The news from Kenya is more and more alarming from the human rights point of view. Ahead of elections expected by the end of the year, there are disturbing reports that political opponents of President Moi, including international development workers, have been harassed, arrested and tortured. International attention has turned on the country after the collapse of the Mobutu regime in Zaire. Kenya is indeed a strategic state in east Africa, in which conflict or disintegration would have serious consequences for the region.
Police brutality is reported with alarming regularity, along with a culture of impunity. This is very much in keeping with the increasing authoritarianism of the Moi government. It is more and more difficult for his opponents to organise politically or to express themselves through the media; in a country where some 50 per cent of the population is illiterate, government control of the radio is used unrelentingly to support the president. All this helps to explain why opposition to Mr Moi is disorganised, but there is also a tradition of factional and regional quarrels which he is only too capable of exploiting.
International concern has mounted over this state of affairs. Pressure has been exercised by the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, by bilateral aid donors such as the United States and Britain and multilateral ones such as the European Union to ensure that human rights issues are linked to the provision of development funding. The Organisation of African Unity has also had to adjust its policies to take account of the genocide in Rwanda, events in Burundi and Zaire and the destructive civil wars in west Africa. It is no longer acceptable to most of its member-states that such despotic figures as President Moi should continue to be accorded the normal diplomatic honours while they preside over increasingly repressive regimes. In a keynote speech to African leaders this summer, the United Nations Secretary General, Mr Kofi Annan, made it clear that human rights issues will be central to his approach. The Kenya case will be one of the most urgent to face Mrs Mary Robinson in her new UN job.
One constructive initiative that could be taken by the international community would be to link continuing aid and goodwill for Kenya to assurances and guarantees that the forthcoming elections, in which President Moi is seeking a fifth term in office, will be free and fair. There is an opportunity to link such an initiative with those taken within Kenya itself, as constitutional reforms were yesterday debated and pressed on the government. If the elections go ahead without such scrutiny it looks increasingly likely that his opponents will turn to violence, which could draw in neighbouring states such as Uganda. It would be better to anticipate such a development than to let events drift towards disintegration.