Barely four months after passing Kenya's new Constitution, Kenya has entered a very dark hour. The peoples' freedom of assembly has been violated by the police presumably on the orders of the President Mwai Kibaki and Prime Minister Raila Odinga. Hon Eugene Wamalwa, Maina Njenga, Tony Gachoka and others were brutally beaten, teargassed as they attempted to enter the historic Kamukunji grounds for a rally that had been licenced in writing by the Government of Kenya through the Nairobi Police.

As Kenya commemorates Madaraka Day, the Partnership for Change calls for the full implementation of the National Accord, and pledges to play its role in making the Accord a reality.

cc Vision 2030 may be a good blueprint for Kenya’s development, but the government must remember that people are more important than plans, Mars Group writes. As politicians shilly-shally in parliament without implementing promised reforms – from civil liberties to the resettlement of IDPs – desperation is setting in among Kenyans too hungry to wait until 2030 for food and jobs.

Mr President, two human rights defenders, Oscar Kamau King’ara and John Paul Oulu, were murdered in the streets of Nairobi, Kenya, two weeks ago. I was deeply saddened to learn of these murders and join the call of US Ambassador Michael E. Ranneberger for an immediate, comprehensive and transparent investigation of this crime. At the same time, we cannot view these murders simply in isolation; these murders are part of a continuing pattern of extrajudicial killings with impunity in Kenya. The slain activists were outspoken on the participation of Kenya’s police in such killings and the continuing problem of corruption throughout Kenya’s security sector. If these and other underlying rule-of-law problems are not addressed, there is a very real potential for political instability and armed conflict to return to Kenya.

cc Statistics on disappearances, petty corruption and killings all point to a Kenyan police force in need of reform, the

We demand the unconditional release of our patriotic colleagues in the civil society who were brutally manhandled and arrested this morning as they exercised their constitutional rights to demand the resignation of Amos Kimunya as Finance Minister.

Their right to freedom of peaceable assembly was brutally violated by members of the Kenya Police. We demand their unconditional release for they have committed no crime. The Police officers who directed the assault on Ann Njogu and her colleagues must be subjected to appropriate discipline by the Commissioner of Police.

Kenya is not a Police State and Kenyans will not surrender their constitutional freedoms or their right to complain against wrongdoing, or to speak against grand corruption and impunity.

The arrested members of the civil society must be released. In any event the man they were protesting against, former Finance Minister Amos Kimunya has resigned his office and stepped aside to facilitate investigations into the subject matter of the protest of civil society.

In the spirit of a transparent enquiry into the role played by numerous public officers and institutions in the grand corruption saga that is the Grand Regency Hotel ‘handover’ and sale, it is morally and legally right that no one should be punished for speaking out for the Kenyan people in their time of need.

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