WhatNow? Photo: YES! to the ICC

Hello! From the ICC Demonstration

Yesterday, a group of Kenyans gathered together at Freedom Corner in Uhuru Park, Nairobi to demonstrate against MPs who have argued for the retreat of Kenya from the ICC (Rome Statute) and use of public funds to defend suspects.

For those of you who don't follow Kenyan politics, since the 2007/8 Post Election Violence (PEV), Kenya has decided that the best choice for pursuing those responsible for the violence, given the current status of Kenyan courts and the political climate, would be the International Criminal Court (ICC), which tries perpetrators of serious crimes such as crimes against humanity. Click the link for more on the ICC and Rome Statute

Last year, Luis Moreno Ocampo came to Kenya to begin the ICC inquiry into the PEV. As a result, a number of high profile Kenyans, including Ministers and other public servants, have been named by the Hague as suspects.

Here are some links to recent articles about the ongoing ICC cases:

There has been a large amount of public criticism of the government recently for two reasons: first, parliament passed a motion that supports pulling Kenya out of the Rome Statute. And second, that the government has planned to pay the legal fees of those suspected of crimes against humanity in the Hague.

Here are a few recent (and slightly older) articles:

And opinion pieces:

So at this point, the pictures you've seen filing throughout may be starting to make sense. Yesterday a group of Kenyans got together on the opening day of Parliament to protest moves to withdraw Kenya from the ICC and to use public funds to defend suspects.

I found out about this demonstration through Masese's Facebook page (for those of you who don't know him, he's in the very first picture) and decided to show up and take some pictures. What I found is a group that's trying to get one million Kenyan signatures in defense of the ICC.

You can find the page (and the petition website) here:

And an article about the group:

Group Seeks Signatures to Support ICC (The Standard)

Present at the event, among others, were Muthoni Wanyeki (below left), columnist with The East African (you can find her latest article here), and Ndungi Githuku (below right, first from left), a poet and actor.

Unfortunately, I was only able to stay for the beginning and end of the event (yep... missing the brunt of it was definitely a good move for adequately explaining what hapenned). But had fun! And by the time I came back, there were dancers