Post by Onyango Oloo on Feb 8, 2018 12:15:05 GMT 3
Kenyan Lawyer and human rights activist Miguna Miguna has been in the news for everything that makes our country a terrifying place for all its citizens.
On February 6, 2018 after showing full contempt for Court Orders regarding Miguna’s case for five days the increasingly autocratic Uhuru regime forcefully expelled him from his country of birth.
Here are the words of Fred Matiang’i the Interior Cabinet Secretary.
“Miguna Miguna who is not a citizen of Kenya whose presence in Kenya is contrary to national interest be removed from Kenya to his country of origin Canada”
The government of Kenya called this illegal forceful expulsion an act of deportation to “a country of origin”. This would be laughable it wasn’t so sick and sad.
I know Uhuru is going crazy at State House and Matiang’i cannot believe the courage and steadfast character of Miguna but how do you deport somebody from his country of birth to another country.
I have never heard of anything like that in my long life.
We have seen all sorts of cleansing of populations and all sorts of injustices but in the scale of sheer madness where on earth do you place the concept of a person being cleansed from their own country.
Miguna was born in Kenya in 1963. Both his parents were Kenyan citizens when he was born. Under Article 16 of the Kenyan constitution a Kenyan by birth even if a dual citizen can never lose their citizenship.
Only foreigners who acquire Kenyan citizenship by registration may lose their citizenship and even then the constitution has very clear guidelines as to the conditions under which that may happen including being convicted for serious criminal offenses and sentenced to certain jail terms.
Uhuru knows the law, Matiang’i knows the law but in this case the laws be damned as the autocrats make their own laws and bumble from chaos to chaos.
Everybody who has not been under a rock somewhere knows exactly why Miguna was arrested on February 1, 2018. It had nothing to do with his citizenship.
As the government struggled to find something or anything to charge Miguna with they kept manufacturing one lie after the other and keeping Miguna detained incommunicado which is illegal under Kenyan laws.
As Court Orders piled up demanding Miguna’s release Uhuru and his posse run out of excuses and now Judge Luka Kimaru gave a final Court Order that Miguna be produced in his court at 11.a.m February 7, 2018.
The shit hit the fan. What to now. Then someone hit the jackpot. Let’s “deport” (expel) this guy to Canada and manufacture more lies and excuses and just muddle through hoping we get over this. Brilliant?
May be not because now Uhuru and his posse have a real nightmare in front of them. I will come to that shortly.
Now they have come up with a new claim that Miguna obtained a Kenyan passport unlawfully in 2009 because he did not declare that he was a Canadian citizen at that time. They forgot one thing. The passport does not bestow citizenship on any Kenyan born in the country.
If you have a problem with the passport of anybody you can deal with it but you cannot take away anybody’s citizenship because you have problems with their passport. This is manufactured nonsense.
Millions of Kenyans do not have Kenyan passports. Should they all be deported somewhere?
But first let’s look at the circumstances that has brought us to this sad set of events.
First the violent invasion of Miguna’s home yielded zero in terms of anything to charge Miguna with. Now Uhuru is stuck with Miguna whose house he has destroyed and also seized his property. So the lies and invention of charges department gets to work. Nothing doing because the judges are not buying their crap.
Second the prospect of releasing Miguna as ordered by courts looks like a complete defeat of Uhuru by the defiant Miguna. Despots can never even contemplate something like that happening. So look, look and cook something Uhuru demands from his little cranky puppets.
Last the idea of Miguna going back to his destroyed house and bringing the entire terrorist activities of Uhuru against him to light was just unthinkable.
The glaring impotence of the Uhuru despotic behaviour is they had Miguna in police cells at the court for aiding and abetting treason and the person who allegedly committed this act of treason, Raila Amolo Odinga is sitting freely in the same court.
If you want to be a dictator at least you need to know what you are doing or you just look like a foolish criminal. That is bad and that is what we have in Kenya today.
So there now we have the expulsion and it brings a ton of problems for Uhuru as follows.
1. Kidnapping and expelling a Kenyan citizen after destroying and seizing his property is an international criminal offense which Miguna can sue the Uhuru government for from wherever he is and the rest of Kenyans will be fighting it on the ground in Kenya. How does this help the dictatorship? It doesn’t.
2. There is an outstanding Court Order to release Miguna to the court and as we speak Miguna’s lawyers are still in court going on with the matter. Where that ends we don’t know yet but how does this help Uhuru.
3. The expulsion of Miguna opens a new set of frontiers on the battle to remove the dictators trying to destroy our country. In any battle when your enemies are in front you don’t give them a chance to open another frontier of battle behind you unless you are suicidal.
Now Uhuru has given us a new frontier.
The international frontier which Uhuru with his criminal activities against Kenyan patriots and democrats has opened will have very many streams.
The first is to involve the Canadian government starting with the Canada’s Minister for Immigration and Citizenship to condemn and seek redress for the criminal activities against a Kenyan with a dual citizenship of Canada.
Miguna’s home has been vandalized and his property seized. That has to be addressed upfront.
The Kenyan government has been trying to claim that Canada was complicit in the kidnapping and expulsion of Miguna. That is a lie that will be debunked publicly.
Canada can never ask another country to forcefully expel their own citizen with the help of Canada. That would make Canada part of the crime and it is manufactured nonsense by Uhuru.
The other frontier in Canada is to fight to get the Kenyan envoy expelled from this country. We have done that before when Kenyan human rights fighters forced Moi to recall then Kenyan ambassador to Canada Mr. Nyamweya.
We were demonstrating to protest human rights in Kenya and the Kenyan Embassy and Moi went nuts.
We are heading to that Embassy again within weeks and this time the issues are even more deadly because we are dealing with international crimes being committed by Uhuru.
These demos are going to spread across Europe and North America. Uhuru should ask Moi how deadly that is.
We are going to ask the Prime Minister of Canada Mr. Justin Trudeau to take a firm stand against the terrorism of Uhuru’s government against Kenyan citizens.
We will strive to extend that battle to other countries. Miguna was involved in that battle for decades and he knows the network very well.
4.The crimes against Miguna has to be taken to International Justice Sytems through the UN and other bodies including Amnesty International which is very active here in Toronto. We need to take the issue of kidnapping and expulsion to the UNHCR and deal with is there.
We also need to look into how to involve the International Criminal Court (ICC). Remember them. First the expulsion issue itself is a crime against humanity.
More deadly for Uhuru and his thugs is the fact that they have killed more than 300 people including children and toddlers. Little kids including babies were gassed with teargas as they slept in a kindergarten. This happened several times.
Those are vicious crimes against humanity specifically because the Kenyan government has not attempted to bring to justice any of the state agents who committed these crimes.
In fact Uhuru offered his sound praise for State security agents as heroes for their actions during and after the elections.
In other words murdering Kenyans and their kids was a job well done.
Let’s see what the ICC thinks about that and there is nobody better suited to take that battle to the ICC than Miguna Miguna. Very soon Uhuru will hoping he can deport Miguna back to Kenya.
My message to Uhuru is be very careful what you wish for because you might just get it.
Adongo Ogony is a human rights activist who lives and works in Toronto.
