by Billow Kerrow
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
The varied reactions and interpretations of the recent demonstration by Muslims for Human Rights Forum has revealed our weakness as a nation.
It seems justice, freedom and human rights are merely skin-deep and may be whimsically sacrificed, not just by the government, but by all, including the media, civic activists and the public.
The government’s knee-jerk reaction was to characteristically deflect attention, blaming the violence on ‘‘extremist foreign elements and al-Shabaab militia’'.
It moved fast, indiscriminately rounding up hundreds of Muslims in various parts of the country, as ‘‘suspected al-Shabaab sympathisers’’ and foreigners.
These included many Kenyan Somalis with IDs, refugees with valid foreign registration documents, Somalis from the diaspora with Western passports, and even more than a dozen MPs from Somalia.
The media even went further to suggest that al-Qaeda elements were involved, with others lamenting that the police did not use adequate force to deal with the protesters.
The public too joined police in the anti-Muslim frenzy, stoning the protesters, and looting shops in Jamia Mall. Ironically, it is the Muslim protesters who were charged in court for the looting!
The demo was a peaceful protest by Kenyans exercising their constitutional rights of freedom of assembly and expression.
Police caged thousands of worshippers who had just finished Friday prayers, denying them exit and defiled the sanctity of the mosque by lobbing tear gas canisters, and firing live bullets.
I was among hundreds of men, women and children under siege from police in the mosque for eight hours. Regrettably, this action provoked many of the youth into immediate retaliatory violence.
Why was it necessary to attack Kenyans exercising their right to protest the incarceration and violation of the human rights of the sheikh?
In Western democracies, don’t millions demonstrate every year against violation of the rights of terror suspects held in Guantanamo? If gays and lesbians or Mungikis demonstrate tomorrow, will members of the public opposed to them be justified in pelting them with stones?
Why is a person convicted of hate speech and discharged after serving his term deemed to be an eternal criminal, with no rights, when a Nazi war criminal and genocide suspects are subjected to the due process of law? Isn’t it hypocrisy that the democratic values of tolerance and liberty are invoked only when it is expedient to do so?
The supposed ‘terrorist’ Sheikh al-Faisal, preached in six African countries before entering Kenya, but those who alerted Kenyan authorities did not see it fit to advise the other governments to reject him.
When the government decided it would deport the sheikh, which Muslim leaders supported, the US reportedly warned the Gambia not to allow the sheikh to transit through it. The US and UK are also reported to have refused to grant a transit visa so that the man could be deported to his country.
It does not help the government to conclude that these protesting youth were al-Shabaab “terrorists” and push them towards extremism.
Muslims feel they have been vilified as foreigners and ‘‘terrorist sympathisers’’ and collectively punished through arrests and intimidation for simply exercising their rights.
Mr Kerrow is a former member of Parliament.