I am a Kenyan citizen by birth.Pursuant to Article 13(2) of the Constitution of Kenya, 2010, Kenyan citizenship may be acquired by birth or registration.
I have never renounced my Kenyan citizenship.Importantly, Article 16(1) of the Constitution stipulates that, “A citizen by birth does not lose citizenship by acquiring the citizenship of another country.”
Canada does not require anyone applying for citizenship to renounce his or her citizenship.Those claiming that I lost my Kenyan citizenship upon acquiring Canadian citizenship must produce credible documentary evidence proving the alleged renunciation or lose of my citizenship.
They must also explain the existence of any other mythical legal principle that would have inflicted homicide on my birthright.Whoever makes an allegation against someone has a positive duty to prove each element of his or her allegation.Significantly, none of my accusers has tendered credible material evidence to validate their baseless and outrageous claims.
My Kenyan citizenship was irrevocably vested on me by my mother, Margaret Suré Nyar Njoga, in a small village called Magina, nestled along the shores of River Nyando in the Kano Plains.
My mother never had a birth certificate, passport, national identity card, a driver’s license or the Kenya Revenue Authority Personal Identification Number (PIN), yet no one doubted her citizenship.In other words, citizenship isn’t granted by government-issued documents.
Those documents are issued for the convenience of national authorities and those citizens who need them for identification, travel or for purposes of accessing credit facilities.
My Kenyan citizenship was a gift from God and our ancestors. Article 17 of the Constitution provides that “Only citizenship acquired by registration may be revoked.”Citizenship is not vested or evidenced by a passport; the latter is a mere travel document issued to a citizen at a stipulated fee as a right under Article 12(a) of the Constitution.
More than three quarters of Kenyans don’t possess and will never own a passport in their entire lives. However, the fact that they neither need nor have passports doesn’t mean that they are less Kenyan than those who have passports.Therefore, no one – I mean absolutely no one – has power or authority to waive, vitiate, invalidate or cancel my citizenship on account that I have a Canadian passport or that I acquired Canadian citizenship.
Secondly, deportation is a legal process; not a whimsical declaration by a cabinet minister. It requires written prior notice to the person to be deported and a corresponding right of response by the latter. A neutral or impartial adjudicator or judicial officer must preside over a deportation hearing and determine whether or not it has sufficient legal grounds before the relevant minister may act on his or her intentions.No one can be validly deported on mere allegations.
For a judicial officer to order someone deported, the minister responsible must demonstrate through credible evidence the law that has been broken by the person to be deported; that the breaches amounting to deportable offences; and that only deportation would cure the offences. This process of determination is a judicial process anchored on law and premised on credible evidence – not conjecture, bald allegations or political propaganda.
Accordingly, the arbitrary and draconian decision taken by one Fred Matiang’I purportedly deporting me is illegal and unconstitutional. A Kenyan citizen by birth cannot lose his or her citizenship and would therefore not be subject to deportation.By invading the sanctity of my home uninvited at 5:45AM on February 2, 2018 and using a military charger or detonator to shutter the main entrance and toilet window to my house, the illegitimate despotic Jubilee regime exhibited their 15th century stone-age barbarism.
If the intention for using such extreme violence towards me was to inflict fear, the despicable acts steeled my resolve to fight against Jubilee’s culture of impunity, electoral theft, tribalism and corruption even harder.
The 35 heavily-armed men who invaded my home, abducted me at gun point and detained me incommunicado under horrendous cruel, degrading and inhumane conditions were not dressed in police uniform, they did not shout out “police” nor did they should out my name or requested me to ”come out;” the hoodlums didn’t show me their police badges nor did they produce any valid search warrants.I understand that a forged search warrant was conveniently “produced” hours after my abduction and illegal detention.
Rather than take me to the nearest police stations 500 meters away from my residence, or 1 kilometer away at Gigiri, or at the CID Headquarters, 3 kilometers away; the heavily armed hoodlums led by Said Kiprotich locked me away for 16 hours in a tiny, cold cell at the Githunguri Police Station, without access to counsel, family, consular services or physicians, after stopping for 45 minutes at the Kiambu Police Station in Kiambu town.Before driving away with me from Runda, the hoodlums had forcefully snatched my iPhone and threatened to blind fold me.
This ensured that I couldn’t contact anyone.At about 5:30 p.m., advocates Edwin Sifuna, Waikwa Wanyoike and Willis Ochieng’ – together with the NRM-Ke youth - managed to locate my whereabouts at the Githunguri Police Station.
They were told, falsely, that I would be released that evening.Meanwhile, xenophobic politicians like Moses Kuria and Kimani Ichung’wa had mobilized and armed the Mungiki militia who were by that time burning vehicle car tires on the roads leading out of the police station.
They were baying for my blood.Yet, by the time my lawyers and supporters left the police station with promises by the OCS that they would be permitted to “collect me” from the police station the following day in the morning, I had been locked up again in the tiny cell.I was denied access to the mattress and blanket the advocates had purchased for me earlier.
At about 10:30pm that day, my abductors returned and took me away. There was no ceremony or notice. We arrived at the Lari Police Station at about midnight.The Lari Police Station was the worst and cruelest detention centre I was kept in. The OCS and majority police officers were brutal. They were rude, chauvinistic, degrading and callous. They denied me access to counsel, doctors, the toilet, food, water and a chair.
They kept me standing in the tiny dungeon for more than 24 hours each time. The dungeon was colder than the Canadian winter. I almost caught pneumonia. I was shaking. This resulted from being exposed to the chilliness for days on end.In the afternoon of February 5th, burly Flying Squad officers entered the dungeon and said “we are leaving.” I didn’t bother to ask them “where to?” because by then I had lost hope and confidence in their humanity. In any event, they took me to an unmarked four-wheel drive vehicle, which took off like a bullet followed by about 3 other vehicles.
Another unmarked “police” vehicle had been parked with its rear very close to the front desk of the police station. After it was driven from the station at a high speed with a siren blaring, the media and some of my supporters started pursuing it. They believed, wrongly, that it was the vehicle I was being transported it.They pursued the decoy all the way to the wrong police station in Nairobi.
I knew this because the hoodlums who had accompanied me were laughing heartily at how they had deceived the media. After a long, circuitous route, I ended at the Inland Container Depot Police Station in Embakasi East through the Bypass that goes through Ruiru towards the Mombasa Highway.
For the first time, I was served with a proper meal, given access to cold running water, a tooth brush, tooth paste, two tiny blankets, tiny fragments of a blanket and a room to sleep in.Very early in the morning of February 6th, more than 15 heavily-armed hoodlums led by Said Kiprotich, placed me in one vehicle, buffeted by numerous others, made an illegal right turn on Mombasa Road, and took off like live bullets towards Mombasa. They drove for about one hour, refueled near the Athi River diversion, turned into the Kajiado road and continued driving at breath-taking speed.We ended up at the Kajiado Magistrates’ Court that morning.
After a lengthy wait, they took me before a magistrate who ruled, thundering that, “To expect me to allow you to disobey more than five orders from the High Court at Nairobi – a Superior Court – would be to grant you permission to perpetuate impunity and to license chaos in our country. I cannot do that. You are ordered to take Mr. Miguna Miguna to the High Court at Milimani, Nairobi before 3 p.m. today.”Upon receiving that ruling, the hoodlums took with me like live bullets once more.
A team of my lawyers and supporters took off after them in a similar fashion. Regrettably, my lawyers and supporters gave up on the chase after my abductors had made more than 5 dangerous U-turns on the Kajiado-Nairobi road. After shaking off my lawyers, the hoodlums took the Ngong road, transferred me into another vehicle because, on their admission, “Hon. Aduma Owuor and my other supporters had taken pictures of this car...” – the one I had been placed in from the Kajiado court.However, rather than take me to the High Court at Milimani, my abductors drove me back to the Inland Container Depot Police Station on Mombasa Road.
They kept me in the vehicle for three hours. Meanwhile, a Mr. Kamau demanded my passport, refused to state why he wanted it and went away. He held onto my Kenyan passport for a long time as he constantly chatted with other strangers opposite the police station and on his mobile phone. He looked excited.At some point, the OCS asked me what I wanted to eat for dinner. I told her fish and ugali and kienyeji vegetables. I also asked her for a pair of slippers since my feet were swollen.
Thereafter, another group led by Said Kiprotich, a Mr. Owiti and Chief Inspector Njoroge, ordered me to enter a room “so that we can chat.” I asked to be allowed to visit the toilet. They initially rudely declined before ordering three heavily armed hoodlums to accompany me into the toilet.Immediately I emerged from the toilet, more than ten hoodlums led by Kiprotich, Owiti, Njoroge and Kamau surrounded and ordered me to accompany them to the courtyard for a forceful search.
Against my loud protest, they physically restrained me, searched and retrieved a copy of the Canadian passport, which I had then left with it.
However, before doing so, Njoroge, Kamau, Kiprotich and a Somali-looking man who accompanied me to the KLM flight that night, told me, almost as if they had rehearsed it, that killing me would be very easy, at which I retorted, quickly, “Go right ahead! What are you waiting for?” They seemed to have an adrenalin rush!As I prepared to eat the delicious wet fried fish, ugali and vegetables the nice female OCS had ordered for me; my first meal of the day, the hoodlums ordered that “we leave now!”
They drove off at extremely high speeds towards Mombasa road, made sharp illegal right turns as Kiprotich stopped the oncoming traffic – wielding an assault rifle and a badge! It was the first time I realized that they were taking me to the airport.They drove in a long convoy and parked illegally in front of the Kenya Airways departure stage.
After about 25 minutes, Kiprotich and his criminal gang emerged with my Canadian passport and a boarding pass before driving onto the runway, still armed.At no stage did they hand me over to immigration officers as they have falsely been claiming. Nor had they given me legal notice and accorded me a fair opportunity to respond. In fact, they never even made any claims.
At about 11:35p.m., the hoodlums removed me from the vehicle where I had now been sitting in for more than five hours, took me through a side entrance to the plane on the runway and gave the KLM crew my passport and the dirty photocopy cut-and-paste document declaring me “an unwanted immigrant.” They also had a one-way ticket and my iPhone, which no longer worked.
Through it all, the illegitimate despotic usurpers of power – Uhuru Kenyatta and William Ruto – and their surrogate, Fred Matiang’i, have demonstrated their blatant contempt for court orders, the judicial process, the rule of law, our constitution and democratic principles. They are determined to make Kenya a pariah ruthless authoritarian state.As the NRM-Ke General, I cannot allow them. My comrades, fellow patriots and friends of Kenya will defeat them.
By Miguna Miguna