Outcry over arrest of priest in Kenya.

This is a first contribution from our news reporter in Kenya.--Editor

The arrest of a Catholic priest after he opposed corruption in allocation of public land has caused an outcry in Kenya. Father Gabriel Doran of Kitale Catholic Diocese was arrested November 6 as he attempted to present an official complaint to the country's Vice President, Moody Awori.

The case has caused public anger because of the manner in which the priest was arrested. He was shoved, pushed and kicked by policemen when he was being bundled into the police van. Footage of the incident was played widely on national television. Police said that they arrested him for obstructing the road where the Vice-President was passing. But the priest maintained that he and the group of protesters he was leading were peaceful.

Father Doran had claimed that over two hundred acres of land belonging to Kitale prison had been hived off illegally and allocated to powerful people in the government. He wanted to present a memorandum containing these allegations to the Vice-President, under whose docket the prison department falls. Although the Commissioner of Prisons, Abraham Kamakil, has always maintained that the land has not been hived off, the Vice-President promised to have the matter investigated. Following his intervention, the priest was released on bond the same day.

The Catholic Church has voiced its concern at the arrest of the priest. The head of the Church in Kenya, Archbishop Ndingi Mwana A' Nzeki, says that the police were wrong in manhandling the priest during arrest. "Even if he disobeyed their order, they should not have beaten him," Ndingi says. It was not wrong for the priest to seek to give the memorandum to the Vice-President though it might have been better if he gave it to his bishop to present it to the country's second in command.

Other churches have also criticized the treatment of the priest. Reverend Peter Njoka of the Anglican Church has condemned the arrest. He says that it was wrong for the government to order the arrest of the priest since he was fighting for justice. "When a senior police officer twice the size of the priest pulls him like a criminal, that is not maintaining law and order. The police should not arrest a priest for seeking to present a memorandum. He has been in Kitale long enough to know that the prison land has been grabbed," Njoka says.

The incident comes at a time when there is a public outcry over police brutality. The police have been accused of being heavy-handed while arresting suspected criminals. Sometimes they have been accused of shooting innocent people. Only two days before Father Doran's arrest, Police Commissioner Edwin Nyaseda had made a public announcement that the police force was going through a radical transformation that involved, among other things, training in humane and civilized ways of handling suspects and the public at large.

It is not the first time that Catholic clergy have been at loggerheads with the government about the country's land allocation system. The late Father John Anthony Kaiser, an American priest who had served in the country for 36 years, fought hard for the rights of the people who were being dispossessed of their land by politically influential people. Kaiser earned enemies among the country's political elite and at one time was saved from deportation by the intervention of the American embassy. He was found dead with a gunshot wound to his head in August 2000, shortly after receiving death threats because of his crusade.

The FBI and Kenyan police concluded after their investigations that Kaiser had committed suicide. However, the Catholic Church maintains that he was murdered. Following a sustained campaign by the Church to find the truth about his death, the government set up an inquest early in 2003. The inquest, which is still in progress, has revealed hitherto unknown details about the death. A witness has even confessed that a powerful cabinet minister offered him money to kill the priest.

Because of this background, Father Doran's arrest has put the government in the spotlight. The way it treats the priest will send a signal on whether it will open a new leaf in its relationship with the Church, or whether it will continue muzzling the voice of clergy who are vocal in fighting for justice. "We will be watching closely to see how the government deals with these kinds of issues. Our hope is that the new regime will be tolerant of divergent views and give more space to public criticism especially from the Church," says Father Kamau Kinyanjui, a Catholic priest in Nairobi.

David Karanja is a Kenyan freelance journalist.