Tuesday, June 15, 2010

HATE SPEECH CRACK DOWN

Police are holding Assistant Roads Minister Wilfred Machage and Mt Elgon MP Fred Kapondi over hate speech claims.

Police arrested Kapondi at his Continental House office in Nairobi Tuesday and he was taken to the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) headquarters for questioning.

Machage who is also the Kuria MP presented himself to the CID where he has recorded a statement.

The two MPs were accused of making inflammatory statements during the launch of the No secretariat in Nairobi on Wednesday last week.

No camp

The National Cohesion and Integration Commission (NCIC) on Monday said it had presented hate speech evidence against Cabinet Minister William Ruto and five MPs.

Ruto appeared Tuesday before the Cohesion team where he was grilled for one hour.

The Higher Education Minister who is leading the NO campaign is accused of making inflammatory statements that border on incitement on his eight face book accounts.

Ruto maintained that he is not responsible for contents posted on his alleged face-book accounts which contain hate language.

The Minister said he owns only one face-book account saying the rest were by imposters.

He further questioned the summons by the Cohesion team claiming that only people in the NO camp were being targeted.

He said the NO camp will not be intimidated by such moves and vowed to continue campaigning for the rejection of the proposed constitution.

Others named by NCIC include legislators Dr Julius Kones, Mohammed Sheikh Dor, Hoshua Kutuny and political activist Christine Nyangitha.

Chairman Dr Mzalendo Kibunja said that this team had received complaints from members of the public on what it termed "irresponsible utterances" by the leaders.

"We have closely worked with police and based on the significant proof that we have in our possession, we have issued Cessation Notices to the said persons, requested the security forces to charge them accordingly and closely monitor public remarks by the said persons particularly during the referendum period," he said.

Those found guilty of hate speech risk being fined Sh1 million or to serve a prison term not exceeding five years or both.

The Commission further asked President Mwai Kibaki and Prime Minister Raila Odinga to immediately suspend campaigns on the proposed Constitution until the start of the official campaign period on July 13.

No comments:

Post a Comment