OF WIKILEAKS, KENYA AND AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL AWARD

Wikileaks won in this year’s Amnesty International UK Media Awards‘ New Media category for their expose on Kenya’s extra judicial police killings. The report titled Kenya: The Cry of Blood – Extra Judicial Killings and Disappearances, was posted on Wikileaks’ front page for an entire week beginning November 1^st 2008.

Wikileaks defines itself as a “multi-jurisdictional organization to protect internal dissidents, whistle-blowers, journalists and bloggers who face legal or other threats related to publishing.” And the gravity of their mandate is best illustrated by their March 8, 2008 editorial, Murder in Nairobi: Wikileaks related lawyers assassinated. Reporting the fatal shootings of oscar Kamau King’ara, the Director of oscar Foundation and John Paul oulu its Programme Coordinator, the Wikileaks editors revealed that “part of their [Oscar Fundation's] work forms the basis of the “Cry of Blood” report Wikileaks released on November 1 last year and subsequent follow ups, including a UN indictment last month.”

In an interesting twist to this tale, as the Wikileaks team was receiving its award, an unnecessarily large delegation was in Geneva plotting the Kenyan government’s response to the UN indictment in a hearing scheduled for the next day. The delegation consisting five cabinet ministers and a horde of bureaucrats managing to arrive at a rare moment of consensus (outside the looting of public resources) for Kenya’s Government of National unity, proceeded to vindicate Wikileaks in their joint statement on Wednesday afternoon: “the PNU and ODM ministers agreed that some police officers had illegally killed suspects — though not as part of a government-sanctioned policy — and refrained from accusing Prof Alston of breaching the UN code. The delegation, led by Prof George Saitoti, however, rejected Prof Alston’s demand that Attorney-General Amos Wako resigns and that Commissioner of Police Maj Gen Hussein Ali be sacked, saying the recommendations were beyond Prof Alston’s mandate.”

Accepting the award, Wikileaks editor Julian Assage stated that “It is a reflection of the courage and strength of Kenyan civil society that this injustice was documented. Through the courageous work of organizations such as the Oscar foundation, the KNHCR, Mars Group Kenya and others we had the primary support we needed to expose these murders to the world. I know that they will not rest, and we will not rest, until justice is done.”