Posts tagged ‘Kenya News’

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January 27, 2011

China Supports Sovereignty of Kenya Over ICC

The Chinese government fully supports the integrity and sovereignty of Kenya and is opposed to interference of her internal affairs by external forces, the Chinese Ambassador to Kenya Liu Guangyuan has said.

Mr Guangyuan also supported Kenya’s cause for peace and harmonious co-existence of ethnic communities observing that justice must go hand in hand with reconciliation of the Kenyan people.The Ambassador made the remarks Thursday when he paid a courtesy call on President Mwai Kibaki at his Harambee House office.The Envoy expressed his government’s satisfaction with Kenya/China bilateral cooperation reassuring of China’s continued assistance in infrastructural development under the Forum for China-Africa cooperation (FOCAC).

During the talks, Mr. Guangyuan conveyed to President Kibaki the China Lunar year greetings from President Jintau.On his part, President Kibaki conveyed warm greetings and best wishes to the President of China Hu Jintao and the people of China on the memorable occasion marking the beginning of the Chinese Lunar year.

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July 18, 2010

Statement From Kenyan Catholic Bishops on Constitution (muigwithania.com)

Our dear people of God and fellow Kenyans, “the truth will set you free” (John 8: 32).We, the Catholic Bishops of Kenya greet you in the name of the risen Lord.You will recall that we wrote to you on 15th April 2010 in our pastoral letter ‘STAND UP FOR LIFE’ in which we were also addressing the government to take our views and those of other Kenyans into consideration. We have also sought other avenues to engage the government without success, specifically trying to address the two major issues raised in our letter. On the 6th May 2010, the Proposed Constitution of Kenya was published by the Attorney-General without change.

We wish to express our disappointment and that of many Kenyans that our voice has not been listened to so far. Even at this late stage, we still believe that the said clauses can be removed from the Proposed Constitution of Kenya.

In our letter ‘STAND UP FOR LIFE’ we referred to the difficulty we had with article 26 paragraph 4 and our concern about articles 169, 170.

With regard to article 26 paragraph 4, we insist that the right to life is paramount and we find the clause to be contrary to natural law, human dignity and Christian teaching as specified in the teaching of the Catholic Church.

We the Catholic Bishops of Kenya have sought advice on legal and medical issues regarding the right to life, and are convinced on the basis of the advice that we continue to receive, that the constitution will result in the liberalisation of abortion laws.

Similar wordings have been used in other countries to legalise abortion, similar faulty arguments as those being used by the proponents of abortion in this country. A good constitution should safeguard very basic rights before conferring other rights. The Proposed Constitution of Kenya does not do that. A good constitution is judged by how it protects fundamental human rights. All the gains in the Proposed Constitution of Kenya are, as it were, cancelled by what it says about the most fundamental right, the right to life. A constitution that does not safeguard the sanctity of human life is not a good constitution.

Together with this there are other issues which are found in the Proposed Constitution about which we have the gravest reservations, namely, the Kadhis’ courts with their inherent inequality of citizens (art. 169 and art. 170), family life (art. 53), acceptance of international law as the law of our country (art. 2), reproductive health care (art. 43, 1a), and the definition of religious freedom (art. 32). Why is the term reproductive health care in this constitution when it is understood in international definition to mean abortion?

Regarding future amendments, we do not believe that a document that is fundamentally flawed should be passed only with a very vague hope that it will be amended later, especially when the process of amendment is more difficult after than before. To vote for the Constitution is to vote for all of it, including its good and its bad provisions. It is impossible to separate them. All people of good will who vote for the Proposed Constitution of Kenya because of some provisions that they like are also responsible of voting for all the morally problematic provisions in the Proposed Constitution of Kenya, including the liberalisation of abortion. We cannot in good conscience advise Kenyans to vote for the Proposed Constitution of Kenya with the hope of future amendments. We also cannot in good conscience leave the matter to Kenyans without giving our considered advice in moral matters so that they can form their consciences in accord with the will of God expressed to us through the moral laws that form part of our cherished Christian tradition. We state this without any fear of contradiction.

The Constitution is not a bag of potatoes for which you can remove five bad potatoes and retain the 95 that seem to be good. It is like an egg, that is delicate and has to be well preserved. And if it begins to go bad, it goes bad wholly and you cannot separate the good from the bad.

Thus, as we have already stated, we are compelled to advise the people of Kenya to vote No!

To emphasize our total objection to article 26 paragraph 4:
We will be promoting the teaching of our Church through the usual means of communication.

As we promised, we will be proclaiming a national day of prayer.

These are the issues on which we judge the Proposed Constitution of Kenya.

We urge our leaders to respect this decision and position that the entire Church has taken. We must voice our opinion, whichever it may be, with utmost respect for persons and institutions (articles 22 and 28). We are not in a political competition but rather putting clearly the position that arises from our role as religious and moral stewards of our society.

We the Catholic Church have been involved in responding to the problems and concerns of women and shall continue working for the respect of their dignity. We wish to prevent many women of this country from experiencing medical treatment by people who are not qualified. We want to prevent them from experiencing the internal pain of the loss of love.

The Church runs many health institutions in collaboration with the government. We know that the rights of many women in this country have not been respected. The Church has always been and shall always be on their side. Those trying to front abortion are the ones who do not care about the plight of women. Why would anyone wish to cause so much pain to women? Would the Church want anything bad for this country? Would the Church promote evil for this country?

Our dear Christians and dear people of good will, we find ourselves at a crossroads. We all understand the craving we all have for a new constitutional dispensation. However, we have a moral duty to pass on to our future generations a constitution that truly safeguards truth and human dignity.

We therefore urge you to make a major campaign of prayer for the defense of life and a constitution that safeguards this reality. We urge al to pray the rosary and other prayers in our Eucharistic celebrations and our small Christian communities so that God may listen to our cry and plea.

We therefore repeat our advice to the people of Kenya to reject this Proposed Constitution of Kenya.

We commend all of you to the protection of our Blessed Mother Mary; may she who treasured the mysteries of God in her womb intercede for our beloved country Kenya.

Signed:

His Eminence John Cardinal Njue;
Archbishop of Nairobi.
Apostolic Administrator of Ngong
Chairman, Kenya Episcopal Conference

1. Rt. Rev. Philip Sulumeti – KEC Vice Chairman (Kakamega)
2. Most Rev. Zacchaeus Okoth (Kisumu)
3. Most Rev. Boniface Lele (Mombasa)
4. Most Rev. Peter Kairo (Nyeri)
5. Rt. Rev. Paul Darmanin (Garissa)
- Apostolic Administrator (Malindi)
6. Rt. Rev. Cornelius K. Arap Korir (Eldoret)
7. Rt. Rev. Joseph Mairura Okemwa(Kisii)
8. Rt. Rev. Philip Anyolo (Homa Bay)
9. Rt. Rev. Alfred Rotich (Military Ordinariate )
10. Rt. Rev. Maurice Crowley (Kitale)
11. Rt. Rev. Norman King’oo Wambua (Bungoma)
12. Rt. Rev. Peter Kihara, IMC (Marsabit)
13. Rt. Rev. David Kamau Ng’ang’a- (Auxiliary Bishop Nairobi)
14. Rt. Rev. Anthony Ireri Mukobo, IMC (Isiolo Vicariate)
15. Rt. Rev. Patrick Harrington (Lodwar)
16. Rt. Rev. Virgilio Pante (Maralal )
17. Rt. Rev. Salesius Mugambi (Meru)
18. Rt. Rev. Luigi Paiaro (Nyahururu)
19. Rt. Rev. Emmanuel Okombo (Kericho)
20. Rt. Rev. Martin Kivuva Musonde (Machakos)
21. Rt. Rev. Anthony Muheria (Kitui)
22. Rt. Rev. James Maria Wainaina (Muranga)
23. Rt. Rev. Paul Kariuki Njiru (Embu)
24. Rt. Rev. Maurice Muhatia Makumba (Nakuru)
25. Rt. Rev. Dominic Kimengich – (Aux. Bishop Elect Lodwar)

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September 14, 2009

Ndura Waruingi Interview With Jeff Koinange

Capital Talk Interview Parts 2,3&4 Youtube Video Page

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April 23, 2008

Rift Valley & KenyaToday

The highest law of the land, the Constitution of Kenya, is explicit on the issue of property ownership by any Kenyan anywhere in the country.This was deliberate because the right to property was one of the sticking points during the Lancaster conferences at the dawn of Independence.The Constitution that was agreed on was explicit that no property of any description shall be compulsorily taken possession of, and no interest in or right over property of any description shall be compulsorily acquired from any Kenyan anywhere.

The import of that is that even if a Truth and Reconciliation Commission is set up, it is doubtful if its mandate will be to extinguish the right to property in the name of correcting historical injustices.The saddest thing about the land situation in Kenya is that the largest culprits actually are amongst some of our political elite and are the same ones who manipulate the peasantry to unleash terror on perceived ‘foreigners’ amongst them.

That a section of Rift Valley Members of Parliament, piqued after failing to clinch Cabinet posts, are actually using the internally displaced people in Rift Valley as a bargaining tool with the government, is not only morally unacceptable, but also highly alarming and extremely myopic.One of the reasons why Kenya is facing a looming food shortage is that thousands of farmers cannot till their land as they are afraid of going back to their farms after being chased away due to the outcome of the just concluded election.It is therefore very irresponsible for political leaders to use these people as political bait to further their personal ambitions. That is the height of sadism.

But more so, this is a grim pointer to the levels that our politicians have gone to achieve their aims and what precedent such actions portend for the future.It is clearly emerging that a new style of political ransom is slowly taking root in Kenya, where disgruntled politicians use all means at their disposal, legal or illegal, to score political goals.This is a bad precedent for Kenya. This time round, the Government should not negotiate with the disgruntled MP’s who want their fellow country men to live in sub-human conditions. The supreme law of the land is clear and it should be followed to the letter.

The President and the Prime Minister should put their feet down and refuse to be held hostage by a group of disgruntled politicians and move swiftly to ensure that the internally displaced are quickly and securely resettled.Similarly, any politician who is found to be inciting the population to chase away and make it hard for the internally displaced from settling down, should face the full wrath of the law without mercy. The culture of political impunity should be brought to an end in Kenya and no one should be allowed to hold a group of people hostage like this.

We all understand the genesis of the land inequity in Kenya and we cannot simply wake up one day and seek to undo history. The colonial notoriety of land acquisition and the subsequent land redistribution mess under both Kenyatta and Moi regimes will not be tackled by torching houses, chasing and killing innocent people.

Finally, it makes sense for the Government to quickly step in and assist in compensating Kenyans who were affected by the political turmoil that beset this country.These were Kenyans who were paying taxes on the belief that the Government would do its part and ensure their property is secure but the Government has failed to fulfil its end of the bargain and should thus step forward and compensate its tax payers.That is the way forward.

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April 21, 2008

Punish the instigators and perpetrators of the ethnic violence.

The Kofi Annan brokered deal signed in February 2008 in Kenya brought President Kibaki and his political opponent Raila Odinga together in what seemed like an inevitable conclusion in a country reeling from an electoral stalemate that saw over 1,500 Kenyans dead and hundreds of thousands displaced.Internally displaced people in a camp in Eldoret. Priority must be given to the prompt and unequivocal resettlement of the displaced families.April 21, 2008: The Kofi Annan brokered deal signed in February 2008 in Kenya brought President Kibaki and his political opponent Raila Odinga together in what seemed like an inevitable conclusion in a country reeling from an electoral stalemate that saw over 1,500 Kenyans dead and hundreds of thousands displaced.Some semblance of peace has been restored, although for all its intents and purposes it creates more of a power maze in Kenya’s already redundant political lexicon.

However even within this maze, it is really ironic that for the Kenyan leadership, the first order of business is not a full redress for those who bore the brunt of the post-election clashes, but an adjudication and division of power.As the tensions simmer it is sad that the bickering on how to accommodate who in what position has over-taken the immediate agenda of rescuing the country from more certain violence.Violence in Kenya runs deep. It is the only constant in the country’s memory. This is precisely because violence is symptomatic of the country’s major ailments stemming from the political, economic and social inequalities. Indeed it is about landlessness 42 years after independence, the abject denial of access to the means of production and sustenance, lack of adequate housing, comprehensive health and human dignity.

It is also about justice.

There are many atrocities and political crimes that demand resolution if the country is to actually move forward and avoid a repeat of the post-election violence. Justice is a sure way of beginning to heal a nation. The authors of the Wagalla massacres where 400 Kenyan men were butchered must be prosecuted.Those who planned and executed the ethnic clashes in 1992 and 1998 (where about 1,500 Kenyans were killed and thousands displaced) must be prosecuted and punished before the law.Who will answer for the hundreds of lives lost after the December 2007 elections? The reported cases of battery and rape of women on campaign trails preceding the December elections must also be fully investigated without prejudice or fail! The internationally sanctioned and euphoric bugle of forgive and forget, rampant in Kenya’s history, must of necessity be brought to a halt. The peace deal should not be about by wiping out memories, tragedies or betrayals. Rather it can be a chance platform from which to punish the instigators and perpetrators of the ethnic violence.The country’s past is filled with injustice and now would be a good time to revisit that chequered history right to the beginnings of the formation of the nation-state, including the betrayal of the freedom fighters. Indeed it is important to politically dissect the Jomo Kenyatta era and debunk the myth of the founding father.The inequalities, state murders, land-grabbing, detentions without trial, ethnic isolation and massacres which greatly defined his rule must be fully addressed and resolved.

The violence must be looked into by addressing the root causes and bringing to book those who engineer these crimes. This could act as a deterrent and also serve some justice to the families who have lost loved ones.A wounded nation cannot heal unless medication is administered to the sick and preventative measures taken to avoid contracting the same ailment. It is no longer prudent to set up commissions of inquiry to investigate whether a commission of inquiry on crimes against humanity is needed.They do not serve justice and they do not work. In fact they only buy time until the next crisis for which another commission is appointed and the partisan and unproductive cycle begins again.

*In the meantime priority must be given to the prompt and unequivocal resettlement of the displaced families in Kenya. This is urgent!

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March 2, 2007

The Enduring Power of Ethnic Nationalism

mt-kenya-flagOn a visit early this year to Africa , President Bush deplored the genocide in Rwanda in the 1990s, defended his refusal to send U.S. troops to Darfur and decried the ethnic slaughter in Kenya.Following a contested election, the Kikuyu, the dominant tribe in Kenya, have been subjected to merciless assault. People are separating from one another and butchering one another along lines of blood and soil.According to a compelling lead article in the new Foreign Affairs, “Us and Them: The Enduring Power of Ethnic Nationalism,” we may be witnessing in the Third World a re-enactment of the ethnic wars that tore Europe to pieces in the 20th century.”Ethnonationalism,” writes history professor Jerry Z. Muller of Catholic University, “has played a more profound role in modern history than is commonly understood, and the processes that led to the dominance of the ethnonational state and the separation of ethnic groups in Europe are likely to recur elsewhere.”

Western Man has mis-taught himself his own history.

“A familiar and influential narrative of 20th-century European history argues that nationalism twice led to war, in 1914 and then again in 1939. Thereafter, the story goes, Europeans concluded that nationalism was a danger and gradually abandoned it. In the postwar decades, Western Europeans enmeshed themselves in a web of transnational institutions, culminating in the European Union.”Muller contends that this is a myth, that peace came to the Old Continent only after the triumph of ethnonationalism, after the peoples of Europe had sorted themselves out and each achieved its own home.

At the beginning of the 20th century, there were three multi-ethnic empires in Europe: the Ottoman, Russian and Austro-Hungarian. The ethnonationalist Balkan wars of 1912 and 1913 tore at the first.World War I was ignited by Serbs seeking to rip Bosnia away from Austria-Hungary. After four years of slaughter, the Serbs succeeded, and ethnonationalism triumphed in Europe.Out of the dead Ottoman Empire came the ethnonationalist state of Turkey and an ethnic transfer of populations between Ankara and Athens. Armenians were massacred and expelled from Turkey.

Out of the Russian and Austro-Hungarian empires came Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia. In the latter three nations, however, a majority ethnic group ruled minorities that wished either their own national home, or to join lost kinsmen.

In Poland, there were Ukrainians, Germans, Lithuanians and Jews. In Czechoslovkia, half the population was German, Slovak, Hungarian, Polish, Ruthenian or Jewish. In Yugoslavia were Slovenes, Croats, Bosnians, Serbs, Macedonians, Montenegrins and Albanians.The Second World War came out of Hitler’s attempt to unite all Germans in one ethnonational home—thus the Anschluss with Austria, the demand for return of the Sudeten Deutsch, and the pressure on Poland to return the Germans’ lost city of Danzig, and for Lithuania to give back German Memel and the Memelland it seized in 1923.World War II advanced the process in the most horrible of ways.The Jews of Europe, with no national home, perished, or fled to create one, in Israel.The Germans of the Baltic states, Prussia, Poland, Czechoslovakia, the Balkans and their own eastern provinces, almost to Berlin, were expelled in the most brutal act of ethnic cleansing in history—13 million to 15 million Germans, of whom 2 million perished in the exodus.At the end of World War II, Europe’s nations were more ethnically homogenous than they had ever been, at a horrendous cost in blood.
After 45 years of Cold War, the remaining multi-ethnic states—the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia—broke up into more than two dozen nation-states, all rooted in ethnonationlism.As Muller argues, ethnonationalism may be a precondition of liberal democracy. Only after all the tribes of Europe had their own ethnically homogenous nation-states did peace and comity come. And what happened in Europe in the 20th century may be a precursor of what is to come in Latin America, the Middle East, Africa and Asia.

In China, Uighurs, Mongolians and Tibetans all resist assimilation. Tatarstan may be the next problem for Russia. In the Balkans, it is Kosovo. Serbs there and in Bosnia may emulate the Albanians and secede.Many, writes Muller, “find ethnonationalism discomfiting both intellectually and morally. Social scientists go to great lengths to demonstrate that this is a product not of nature but of culture. …”But none of this will make ethnonationalism go away.”Indeed, we see it bubbling up from the Basque country of Spain, to Belgium, Bolivia, Baghdad and Beirut. Perhaps the wisest counsel for Kenya may be to get out of the way of this elemental force. Rather than seek to halt the inexorable, we should seek to accommodate it and ameliorate its sometimes awful consequences.

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