing innocent mwananchi with impunity that have now resulted to being among other things, debt collectors and agents of extortionists.
Apparently, it is not only the junior policemen that have been sucked into this web of doing unscrupulous 'jobs' for those with cash as their senior's are also involved in these racket that has grossly affected the credibility of the police. Show me a Kenyan who trusts the police and I will show you blue grass.
Many thought that these injustices would end with former president Moi's era and everybody assumed that 2003 would mark a new beginning in many ways for Kenyans, majority of citizens couldn't have been further from the truth.
Then there are situations where the police themselves set the stage for the extortion especially in minor cases like simple assault. This is how it works. When you report that you have been assaulted, the police will go ahead and arrest the accused person and scare him or her that he could serve a stiff penalty in jail and it would be wise on his part to settle the matter while still in the hands of the police.
In such instances, the policemen act as the mediators where the complainant is convinced that its better to take money and run as court cases are lengthy and might not necessarily be ruled in your favor, on reaching a 'practical' amount, the accused is informed and advised by police that this is the best option.
Police could 'benefit' in two ways as they will ask the suspect for more money than the complainant wants and pocket the difference then go the other side and demand for a percentage from the complainant for 'helping him make money'.
The list is endless, the police, besides those in the traffic department have created ways of making money on the side at the expense of national security and with a boss in the name of the domineering, arrogant and deceitful John Michuki, the future of the force does not look particularly bright, whatever we are being told.
Many people don't know it, but there are plenty of genuine jobs and business opportunities available online. Get details on how you too can make money on the Internet or even earn a living. It does not matter whether you live in the remotest village in Kenya or anywhere else, all you need is a computer connected to the Internet. Read Kumekucha's fascinating report; Ways To Make Money Online
The Real Reason Why married women have affairs
Under such circumstances, the creditors' friends and relatives will raise the money as a matter of urgency as nobody wants his kin to spend time in police cells which are notorious for several nasty things starting from terrible skin diseases, to assaults and even deaths of inmates
This is just one of the hundreds if not thousands of similar cases that happen in this country every year as police are 'hired' by the rich and influential as well as anybody with the cash to spare, to do dirty work like debt collecting, extortion, framing an innocent person and so on as law enforcers look into ways of supplementing their meager income.
It is this same police force that is expected to be out there hunting down the dangerous criminals that are killing innocent mwananchi with impunity that have now resulted to being among other things, debt collectors and agents of extortionists.
Apparently, it is not only the junior policemen that have been sucked into this web of doing unscrupulous 'jobs' for those with cash as their senior's are also involved in these racket that has grossly affected the credibility of the police. Show me a Kenyan who trusts the police and I will show you blue grass.
Many thought that these injustices would end with former president Moi's era and everybody assumed that 2003 would mark a new beginning in many ways for Kenyans, majority of citizens couldn't have been further from the truth.
Then there are situations where the police themselves set the stage for the extortion especially in minor cases like simple assault. This is how it works. When you report that you have been assaulted, the police will go ahead and arrest the accused person and scare him or her that he could serve a stiff penalty in jail and it would be wise on his part to settle the matter while still in the hands of the police.
In such instances, the policemen act as the mediators where the complainant is convinced that its better to take money and run as court cases are lengthy and might not necessarily be ruled in your favor, on reaching a 'practical' amount, the accused is informed and advised by police that this is the best option.
Police could 'benefit' in two ways as they will ask the suspect for more money than the complainant wants and pocket the difference then go the other side and demand for a percentage from the complainant for 'helping him make money'.
The list is endless, the police, besides those in the traffic department have created ways of making money on the side at the expense of national security and with a boss in the name of the domineering, arrogant and deceitful John Michuki, the future of the force does not look particularly bright, whatever we are being told.
Many people don't know it, but there are plenty of genuine jobs and business opportunities available online. Get details on how you too can make money on the Internet or even earn a living. It does not matter whether you live in the remotest village in Kenya or anywhere else, all you need is a computer connected to the Internet. Read Kumekucha's fascinating report; Ways To Make Money Online
The Real Reason Why married women have affairs
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