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Solidarity campaign for Ngugi Wa Thiong'o
A grouping of top international academics is pressuring the Kenyan government to take seriously the August 2004 attack on Ngugi Wa Thiong'o and his wife Njeeri Wa Ngugi, just as the trial began in Nairobi of those arrested for the assault and of world-renowned Kenyan writer Ngugi and the rape of his wife Njeeri.
The grouping, the Ngugi and Njeeri Solidarity Committee, is asking that Nairobi "prosecute not only the direct attackers, but all those involved in the attack" as it becomes "increasingly clear that this was a politically motivated assault on a leading international intellectual and his wife".
The 2004 attack took place during the first time that Ngugi had returned to his home country after 22 years in political exile. Ngugi and Njeeri were attacked in a flat in Nairobi. Ngugi was severely beaten and burned with cigarettes, and Njeeri, was raped.
The international campaign comes as the magistrate in the case, Julie Oseko, issued a stern warning, shortly after the trial began in mid-January 2005, following complaints by the state that its witnesses were being interfered with, according to the East African Standard newspaper based in Nairobi.
This warning by the magistrate followed claims by the prosecution that attempts were being made to interfere and influence some prosecution witnesses. The prosecutor further claimed Ngugi had received several e-mails aimed at intimidating him not to testify, says the East African Standard.
The solidarity committee is asking people to write to the Kenyan government "to encourage the Kenyan courts and government to take this attack seriously, and to prosecute not only the direct attackers, but all those involved in the attack".
"This is not only an issue of paramount importance for political liberties and the rights of intellectuals. It is also a critical test case for overcoming a culture of silence and impunity surrounding violence against women in Kenya (and, in many ways, the world at large)," says the solidarity committee.
The committee is comprised of Gabriele Schwab, chancellor's professor of English and Comparative Literature, University of California-Irvine; Ann Kaplan, professor of English and Comparative Literature and director of the Humanities Center at SUNY Stony-Brook; Simon J. Ortiz, poet and writer and professor of Native American Studies and Creative Writing, University of Toronto; Manuel Schwab, writer; and Gayatri Spivak, Avalon Foundation Professor in the Humanities and director of the Center for Comparative Literature and Society, Columbia University. (Ngugi is a professor in the English department at the University of California-Irvine).
The committee has composed a letter which can be forwarded to the Kenyan government. A copy of the letter and contact details to which it can be sent appear on the news section of the Kenyan literary website Kwani? at www.kwani.org.
The letter "exemplifies the spirit of the pressure that we believe it is necessary to put on the Kenyan government to insure that these attacks are treated in the most appropriate and deliberate manner. We fear that without this pressure, the political forces behind this attack may go unpunished, and the issue of rape glossed over", says the committee.
African Review of Books has attempted to get comment on this matter from Kenya's Ministry of Justice and Constitutional Affairs, but has received no response.
