[Statement] 'Sad' Joho condemns repression after Kwale GSU attack

Mombasa Governor Hassan Joho speaks to one of the General Service Unit officers who stopped an ODM rally in Kinango town, Kwale county, on March 23, 2017. /COURTESY
Mombasa Governor Hassan Joho speaks to one of the General Service Unit officers who stopped an ODM rally in Kinango town, Kwale county, on March 23, 2017. /COURTESY

I am deeply saddened. General Service Unit officers have violently disrupted our ODM meeting in Kinango, Kwale. The noble people of Kwale were forced to flee like strangers while in their own home.

The Constitution of Kenya guarantees as a basic human right in Chapter 4, Article 37, that every Kenyan has the right, while peaceable and unarmed, to assemble, picket, demonstrate and present petitions.

This Jubilee administration has yet again shown that it does not and will not respect the law of the land.

That the sanctity of the document they swore to uphold and defend before millions of Kenyans is nothing but a piece of paper to them.

We demand that the Independent Police Oversight Authority, review the circumstances and chain of command surrounding this incident and prosecute the legal violations.

I would like to remind this regime, that freedom once won cannot be reversed, that repression is a tool of the unenlightened, tat history is littered with far worse examples of repression that have all fallen.

I also wish to reiterate to our friends, that I shall not cease to tell Kenyans the truth, that the truth shall always remain the truth.

It is the truth that Jubilee has engaged in a policy of deliberate economic sabotage against the people and economics of the Coast.

The movement of port-related services to Naivasha will destroy Mombasa. The reduction on community share of mineral proceeds will adversely affect Kwale and Taita Taveta counties.

The acquisition of a million acres for a failed irrigation scheme was a con on the people of Kilifi and Tana River. And the erosion of the powers of the National Land commission means our all our peoples from Lamu to Lunga Lunga will never get justice under Jubilee.

To the police, do not allow yourselves to be used in an illegal manner. It lowers the dignity you fight so hard to preserve.

I wish to promise Kenyans on behalf of the incoming ODM/NASA government 8/8/17, that we shall never use police in this manner but only to protect the lives of our citizens.

For the people of the former coast province of Kenya. I wish to invite you all to the Pwani Declaration to be held at the historic Tononoka grounds on March 26.

We shall peaceably declare our future and reinforce our political stand.

Unedited

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