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April 3-10, 2015

Media Monitoring Report for Kenya
Posted on April 13, 2015

Compiled by Pierre-Philippe Turnbull

Garrissa University Attack
1. State Owned Media

One of Garissa attackers identified (Daily Nation, April 5 2015)

  • Interior ministry names him as Abdirahim Abdullahi, a university of Nairobi law graduate.
  • The Garissa massacre, was the deadliest attack on Kenyan soil since the 1998 bombing of the US embassy in Nairobi, claimed the lives of 142 students, three police officers and three soldiers. Lot of the blame is put on county governments as well 
  • UPDATED: Mohammed Abdirahim Abdullahi, the son of Abdullahi Daqare, the chief of Bulla Jamhuri location in Mandera County, will likely go down in history. He was identified as the “mastermind” behind the Garissa attacks

KDF fighter jets destroy Al-Shabaab bases in Somalia (Daily Nation, April 6 2015)

  • Airstrikes followed threats by President Uhuru Kenyatta that he would retaliate "in the severest way possible" against th Al-Qaeda-linked militants
  • No information given as to casualties in the bases hit,
  • These attacks are seen as “revenge attacks” following the Garissa massacre

Leaders want refugee camps closed down (Daily Nation, April 6 2015)

  • Leaders from north eastern Kenya have called for the closure of refugee camps in the region and moving of their occupants to Somalia.
  • The camps have been — and the intelligence provides so — centres where the training, coordination, the assembly of terror networks is. 
  • “They (refugees) have been with us for the last 20 years. I think time has come when the national security of our people becomes (more) paramount than the international obligations that we have,” said Mr Duale.

State admits mistakes in its response to Garissa massacre (Daily Nation, April 9 2015)

  • State House spokesperson Manoah Esipisu on Thursday told editors in Nairobi that there were shortcomings in the State's response to the Al-Shabaab massacre.
  • There were previous accusations that the State was killing the morale of officers who felled the terrorists by paying them a Sh500 allowance.
  • Mr Esipisu said the work of the security officers was to save lives and the allowance was not a priority at that moment. 
  • Government officials also denied claims that the UK government had shared intelligence on the attack with the Kenyan government.

Somali Anger at Kenya Cash Transfer Freeze (Standard Media, April 9 2015)

  • This move was condemned as "collective punishment." Kenya's shutting down of money transfer services to the country over suspected links to the Al-Qaeda-linked Al Shabaab.
  • With no formal banking system in the impoverished country, diaspora Somalis use money transfer services to send cash back home to support their families, sending some $1.3 billion (1.1 billion euros) each year, dwarfing foreign aid.
  • Somali president shoes concerns to such action by the Kenyan government because, “remittances are a critical lifeline to millions in poverty.”
2. Social media
  • President Kenyatta multiplies the nationalist tweets, promoting new, and increased national security efforts.
    • @UKenyatta: “My Government is increasing efforts to contain the threat of terrorism we assure you of justice for this brutality.” 
    • Increase in the popularity of #OneKenyaOnePeople in the following days of the attacks
  • Freezing of Human Rights Groups accounts in Kenya (Tweeted by Human Rights Agenda @HURIA_Kenya) https://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=831692110244437
    • The inspector General has listed both Muslims for Human Rights (MUHURI) and Haki Africa amongst 85 individuals and institutions that arenotified of the intention to specify them as a ‘terrorist entity’ under the Prevention of Terrorism Act 2012.
    • This seems happens in retaliation to the Garissa attacks
    • Such matter is seen by HURIA as a method of intimidation
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