Buffeted by relentless Al Shabab terrorist attacks, Kenya has passed a controversial anti-terror law permitting the incarceration of terror suspects for up to one year instead of the previous 90 days limit. The law also increases sentences and gives the authorities more powers to tap phones, while journalists could be jailed for three years if their reports “undermine investigations or security operations relating to terrorism,” or if they publish images of “terror victims” without permission from the police. It will be recalled that President Goodluck Jonathan’s initial state of emergency declaration contained a few of such deplorable anti-freedom and anti-media provisions.
But what is even more controversial about the retrogressive Kenyan law is not the severity and unreasonableness of the law, but the government’s response to criticisms by the United States. The US, said Kenya, had worse provisions in its own anti-terror law, while Kenya had checks and balances. Kenyan opposition parties and the media do not believe the new anti-terror law is reasonable. They think it is execrable, dehumanising and targeted at creating a political hegemony and police state. Kenya is after all notorious for its police repression.
It is shocking that rather than address the concerns of democrats and human rights activists, Kenya boasts only of the fact that US anti-terror campaign record is worse. It is unfortunately true that the US is forfeiting its moral leadership of the world by its unscrupulous anti-terror war and unrestrained police repression of blacks; but it is sadder that Kenya cannot seem to appreciate that rather than compare itself with a bad case., it owes its people the responsibility of creating social and political systems that should be the envy of all. That it is a developing African country does not mean it should be a laggard in good laws, or compare itself only with worst cases. The quality of leadership in black Africa is appallingly poor; Kenya should not make it even poorer.
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