Kenyan journos protest new law

2007-08-15 10:45

Nairobi - Hundreds of journalists wearing black gags over their mouths marched silently through Kenya's capital on Wednesday to protest a proposed law that would allow courts to compel reporters to reveal their sources.

Several radio stations also declined to run their morning news broadcasts, playing music or talk shows instead, to protest a bill that an international media rights watchdog had described as "disastrous" for democracy.

Mitch Odero, a journalist for 30 years in Kenya, said this was the media's first mass protest.

Odero, who once served as editor of The Standard, Kenya's oldest newspaper, said: "This has never happened in my lifetime."

He was among more than 300 journalists who set off from Uhuru Park, where protesters seeking multiparty democracy would gather in the early 1990s.

Kibaki told not to sign the bill

Protesters carried signs that said: "Protect Our Sources, Say No! to Media Bill."

Attorney-General Amos Wako said on Tuesday he would advise President Mwai Kibaki not to sign the bill and refer it back to the National Assembly "for reconsideration."

A statement signed by a committee of Kenyan journalists said: "As journalists who take it upon ourselves to fight for the rights of others, we simply cannot afford to sit down and do nothing while our own rights and a basic tenet of our profession is at stake."

] The bill proposed an independent media council to arbitrate complaints against the press, and its decisions would be legally binding.

But just before the National Assembly's final vote more than a week ago, a parliamentarians added a clause giving courts powers to force journalists to reveal their sources or unnamed individuals quoted in a story.

Kibaki has 14 days to sign the bill

The MP argued journalists often defamed prominent people by not naming them in controversial stories, but describing them enough to be identified. Four opposition MPs were challenging the proposed law in court.

Kibaki had 14 days to sign the bill into law after Wako presented it to him or return it to parliament with an explanation for not signing it.

Organisers planned to march to Wako's office to petition him, as the government's chief legal adviser, to advise Kibaki not to sign the proposed law.

The secretary-general of the Paris-based watchdog Reporters Without Borders, Robert Menard, warned the proposed law would have "disastrous consequences" for Kenyan democracy if passed.

Menard said forcing journalists to reveal sources would mean "a key component of the democratic checks and balances is destroyed".

Kenya, which was due to hold elections later this year, was ranked as one of the world's most corrupt countries in the Berlin-based Transparency International's annual corruption perceptions survey, but had one of Africa's best developed and liveliest media environments.

- AP