Folks,

This is an act of corruption and impunity denying Citizens the right to assemble and is tantamount to acts of Human Rights Abuse. Secondly, these people had applied for permit to assemble, why were they rounded up and taken to custody as criminals? Why were they harshly rafled up and inhumanly mishandled? Why did they get charged? Why were they given free bond for release if they were criminals?

The Coalition Government has failed in its mandate to provide security and protect its citizen unfair treatment and are not able cooperate amicable with the Society demands to dialogue, so to avoid confrontations. As can be seen here, the Judicial Ministry not functioning and has also failed to respect and honor people/public dignity for peaceful assembly. The public are treated like bags of potatoes without due regard for the older women who were in the midst of the demonstrating group. They were all treated like thugs or criminals. This is quite an unfair treatment. I suggest the Kenyan court is equally not qualified to handle and tackle the judicial civil cases without being manipulative when using powers of the Justice Department or prosecute anyone for injustices. This is because this body does not respect principle of the bar and cannot be trusted. They are not competent and are all prejudiced and suspected to have been compromised in the handling of such kind of Civil matters. They have no business occupying public judicial offices and are earning public money dishonestly.

We demand that the Coalition Government take early opportunity to dismantle the Judicial body including Wako and replace them together with the Judges with unpoluted characters, who the Republic can generate trust to give a just and unbiased ruling in administering Law.

We hope International friends and sympathizers will also help in adding pressure to the Government to stop harrassing Civilians unfairly those who are excercising their democractic rights to demand justice and service delivery.

Thanks,

Judy Miriga
Diaspora Spokesperson
Executive Director
Confederation Council Foundation for Africa Inc.,
USA
http://socioeconomicforum50.blogspot.com

Check this out……..

Activists request to hold anti-Ongeri demo

Dear Kenyans and friends of Kenyans,

Following our release on free bond on Saturday (26th December, 2009) we appeared before Magistrate Grace Nzioka this morning to answer to amended charges of engaging in an unlawful assembly. However, as indicated in my previous update, before proceeding to plead to these charges, we applied to the court that the magistrate disqualify herself from hearing the case as in our view her manner of handling the case on Thursday had betrayed her lack of independence and in that event compromised our constitutional rights. In this regard it is our intention to make an application to the High Court. The magistrate disqualified herself and for about two hours we waited outside the Kibera Law Courts to be informed to whom the case had been referred and when it was scheduled to be heard.

We were eventually directed to Court No. 4 where the Magistrate insisted that a plea must be taken from each of us before we can move to the High Court for a ruling concerning the violation of our constitutional rights in the arrest, initial appearance before court, re-arrest and treatment while under police custody.

We all entered a plea of “Not Guilty” and the mention date was set for 3rd February, 2010 and the hearing date for 22nd February, 2010 in Court No. 1 before Mrs Kidullah.

The Magistrate set the cash bail for our release at K.Shs. 5000/= each. We appealed to the court for lowering of amount since we are all people of simple means and the amount was simply too high. Despite three lawyers standing to support us in our appeal, the magistrate remained adamant and indicated that if in a week’s time there will be people still in custody for failing to raise the amount, then the court would consider reviewing it. The matter of bail was further complicated by the fact that tracing the court cashier at that late hour of the day was tedious in itself.

It is amazing that we found a police lorry with armed policemen already waiting for us as though they had anticipated we would be returning to the cells at least for tonight if not for more days and nights. It is also amazing that similarly to last Thursday, when we first appeared in court, our matter was delayed all day long only to be dealt with in the evening. Further, the matters that the magistrate was not specific about were implicit directions to the prosecution on how they can keep us in continued custody.

In any event, we managed to post bail of Kshs. 110,000/- for the whole group, thanks to well wishers (friends of the people of Kenya). We will be returning to court on 3rd February, 2010.

We thank you for your continued support – especially everyone that attended court with us, contributed towards the bail or just put out a message of solidarity.

Regards,

George Nyongesa

Bunge la Mwananchi