Miguna Miguna’s exact location and
movement remain the preserve of
state security and the subject of much
speculation.
From his last social
media post, the self-styled NRM
general was last located in a hospital
at Dubai Airport, where he had been
repatriated by Kenya’s Immigration
and security agents after being
drugged and forced onto an Emirates
Airlines flight.
Miguna says he has neither the
passport of his acquired Canadian
nationality nor his native Kenyan one.
His saga bears the hallmarks of the
tribulations of another controversial
Kenyan Sheikh Khalid Balala
who 20 years ago was rusticated in
a foreign land after his passport was
revoked by the Kenya government.
Like Miguna, Sheikh Balala was a
thorn in the state’s flesh. He led the
proscribed Islamic Party of Kenya,
which had become a nightmare
for Kanu soon after the return to
multiparty politics.
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Shortly after this Easter, Mombasa
High Court judge Eric Ogola will rule
in a long-running compensation
suit launched by the former radical
preacher and political activist 21
years ago.
Now living a less-eventful life in a
Mombasa flat, Balala turned 60 years
on March 22.
In an interview with
the Star, he said he has prosecuted
a strong case and believes he will
prevail against what he calls the
“colonial state that still rules Kenya”,
after half a century of independence.
Although the two cases bear some
similarities, Miguna’s woes pale in
comparison to what Balala faced
in the 1990s.
Both are victims of
ulterior political machinations; both
are citizens whose conduct the state
frowned upon; both tried to return to
the country and were forced back out
four times in Balala’s case.
Frustrated by his persistent
activism through the now-defunct
Islamic Party of Kenya, IPK, which he
co-founded, the Moi state suddenly
snatched Balala’s passport, cancelled
it and declared he was not Kenyan.
Angered by his confrontational
politics, the Uhuru administration
confiscated Miguna’s passport,
defaced it, declared him an alien and
deported him.
Twenty years after he was allowed
back into the country, Balala is still
waiting for justice. He believes the
conclusion of his suit which has
been heard by five different judges
has been delayed by political pressure
on the Judiciary after he allegedly
rejected two bids during the Moi and
Kibaki administrations to settle out
of court, or part with a 10 per cent of
the anticipated compensation.
STATELESS
Balala had left Kenya to visit
Germany, but his situation changed
dramatically while abroad.
Balala
had launched the IPK, a feisty
youthful political outfit that was
denied registration.
He became the
go-to person for anyone organising political activity in Mombasa. He
angered the Moi regime when he
entered into cooperation with the
opposition Ford Kenya.
Between November 1991 and
February 25, 1993, he was tried
for treason and acquitted for lack
of evidence.
He resumed public
politics unbowed following what he
described as a sham trial.
“The clear plan was to detain me
until after the 1992 general elections.
There was no evidence of treason and
it was a malicious prosecution,” he
tells the Star.
After the acquittal, he was warned
not to attend a by-election in South
Nyanza occasioned by the defection
of an opposition MP to the ruling
Kanu party. But he attended several
opposition rallies in Western Kenya
where he stepped up attacks on the
Moi regime.
Kanu’s chance to exact revenge
came in early 1994 when Balala
travelled to Germany to attend a
conference and raise money for his
human rights causes Before his departure, he was
alarmed when he went to renew
his passport.
His new passport was
marked for expiry after only three
months.
“When I asked why my new
passport would expire after three
months I was told that it was the
policy for politicians of my nature,”
he says.
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During his tour in Germany, he
travelled to London where, out of
the blue, he encountered a man who
identified himself as Mudavadi from
the Kenyan High Commission in
Bonn.
“After three weeks in London
someone accosted me at Heathrow
Airport, claiming to be from the
Kenyan Embassy in Bonn.
He
identified himself only as Mudavadi
and he told me straight away my
passport was to expire in two weeks.”
Balala immediately suspected the
stranger was a Kenyan spy trailing
him.
Mudavadi invited Balala to Bonn to
renew his passport. He acceded and
travelled to the embassy but soon
realised he had walked into a trap.
Balala believes British intelligence
alerted Kenyan authorities about his
presence in London out of mutual
interest.
“When I gave him (Mudavadi) the
passport he was extremely happy.
He actually kissed it and vanished
into the embassy. I waited for three
days and he reappeared to tell me
he had information from Nairobi
that my passport would not be
renewed.”
Balala was now stateless, without
any documents to travel or seek
asylum in Germany. For five days
he was stranded in the transit zone
at Frankfurt International Airport
because “no airline was willing to
take me and the British government did not want me back in London,”
Balala recalls.
He was taken in by friends and a
church. He also received monetary
assistance from sympathetic Kenyan
opposition leaders, especially Raila
Odinga, who paid for his upkeep and
legal fees in Germany.
On December 12, 1994, Moi
publicly declared that Sheikh Balala
was not Kenyan and should return to
Yemen, where he allegedly belonged.
“At least Miguna has admitted he
acquired Canadian citizenship but
for my case, I do not understand
where the claim I was Yemeni was
plucked from,” he says.
That marked the beginning of a
titanic legal battle by Kenyan and
German activists to restore Balala’s
citizenship.
With assistance from the
German Social Democrat Party,
Balala petitioned Germany, the
US and the United Kingdom to
pile pressure on the Moi regime
to restore his citizenship. He also
filed suits in a German court and
at the European Court of Human
Rights in Strasbourg, seeking a
declaration that the revocation of
his citizenship was a gross violation
of international law.
Kenyan High Commissioner to
Germany Ogutu Obare, Raila Odinga,
human rights activist Maina Kiai
and officials from the Kenyan High
Commission testified. The Yemeni
government presented information
to courts and tribunals denying
Balala was its national.
In a letter to German authorities on
September 17, 1996, Obare restated
the official line from Nairobi that
Balala was not and had never been a
Kenyan citizen.
“Suffice it to say that the Kenya
government has not deprived Mr Balala of his travel documents as he
is not a bona fide citizen of Kenya.
Mr Balala is in fact Yemenis (sic)
by descent and failed to renounce
this stature on his 23rd birthday in
conformity with our constitution
which does not recognise dual
citizenship.”
And to demolish Balala’s case,
the commissioner claimed, “Balala
plays no significant role in the
Kenyan political sphere…,” for
he was “…neither a member of
Parliament nor known leader of any
institution of political significance
in Kenya…”
This is notwithstanding the fact
that Balala who matriculated at
Allidina Visram in 1975 and later
took Islamic law studies in Saudi
Arabia was IPK’s spiritual guide and
an articulate leader whose oratory
had made him a the darling of many
at the Coast and a prime target for all
political factions.
IPK had entered into a union
with Ford Kenya, Kenya’s strongest
opposition party at the time, to erase
Kanu’s dominance in Mombasa,
besides awakening the Muslim
masses across Kenya.
Kenyan envoy Obare would later
visit the activist at his house in
Frankfurt to warn him not to return
to Kenya. Balala quotes him saying,
“You will not return to Kenya until
we tell you because you are a threat
to national security.”
In mid-1997, a Bonn court issued a
judgement
urging Kenyan authorities
to restore Balala’s citizenship and pay
him the equivalent of US$2 million in
compensation.
Balala was not paid the money but
Kenya succumbed to international
pressure and agreed to allow the
activist back home. The Kenya
government neither bought him an
air ticket nor gave him money for
support. He was promised citizenship
papers upon return but this was not
fulfilled.
An international campaign,
including a petition to the Queen of England, US President Bill Clinton
and other world leaders forced the
Moi regime to allow Balala back on
May 13, 1997.
Besides the British refusing to
allow him to transit through London,
Balala tried unsuccessfully to enter
Kenya four times, on temporary
Kenyan papers issued by the mission
in Bonn, and was forced out.
“I was returned four times, once
in Mombasa, twice at JKIA and once
in Dar es Salaam. On all occasions I
was forced back onto the plane that
had flown me in and I returned to
Frankfurt,” he says.
The German government finally
paid for his air ticket on his fifth
attempt to enter Kenya and he
travelled on temporary papers issued
by Germany this time.
CONFISCATED AGAIN
The Kenya government had promised
to reissue him Kenyan documents
upon return to the motherland but
that was never to be. His house in
Mombasa had been vandalised and
all his identification documents
stolen by state agents.
After two months, Balala was
called by Immigration officials to
Nyayo House in Nairobi to pick his
new passport. But it was confiscated
again before he left the precincts.
“I was issued a new passport on
July 22, 1997, at Nyayo House. I felt
relieved and descended in the lift
from the tenth floor feeling good.
On the ground I was accosted
by state agents who asked me to
surrender the passport and up to
now it has never been returned,” he
says.
Balala launched a new legal battle
to reclaim his passport.
“I sued and the state acknowledged
in court that it had taken my
passport,” he says, adding that his
suit was sabotaged when Kenyan
authorities threw him in jail in late
1997 until 2001.
Although detention without trial
had been abolished in the statutes,
Balala was held without charge
during these years to ensure he did
not participate in the 1997 elections,
from which the opposition emerged
stronger than in the 1992 polls.
BETRAYED
Balala identifies with Miguna and
others like Raila aide Salim Lone,
former MP Koigi Wamwere and
the late Professor Katama Mkangi,
who suffered similar withdrawal of
citizenship.
But he feels betrayed by
the Kibaki regime, which he believes
did nothing to reverse these policies,
substantially, or at all.
He also believes the British and
American governments silently
supported his tribulations and could
be cheering on Miguna’s humiliation,
actuated by the belief that opponents
of the successive regimes in Nairobi,
ideologically, threaten their imperial
interests in East Africa.
“I have been restless since 1990
to date. Had I been someone who is
not spiritual and reads a lot, I would
have gone crazy by now,” says the
grandfather of 12, who says he is
about to complete his memoirs.
“I am a responsible man and I
rejected all attempts to compromise
me or destroy my people and country
through violence. Many times we
were provoked but we remained wise
and committed to our people.”
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He adds, “I have been through
everything that Miguna is going
through now but this is the price we
have to pay to change our country
which is controlled by a tyrannical
colonial state that began with the
British and has not changed.”
“The British and Americans have
always supported regimes in Nairobi
for imperial and ideological reasons.
Kibaki betrayed the cause by shifting
power back to Kanu’s tactics and
paved way for the Jubilee regime
which is a vestige of Kanu.”
Balala claims that under the Kibaki
and Uhuru administrations, his case
did not move because he refused to
kowtow to the new powers.
“I have been told to compromise or
make an undertaking that I will part
with 10 per cent of my compensation
but I refused because we are in this
thing not for financial gain because
we wish to strike a blow for freedom
and posterity.”