For a good overview:

“Kenya’s About-Face: Fear for Democracy as Dissent is Muzzled” by Jina Moore, New York Times, Feb. 4.

Today the police failed to honor an order to produce detained opposition activist/lawyer Miguna Miguna, who has been arrested by police and held in defiance of a previous order granting bail. No charges have been initiated against him by the Office of the Director of Public Prosecution.

The Court ordered the Inspector General of the Police to appear tomorrow morning with Miguna. Raila and other NASA leaders came to Court for Miguna this afternoon.

Miguna is a firebrand “character” on the local scene in recent years who was not in NASA, running for Governor as an independent against ODM/NASA incumbent Evans Kidero and the new Jubilee Governor Sonko, gaining little support as a candidate. Post election he has associated himself with an activist wing of political opposition calling itself the “National Resistance Movement” and pressured for, publicized and participated in Raila’s (peaceful) “people’s president” swearing in ceremony. It would seem that the regime saw him as someone they could visibly and conspicuously “shut up” who did not have a political constituency or independent mass following.

Personally, I have not considered Miguna’s role one that I thought seemed constructive over the years, but he does not deserve to die for that and I am worried for him.

What does it take for people to see that Kenyatta and Ruto just are not the men whom their Western friends and publicists would try to make us believe?

Looking at Kenya over the years it is so easy to become inured to State violence used not in the interest of the nation or the citizens but of political power and self interest of those controlling the ruling party.

537th they came for Miguna Miguna, and I said nothing because I was not Miguna Miguna?

UPDATE: Later Monday, KTN broadcasting was restored and while NTV remained off the public airwaves its signal was restored to cable and DSTV for those subscribers. Citizen and Kikuyu language sister station Inooro were still blocked from broadcasting. The partial restoration came just ahead on a contempt petition following the original order that broadcasts be restored secured by a public interest litigant. Citizen, unlike its rivals, went to Court itself to challenge the ban.

UPDATE:  Miguna, a Kenyan born citizen who fled to Canada as a refugee during the political persecution of the Moi days, was finally taken late at night to Jomo Kenyatta International Airport and bundled onto a plane for Amsterdam and on back to Toronto.  The police having run out of time finally after serial Court orders to produce him took him to the airport instead of the courtroom.  The authorities will have to file affidavits explaining their actions in preparation for contempt hearings.  Miguna asserts that he was physically mistreated aside from the extralegal aspects of his detention and his alleged deportation or expulsion.

Ken Opalo points out in The Standard that Interior Minister Matiangi shouldn’t have overreacted to Raila’s oath of office in first place, since “the people’s president” is not a real office and the ceremony was a political statement not a treasonable offense.  To this I would add that the State Department’s pronouncement from Washington helped fuel rather than diffuse the confrontation, in particular by decrying the ceremony as a “self-inauguration” without noting that the opposition had stepped back from a claim to an actual office (the stated goal of the opposition is take office through new elections later this year).