Human rights groups accused Kenya of a “pattern” of collaborating with foreign powers over the rendition of political opponents, after a Ugandan opposition leader was taken last week.
Kizza Besigye was seized on Nov. 16 while visiting Nairobi, the capital, and was transported to a jail in Uganda, according to his wife, Winnie Byanyima, the executive director of UNAIDS.
The abduction comes just weeks after Kenya admitted to honoring a request by Turkey to deport four asylum seekers, the latest in a long line of foreign dissidents that the East African country has helped extradite.
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“This is not the first time a foreign dissident has been abducted on Kenyan soil,” Tigere Chagutah, Amnesty International’s Regional Director for East and Southern Africa, said in a statement. “It is part of a growing and worrying trend of transnational repression with governments violating human rights beyond their borders.”
Kenyan government spokesman Isaac Mwaura said “we aren’t aware of any abduction at all as a government,” when asked about Besigye. Requests for comment from the Department for Foreign Affairs were not answered.
Last month, the government said it dispatched the Turkish refugees — who are believed to belong to the Gulen movement that was blamed for a 2016 coup attempt — after being assured they would be “treated with dignity” and in accordance with the law.
Kenya’s involvement shows “a pattern” of pandering to other governments at the expense of human rights, said Ernest Cornell, spokesman for Kenya Human Rights Commission.
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“Even if a request is made, we should weigh on its constitutionality,” he said. “The credibility of a nation is in its adherence to the rule of law.”
Besigye has been detained numerous times during his opposition to Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, who has held power for nearly four decades. In addition to being shot in the hand and doused with pepper spray, he’s said he’s been tortured while in detention.
Harold Kaija, a spokesman for Besigye’s Forum for Democratic Change party, said he was now being held at the Luzira Prison in Uganda’s capital, Kampala.
The events were not isolated incidents.
In 2021, Nigerian Biafra separatist leader Nnamdi Kanu went missing in Kenya and resurfaced handcuffed in the west African nation a few days later, where he still faces terrorism charges.
In the same year, a wealthy Ethiopian businessman was snatched from his car by unknown assailants after being stopped by Kenyan traffic police. Samson Teklemichael hasn’t been seen since.
In 1999, Kurdish leader Abdullah Ocalan was grabbed in Nairobi, where he had sought refuge at the Greek embassy. He was transported back to Turkey, where he was convicted of treason and initially condemned to death. That judgment was subsequently commuted to a life sentence that he continues to serve.
His Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, has waged a decades-long insurgency seeking autonomy in southeast Turkey in which thousands of people have died. The PKK is designated as a terrorist organization by the US and European Union.
