Kenyan election campaign hits journalists and media freedom

Ten years after appalling election violence was accompanied by serious media freedom violations in Kenya in 2007, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has been looking at the current election campaign's impact on press freedom.

Kenyans are due to elect a parliament and president on 8 August. This should be a routine step in a democratic nation's life but previous elections have given rise to both grave abuses against journalists and serious loss of life - hence the concern of RSF and the international community.

RSF has registered many violations of free speech and the right to inform in Kenya since President Uhuru Kenyatta's election in 2013 and they have been increasing in the run-up to next month's elections, in which Kenyatta is seeking another term.

At the same time, the authorities have developed an extensive information control system, applying new regulatory measures to both the traditional media and social networks. As a result, the scope for producing and disseminating news and information freely has declined considerably in recent months.

The media nonetheless have a key role to play in democratic and pluralist elections. And they must be free and independent, so that the public has adequate access to information about the political parties, their programmes and the way the polling is conducted.

Journalists targeted

Physical attacks on journalists by the security forces, intimidation and open threats against journalists by politicians, seizure of journalists' equipment and the suppression of media content are all typical features of election campaigns in Kenya.

And this year is no exception. Since the start of 2017, there have been at least five cases of violence against a total of eight journalists by public figures or their bodyguards after the journalists raised sensitive political issues.

Journalists sometimes pay dearly for covering election-related events, especially those organized by the opposition, or for negative portrayals of President Kenyatta's Jubilee party and its flaws.

Walter Menya, a reporter for the Nation Media Group's Nation newspaper, was arrested on 18 June. His arrest came after he wrote stories implicating senior officials in the use of a foundation to provide Kenyatta's reelection campaign with illegal funding.

National Media Group reporter Winnie Atieno was covering the opposition Orange Democratic Party's primaries on 22 April, when police grabbed her phone and deleted all the photos she had taken at a voting station.

Political corruption and misgovernance, especially by the governors of Kenya's 47 counties, also seem to be off-limits for reporters in the run-up to the elections.

Royal Media group reporter Emmanuel Namisi sustained a serious head injury when he was attacked and badly beaten by Bungoma County governor Ken Lusaka's bodyguards in a restaurant in Bungoma on 5 June, after he accused the governor of corruption in his radio reporting. They said he had damaged the governor's image and were angered by his report on Radio Citizen and Mulembe FM blaming them for a woman's death during a demonstration in Bungoma three days before.

It was Kakamega County governor Wyclife Oparanya's bodyguards who gave Standard newspaper journalist Dan Ocholla a severe beating on 7 May when he photographed workers injured by the collapse of a building under construction in Kakamega. His assailants tried to confiscate his phone and camera.

Three journalists working for the Mediamax group - Sarah Ndungu and Charles Mathai of People Daily and K24 TV cameraman Patrick Kimanthi - were badly injured by demonstrators while covering a visit by Nairobi governor Evans Kidero to Nairobi's Dandora district to resolve a land dispute.

All of these abuses have gone unpunished and, in most cases, no investigation was even opened although the journalists filed complaints. Impunity is a chronic problem, as RSF noted after regional newspaper editor John Kituy's murder in April 2016 while investigating the intimidation of witnesses in the International Criminal Court case against Kenyan Deputy President William Ruto.

"We call on the Kenyan authorities to end this persecution of journalists and we remind them that the provision of news and information is essential during an election campaign, RSF said. Unpunished attacks of this kind have just one aim - to deter journalists from tackling certain political issues out of fear of reprisals."