March 2, 2006

Bad times in Kenya

Kathryn Cramer is blogging about the recent unrest in Kenya with the police shutting down and burning newspapers:
Media Shutdown in Kenya
I went to look at a news story on the Kenya Broadcasting Corporation site a moment ago, and on the page there was this ominous message, which I take to be a form of SOS:
BREAKING NEWS: Kenya Television Network, KTN is off-air and Standard newspapers off streets after people said to be security agents conducted an overnight operation shutting down their facilities. Information Minister denies prior knowledge of the raid. KBCNewsAlert…
She also links to this article at Journalism.co.za:
Armed men in midnight raid on Kenyan TV station & paper
Close to 100 masked men, some armed with AK-47 assault rifles, raided the offices and printing press of Kenya's Standard Group, stopping the operations of its television station and newspaper, writes Eric Nyakagwa.

The masked men staged simultaneous raids on the editorial offices of Kenya Television Network (KTN) and the group’s printing press in a Nairobi industrial area, where they vandalized machines and carried away some machinery crucial for production.

At both premises, the raiders, who struck shortly after midnight on Wednesday night, roughed up security officers who were on duty and managed to access the group’s headquarters after one of the men in the group identified themselves as a police officer and demanded entry.

The security men were all herded into a corner as the attackers demanded access to the editorial floors and the KTN transmission room where they took away a computer, some power units and interfered with cables, effectively disabling transmission.

At the printing press, they vandalised equipment and burned most of the Thursday papers, which were either rolling off the press or were being packaged for distribution.
Power to the People? Naaa -- corruption and cronyism. Africa just being Africa although Kenya was a surprise to me, they seemed to have their stuff together. Posted by DaveH at March 2, 2006 5:59 PM
Comments
Post a comment









Remember personal info?