Re: What is it that I've exaggerated or embleshied about my (14 day detention)?

It is laughable how some people are blaming us for not recognizing Miguna’s so called “heroism”. We cannot include you in the book by force. In fact none of us had ever heard of Miguna before. This debate was triggered not by an investigation of Miguna, but by an isolated e-mail we came privy to claiming Miguna was a “political detainee who was only released after intervention of Amnesty International and UNHCR.” That is a “big statement”. We had to investigate. Had we missed something?

UNHCR as we all know is short for United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. So how can an office focused on refugees be fighting for release of political prisoners? Then we started doing our checks. Amnesty may issue a statement regarding arrest of people, but they normally do not adopt people as prisoners of conscience before they become political prisoners.

------------

“if the prisoner has been sent to prison under a law that Amnesty International considers to be in violation of international human rights standards, it may consider the person for adoption as a prisoner of conscience. In such cases, Amnesty International must be able to determine that the person has been imprisoned by reason of his or her political, religious or other conscientiously-held beliefs, provided that he or she has not used or advocated violence.”

------------------

Mr. Miguna, you are asking how you exaggerated. The answer is simple. You never went to prison. For your information, Nyayo House was never a prison. If you were just picked up for questioning and caned for 14 days, you are free to call yourself a “questionee” if you were caned, a “caneee”, but not a “detainee” in Kenyan political parlance.

When JM authored a book Mau Mau Detainee we know what he meant. When Ngugi wrote Detained, no Kenyan was asking “was Ngugi talking about the time he was picked for questioning by police in Limuru?” When either Raila, Shikuku, Oneko, Wanyiri Kihoro, Wamwere or Gacheche Wa Miano is talking about detention, we know what they mean. To add your name in this list of Kenyans while you were just in police cells is fraudulent.

Nobody is doubting that you were indeed arrested, so there is no point referring us to people to verify this since it is in the public domain. The problem is in the interpretation of your arrest. If you were picked up by police and locked up and caned for 14 days then released, just say “I was picked up by police and locked up and caned for two weeks then released.”

You were in a group. There was nothing specific you did other than being elected into the student representative council, which had and still has specific mission of serving student welfare on campus. Thus being in that student representative council in or by itself does not make you a political activist. If you had any political history prior to your arrest, please let us know. That is what we are interested in.

Otherwise from testimonies of your peers, you were not even in the periphery of student radical action. The epicenter of student revolutionary activity is the one which churned out the propaganda that led to the avalanche that defeated the pro-Moi student clique. You were not part of that inner circle. From your utterances (after checking your website and other writings), it seems you were not even aware of it.

In fact if you were, then you would be more humble in reference to the events of November 1987. Since you were not part of the radical circles or Mwakenya study cells, or the leafleteering distribution collectives, pinning up, typing, photocopying, composing, funding, of pambana or mzalendo or mpatanishi or instigator of any branch-out underground paper or activity, therefore, we are forced to ask, what was it that constituted your political action against the Moi regime?

To be found with any of these leaflets would earn you 10 years in jail straight away on sedition charges. Were you part of any of these people who risked everything everyday waking up at 4am to ensure they cover the entire campus, and the estates and city center with educational (read seditious) literature that would mean the end of life for any ordinary student—or on the contrary you were just an ordinary student churning out “safe” poems at Campus Mirror, thinking that was the cutting-edge of student radical action against the dictatorship?

Were you a member of any underground political movement or political party? If yes, which one? This, if found would earn you detention if you were lucky. Other than that it was torture unto death. Do not think that people were leaving the country because they feared prison. People were running away from real threat to their very continued survival on this earth.

My friend, the events of November 1987 did not just happen. The government was preempting a major rise of a nascent political movement. It was being challenged in a way that it had never been challenged before, hence the brutality and gun-trotting etc.. .

So when you write about these events from a micro personal level and fail to cast this in any meaningful political context, it shows very clearly you were not aware of what you were involved in. Twenty years later, you are still trying to make meaning of it.

You were just a student leader like a prefect—that’s it. The state swooped on every one and of course they had to give you a slap or two and in their own words, “Miguna and the others had no idea what they had gotten themselves into”.

So to turn around and suggest that you were arrested because of your opinions is to invent history. You are not even revising history, since you had no history prior to this event that is worth revising.

After that you left Kenya and proceeded with your studies. So are these two weeks at nyayo house that you want us to judge you with? People are not judged as heroes because of their arrest or detention. On the contrary people are judged as heroes for their ACTIONS which may or may not lead them to prison or detention or even death.

In Kenya, it is generally accepted that when you say that you were a political prisoner or detainee, people stop to listen. They do not stop to listen because you were in prison or you were tortured (even petty criminals are routinely imprisoned and tortured). Kenyans stop to listen because you must have been involved in something that warranted the police to be interested in you to either jail you for sedition, or on trumped up charges on a sham trial or by an order signed by the minister for Home Affairs to imprison you for an indefinite period of time at the pleasure of the president.

When Kenyans stop to listen, their main focus is the struggle leading to this-the struggle to change things, to change their lives. The prison is the testimony of that struggle. So when Miguna only presents us with his two weeks stint at Nyayo house, but nothing substantial leading to the event, then we are forced to say that he is trying to create the reasons for his arrest after the event. It is called embellishment:

1. To make beautiful, as by ornamentation; decorate.
2. To add ornamental or fictitious details to: a fanciful account that embellishes the true story.
3. Cause to seem more splendid; "You are glorifying a rather mediocre building" "beautify yourself for the special day", decorate or cover lavishly with gems. To represent as greater than is actually the case; overstate: exaggerate the size of your involvement; exaggerated his own role in the episode exaggerate, inflate, magnify, overstate

These verbs mean to represent something as being larger or greater than it actually is: inflated his own importance; magnifying his part in the success; give false or misleading information to place special or excessive emphasis on.

Mr. Miguna, if you are falsely charged with murder and held for questioning then cleared and released you cannot start going around saying you are a murderer, no matter what mistreatment you suffered during the time that you were clearing your name.

Torture is routine in Kenya even today.I am sorry I have no time to read 20 pages of your “River Nyando Mumble” poems, but from what I have glanced about your so-called torture, Mr. Miguna, stop playing with people’s minds. I have a lot of information which you do not want me to go into.

When you go around saying you were detained are you not embellishing?

I urge you Mr. Miguna to stop provoking me. I asked you a question you have answered. You were picked up and probably slapped or caned for two weeks. I am very sorry about that. But that does not qualify you as a political prisoner or detainee. That is all. So many Kenyans get picked kicked, whipped, roughed up, or falsely charged. But when we talk about detention we are referring to the Preservation of Public Security Act which allowed for inter alia, indefinite detention without trial, and sections of the Penal Code dealing with sedition and treason.

The IPPG, in September, adopted, on a full-package basis, wide-ranging administrative and constitutional reforms proposed by the IPPG whose secretary was ex-political detainee, the late Hon. GeorgeAnyona.

Among the recommendations was the amendment of the contentious Preservation of the Public Security Act, which provides for detention without trial.

It recommended that:
(a) Section 4(2)(a) on detention without trial be repealed.
(b) the proviso "provided that no person shall be restricted on account of his/her political beliefs and /or activities'' be inserted immediately after section 4 (2)(b).

Former Nyeri MP Wanyiri Kihoro says the Statute Law (Miscellaneous amendment Act of 1997) still does not stop the President from detaining people. "The law itself has not been abolished. The President can use Cap 57 to declare a state of emergency and detain his critics." The lawyer, who is a former detainee, says the government "uses crude methods of oppressing Kenyans. The police and provincial administration harass (critics) with impunity." Daily NationSpecial_Report, Sunday, April 30, 2000 “How detention was used to break people” By Stephen Mburu.

Thus the Preservation of Public Security Act continued to be used to arrest and imprison government critics throughout the ‘90s. In July 1996, 21 members of the Release Political Prisoners (RPP) pressure group were detained for two weeks following an attempt to hold a three-day cultural event in memory of Karimi Nduthu, Secretary General of the RPP, who was murdered in suspicious circumstances in March 1996. All 21 were charged with holding an illegal meeting without a license, incitement to violence and disobeying a lawful order. They were released on bail.

In May 1995 Njehu Gatabaki, journalist, publisher and member of parliament, was charged with sedition. In May 1996 he was arrested and held for nine days after he failed, because of ill-health, to attend a court hearing.

It is these people’s democratic and constitutional right to state what happened to them—exactly what happened to them. I have never heard the RPP group, or even Njehu Gatabaki calling themselves political detainees, for they, like every one else in Kenya, know exactly what that means.

Sincerely,

Manganga, J.
Team Leader
Kenyan Heroes Documentation Project
Nairobi