Bill on media seeks to cripple journalism, limit free speech

Kenya: Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it first as a farce then as a tragedy.

Nowhere is this adage truer today than in the National Assembly, where the Cabinet Secretary for Information, Communication and Technology, Dr Fred Matiangi, brought flawed Bills that sought to rob the citizenry of their democratic rights under the guise of controlling the media.

In the usual Kenyan politicians’ style of saying what they do not mean and using many words to hide what they do mean, some members of the House Committee on Energy, Information and Communications, including chairman Jamleck Kamau, not only agreed with the critics of the new media laws but went as far as terming them unconstitutional.

This raised the hopes of many Kenyans, and their democratic friends around the world, that the contentious clauses would be deleted when the two Bills were brought to the floor of the House for debate. Sadly, that was not to be. The Bills the MPs brought to the House were more draconian and injurious to freedom of speech and information than this country has ever witnessed since independence. Their import can only be likened to those practised in apartheid South Africa.

Denying the Cabinet Secretary the power to nominate members of the Media Council and vesting it in themselves was only the beginning as the MPs introduced provisions in the Bills meant to cripple media houses financially and to intimidate media professionals by levying hefty fines and threatening them with de-registration. One may be forgiven for imagining that was bad enough.

But, it turns out it was not, for the emboldened members of the August  House are reported to be plotting to bring a fresh set of amendments to the Media Council Bills, 2013, that, if approved would turn Kenya into a Police State. This calls for Kenyans from all walks of life to be afraid, very, very afraid because this is the beginning of the end for the country as we know it.

In the fresh attack on free speech, the MPs are scheduled to debate new amendments that give them powers not only to determine the members of the Media Council of Kenya but also to ban local and international media houses that do not toe the line from doing business in Kenya.

The MPs also propose the government controlled council should have powers to ban any publication that contains any article, caricature, photograph, report, notes, writing, sound, music or statement that is in any manner prejudicial to or likely to be prejudicial to public order, morality and security, or that is likely to alarm public opinion or that is likely to be prejudicial to public interest or national interest.

They also propose a two-year maximum jail term or a Sh10 million maximum fine for anyone who distributes, prints or even imports newspapers that are not licensed by the council.

The sum total of the MPs’ actions is heralding a cloud of darkness and fear that was last experienced in Nazi Germany in the run-up to and during the Second World War. Of course, the Soviet Union had already lived under similar totalitarian conditions after the fall of the Tsarist Russia following the end of the First World War and the rise of Communism.

The time has come for all those who love freedom and democracy—with all its warts—to stand up and be counted. Today. Tomorrow may be too late.