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"We
will not be silenced"
by John Kamau, Rights Features Service
(August 31, 2000) "We
will not be silenced."
That was the message
sent today to the Kenyan government as slain U.S.-born Kenya-based
human rights activist Father John Kaiser was laid to rest in a
rural village in southwestern Kenya.
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Father
John Kaiser won the Law Society of Kenya Human Rights Award.
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The Catholic Church
vowed it will not be silenced in denouncing social injustice and
vowed to continue the work of Fr. Kaiser.
The church also revealed
that there had been two more "mysterious murders" of Catholic
priests in Kenya during the last four years, all in a bid to silence
the church from advocating for justice and fighting for the poor.
The church said that
the priests include Franciscan Brother Larry Timons and Father
Luigi Andeni of the Consolata Mission.
Led by Pope John Paul
II's representative in Kenya, Archbishop Giovanni Tonucci, the
church said: "If this murder is a message given to the church
let it be said the church, at any cost, will not remain silent
in front of violations of the law of God and of the most sacred
human rights."
Government critic
murdered
Fr. Kaiser was murdered
on the night of August 23 in what observers say is related to
his fierce defense of the poor and criticism of President Daniel
arap Moi's government.
At an emotional requiem
mass held on Wednesday, August 30 at Nairobi's Holy Family Basilica,
speaker after speaker condemned the killing of Fr. Kaiser as students
from the University of Nairobi took to the streets chanting slogans
denouncing President Moi's government as a "Government of Assassins."
They asked the police
to question a senior cabinet minister, Julius Sunkuli, who had
publicly been at loggerheads with Fr. Kaiser after the priest
helped a teenage girl to file a rape case against the minister.
During the requiem
mass the papal representative said; "Those who killed him wanted
to silence the voice of the Gospel."
He said of Fr. Kaiser's
murder, "If somebody thought that through this physical elimination,
the embarrassing questions raised by his presence could be silenced
once and for all, his calculation was completely wrong."
Bishop John Njue, Chairman
of the Episcopal Conference, which brings together all Catholic
bishops in Kenya, dismissed the government's promise that it will
investigate the murder accusing it of "fooling the public."
"The fire lit by Fr.
Kaiser will not be put out, because those who kill the body cannot
kill the soul," Njue said.
Helped victims of
tribal clashes
Fr. Kaiser has been
at the forefront helping victims of politically instigated tribal
clashes between 1991 and 1994 who were evicted from their farms
in the Rift Valley province. Despite a government promise that
they would get their farms back, the mainly Kikuyu and Kisii tribesmen
have yet to be settled back and hundreds of them live in church
yards and by the roadsides as squatters.
Their farms are said
to have been given to top Government officials and Moi's Kalenjin
tribesmen, an issue Fr. Kaiser strongly opposed. Fr. Kaiser was
one of the people who gave evidence at the commission of inquiry
into the tribal clashes. The findings have never been made public
a year after they were handed over to President Moi.
Sources say that Fr.
Kaiser was in the process of helping the displaced file a civil
suit that would have opened the Pandora's box on the saga.
Meanwhile, U.S. Federal
Bureau of Investigation officials are in Nairobi investigating
the death of the Catholic priest.
Opposition politicians
in Kenya likened the murder of Fr. Kaiser to previous political
assassinations in Nairobi. "I have never heard of a ruling party
hawk dying under mysterious circumstances. It is only those who
criticize the government," said Dr Shem Ochuodho, a fierce critic
of President Moi.
Moi has dismissed the
murder as ordinary, charging that "murder is murder."
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