The Kenyan government’s response to the Garissa University College massacre on April 2, 2015, threatens to lead to further violence. On April 8, 2015, the Inspector General of Police froze the financial assets of 86 individuals and organizations. This included human rights groups – Haki Africa and Muslims for Human Rights (MUHURI) – both of which are well respected by international agencies such as Human Rights Watch for their work amongst marginalized Muslim communities. The government’s unlawful freezing of their accounts on suspicions of “terrorism” indicates a policy of suppressing critical voices in civil society and threatens to further polarize Muslims and Christians in the country.
Coastal Kenya and its predominantly Muslim residents have long protested economic and political marginalization in the region. When I first arrived in Mombasa in 2011, I was struck by the everyday forms of discrimination experienced by residents. Coastal Muslims and Christians complained about the lack of title deeds to lands, land grabbing by politicians, and the difficulty of obtaining identity cards, passports, and voter registration cards.
I experienced some of this discrimination first hand as I was travelling by bus, from Lamu in northern Kenya, to Mombasa. The bus was scheduled to depart at 9 am, but at 10:00 am, there was no bus in sight. Three hours passed, then six. Passengers were anxious. It was an eight-hour drive that often took ten hours, and passengers were nervous about making the journey in the dark. The road was considered unsafe, ever since the area had been the site of the ‘Shifta Wars’ decades ago, in which ethnic Somalis of northern Kenya fought to become a part of Somalia, and secede from Kenya. These old security concerns had been replaced by newer ones as the bus was delayed by police on a drug smuggling tip-off. At twilight, the bus creaked into the stop and we finally made our way.
Yet, the mood onboard was tense. The bus was making its way along the dirt road when suddenly, it came to a halt for a roadblock. Passengers groaned at this new delay. Two policemen boarded the bus, checking IDs. When it was my turn, I handed my student ID, driver’s license, and a copy of my passport. I fixed the scarf around my head, realizing that it looked like a hijab, and I like a Muslim woman. The policeman inspected my IDs and asked me to step out of the bus. The passengers were furious. Women began to yell, “Corruption! Corruption!” They believed the policemen wanted a bribe. The women on the bus insisted, “She will not step out alone into the dark. We will all go. She is a student, look at her ID. This is corruption.” The voices of these women brought the men on the bus into action. They argued with the police that I had valid identification, and to order me off the bus, at this late hour, amidst the arid scrub, suggested not the rule of law, but the threat of violence. The admonished policemen left the bus. As we continued our way to Mombasa, a young man said angrily, “And then they wonder why Muslim youth join Al-Shabaab?! This is discrimination against Muslims. Harassment.” This vignette pales in comparison to the trials that coastal Kenyans and civil society are currently experiencing.
It is these everyday forms of discrimination that groups such as MUHURI have been working against, critiquing government policies around land tenure, security, and extrajudicial killings on the coast. Yet, only seventeen days before the freezing of its accounts, MUHURI’s offices were ransacked. Computers, cash, and documents that incriminate politicians in suspicious land transfers had been stolen. They filed a report with the police, but to no avail. MUHURI members believe that this was an illegal government investigation, intended to intimidate them for being critical of repressive and illegal state policies. Khelef Khalifa, Chairperson of MUHURI, believes that this is a witch-hunt. He said, “This government is clearly anti-Muslim. We have all become scapegoats.” New lines are being marked in the sand, terrorism being conflated with Muslims, and a rift forming between “Us” and “Them.” The implications of these actions are troubling for all of Kenyan civil society.
As these events unfold, a larger government rationale is becoming visible: the silencing of dissent in the name of combating terror. The Kenyan government is suppressing non-violent voices that use peaceful, lawful means to critique the government. Even as police cars stand threateningly outside MUHURI offices, its members are taking to the courts. Khalifa reminded me that the government is bound by law to inform NGOs at least 24 hours before their accounts are frozen and immediately filed a case in court. On June 11, 2015, the courts placed an injunction that restrained the Inspector-General’s classification of the NGOs as suspected terrorist organizations, until the main petition is heard by the courts. Thus, MUHURI continues to take legal action, holding the government responsible to its laws, even as the state employs problematic “clash of civilizations” logics to rule. Kenya needs these peacefully dissenting voices, now more than ever.
Nidhi Mahajan is a PhD Candidate in Cultural Anthropology at Cornell University. She has conducted over two years of ethnographic and archival research in East Africa and India on maritime commerce, security, and illegality in the Indian Ocean. After finishing her PhD in August 2015, she will continue working on these topics. In her free time, Nidhi loves writing, traveling, reading, dancing, and cooking.
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