KCA condemns threats and detention of journalist

By Vision Reporter

KENYA Correspondents Association (KCA) has strongly condemned the persistent threats and the recent arbitrary arrest and confinement of a journalist with the Star Newspaper, Justus Ochieng, who is based in Kisumu City in Western Kenya. 

KCA Chairman William Oloo Janak in a statement issued today said the threats and the recent arrest of the journalist represented a grave threat to press freedom and the safety of security of all the journalists in Kisumu and by extension the entire country.

“We find it unacceptable and an act of impunity for the same police officers who have been accused of alleged involvement in robberies to threaten and intimidate the journalist and subsequently plot his arrest and confinement in the cells over trumped up charges,” said Janak

He said KCA and Kenyan journalists will not sit and watch as security officers, who are supposed to protect the lives of journalists and other citizens, threaten and intimidate members of the media in an attempt to silence them to stop them from exposing the ills the security officers commit against citizens.   

“We demand that immediate action be taken against the police officers involved in this case,  which should include urgent investigations into their activities, which they are seeking to cover up, and their arrest and prosecution for their threat and illegal confinement of the journalist,” Janak added.

He called on the leadership of the Kisumu County Police and the National Police Service Commission to declare if they condoned the incident and other cases of increasing threats to journalists in the region and across the country saying the journalists’ fraternity was keenly watching this trend with a view to collectively defining how to relate with the security organs. 

“The police and other security agencies are doing public duty and need the media in their work. They have an obligation to respect media freedom and follow the law, including in lodging any complaints against any perceived misreporting but we wish to assure them that journalists will not relent in their work of exposing any activities on their part which may injure public interest,” said Janak 

The Kisumu based journalists has faced increasing threats since September, for writing a series of stories, which have exposed a clique of rogue police officers who have been accused of involvement in robberies of members of the public who withdraw money from local banks. 

In one such story, on October 1, 2014, he wrote a story in which one of the officers reportedly refunded some of the stolen money, which belonged to another police officer who had also fallen victim of the clique.  His paper, The Star, also ran an editorial on October 2, calling for the arrest of the rogue police officers. 

 On the same day, the journalist , who was with a friend at a restaurant was accosted by some of the officers attached to the Kisumu Central Police Station, who warned him of unspecified consequences for “exposing their colleagues” in his stories. 

Ochieng’ reported the matter to the local police station but nothing was immediately done over his complaints. Instead, on October 29, 2014 at around 5pm in the evening, he was arrested and locked up at the police station as he and two colleagues sought to find out the progress of the case of threats against him. 

“To my utter dismay, one of the officers who I had earlier identified for threatening me, together with another CID officer and another officer called Juma took me to an office at the first floor of the station, where they beat me up and removed everything that was in my pocket including; money, wallet, handkerchief, press cards, National ID as one of the officers (who was among those who had threatened me) shouted that I may be having a gun.” Said the journalist in a reported to KCA copied to other local and international journalists’ advocacy organizations. 

He was given back the items following the intervention of the local Criminal Investigations Officer, Mr. Moses Ndindi.

The officers however locked him up in the cells saying he was under arrest for an earlier story which they claimed had defamed the suspended Independent Elections and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) CEO James Oswago and that the Director of Public Prosecutions had given them the green light to prosecute him.

The journalist was detained in the police cells for eight hours, till 1 am on Thursday October 30, when he was released on bond. The police had earlier on ignored interventions and please by fellow journalists, KCA and other organizations that the journalist be immediately released. 

“We consider the attempt to use the story of alleged defamation of the suspended IEBC official as diversionary and an attempt to find a reason to fix the journalist for exposing the illegal activities of the rogue police officers and we shall not relent in demanding their prosecution,” said the KCA Chairman.

Over the recent past, there have been a series of threats to journalists from both security officers and politicians. In one incident in Eastern Kenya, mid this year, a journalist, Lydia Ngoolo, also with the Star Newspaper, had to go into hiding for three months after the police in Mwingi Township threatened her over a story which called for investigations into an abandoned house which was housing suspicious travellers on transit from Northern Kenya and Somalia. 

This was at a time when Kenya faced daily threats of grenade attacks from elements linked to the Al-Shabaab in Somalia who on September 21, 2013 bomber the Westgate Shopping Mall in Nairobi.