Responding to criticism from donors about corruption in Kenyan, Murungi said that such criticism was “like raping a woman who is already willing.”

The statement brought swift condemnation and protests from women’s rights groups in Kenya. Miriam Kahiga of Amnesty International said of the comment,

It is trivializing rape and the fight against graft in one breath.

She also called Murungi, “an embarrassment to the country.”

Murungi later apologized saying,

I unreservedly and sincerely apologize to all the women of Kenya who were offended by these remarks.

Human rights groups in Kenya have faulted the government for the high incidence of rape and the poor response by police to prevent and investigate such crimes.

Sources:

Kenyan apology over rape remark. The BBC, February 11, 2005.

It?s a big shame, ministers say of attack. Patrick Mathangani, East African Standard, August 17, 2004.

Sexual Politics. Press Release, Kenya Human Rights Commission, February 10, 2005.

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When it comes to abortion, Maathai, who is currently Kenya’s deputy minister of the environment, told Norway’s Dagen newspaper,

Both [the woman and the aborted fetus] are victims. There is no reason why anybody who has been conceived, shouldn’t be given the opportunity to be born and to live a happy life. The fact that a life like that is terminated, is wrong.

. . .

When we allow abortion, we are punishing the women — who must abort their children because their men have run away — and we are punishing the children whose life is terminated.

Maathai goes on to identify a particularly bizarre aspect of the Kenyan legal system that she believes drives women there to abortion. Under Kenyan law, mothers alone are responsible for the maintenance of children born out of wedlock. No, that’s not a misprint or an exaggeration — in Kenya, a man who fathers a child out of wedlock has no legally enforceable requirement to financially support that child.

Maathai told Dagen,

I want us to step back a little bit and say: Why is this woman and this child threatened? Why is this woman threatening to terminate this life? What do we need to do as a society? A part of that answer lies in this House [the Kenyan Parliament].

. . .

Now I think we are too lenient on men. We have almost given them a license to father children and not worry about them. That is part of the reason why women abort, because they do not want to be burdened with children whose fathers do not want to become responsible.

Source:

Abort er galt, sier Maathai. Jostein Sandsmark, Dagen, December 12, 2004.

“Abortion Is Wrong” says Nobel Prize Winner Maathai. LifeSiteNews.Com, December 7, 2004.

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Much of the controversy centers around the Indigenous Movement for Peace Advancement and Conflict (IMPACT) — a Kenyan group that has been working with British lawyers in preparing the lawsuit.

One of the major pieces of evidence buttressing the rape charges were mixed-race children born to Kenyan women who claimed they had been born as the result of rape by British soldiers. First, however, it turned out most of these children were born to prostitutes. Then, Kenyan prostitutes began stepping forward claiming they were told by IMPACT that they could receive thousands of dollars if they accused British soldiers of raping them.

The Daily Telegraph reported on one of these prostitutes,

Angela Muguri, 24, claims three IMPACT activists sought her out and promised to make her a millionaire. All she had to do was pretend that British soldiers raped her — and then give them a cut of any forthcoming compensation.

Miss Muguri held her two-year-old daughter, Britanny, who, like scores of children in Nanyuki, is mixed race. “They told me that if I said I was raped by British soldiers and showed them my baby then I would get three million shillings [30,000 pounds],” Miss Muguri said. “I would take two million and they would take one.”

According to Miss Muguri, Britanny’s father is a British soldier, but she insisted that the child was the product of a six-week consensual relationships, not of rape.

“I know it was a lie but they told me if I told the truth I would get nothing,” she said. “This British soldier no longer sends me ay money, or communicates with me. I am very poor. How could I say no?”

Those sort of revelations followed on the heels of Royal Military Police investigators concluding that police records documenting the alleged rapes were in fact fakes created specifically for the purposes of pursuing the IMPACT lawsuit.

According to the Daily Telegraph,

A spokesman at the British High Commission in Nairobi confirmed that the 37 reports expected to form the backbone of the case, the only ones filed at the time of the alleged attacks, had proved to be fakes. The reports had encouraged hundreds more women to come forward.

“I am therefore unaware of any genuine entries concerning rapes by British servicemen in police records,” the spokesman said.

Unfortunately the Royal Military Police have not yet explained how they were so certain the reports were not genuine. British newspaper The Guardian, however, examined hospital records related to the rapes and said that the records appeared to have been doctored after-the-fact to include rape-related materials. For example, there tended to be large numbers of patients allegedly raped by British soldiers added to the end of daily hospital logs, suggesting they were added at a later date.

Writing about the controversy, Wendy McElroy noted that it’s often difficult to sort out whether such allegations are accurate or not because of what McElroy terms the “compensation culture” that is currently prevalent in developing countries that plays on Western feelings of guilt over colonial-era injustices,

A “compensation culture” seems to be spreading through poor nations. This “soak the rich” attitude toward the West draws upon Western guilt over its own prosperity and over historical wrongs, like slavery. This collective guilt is especially undeserved when placed on the blameless shoulders of children born today. It is also likely to harm the credibility of true victims who seek compensation.

It also has the effect of infantilizing the governments of developing nations who often seem to spend more time blaming Western nations than actually trying to solve problems their countries face.

Sources:

Rape claims are forged, says Army. Adrian Blomfield, Daily Telegraph, September 27, 2003.

New doubt thrown on Kenyan mass-rape claim against UK. James Astill, The Guardian, October 2, 2003.

Prostitutes ‘told to fake rape claims’. Daily Telegraph, October 11, 2003.

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Why all the fuss? Because Wambui, 67, was married in July to a stonemason 42 years her junior.

The marriage itself drew hundreds of onlookers and created something of a schism among churches in Kenya. Although clergyman with the Presbyterian Church of East Africa opined that the marriage was perfectly appropriate, Catholic priest Father Emanuel Ngugi characterized the marriage of Wambui to a much younger man as “uncouth” and criticized her for not consulting her local community before going ahead with the marriage.

When Wambui showed up at the constitutional conference, Member of Parliament Bonny Khalwale was the leader of a faction of male MPs who demanded that she be ejected from the conference. Khalwale was quoted by the BBC as saying, “We are discussing African culture and what she did [by marrying a much-younger man] negated the very concept of our culture.”

Not everyone in Kenya thought this was the major issue facing delegates. According to the BBC, conference delegate Hubbie Hussein noted that, “there are land grabbers, looters, murderers and other criminals among the delegates, but no one has questioned their presence in the conference.”

Sources:

Kenya split by wedding row. Kariuki wa Mureithi, BBC News, July 22, 2003.

Kenyan woman slams ‘disgusting’ MPs. BBC, August 21, 2003.

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The Mungiki sect is an ascetic religious extremist group that, like many such groups these days, sees itself defending traditional values against encroaching liberalism driven by exposure to Western ideas. Estimates put the number of people involved with the sect at around 300,000 (out of a population of 30 million).

Along with assaulting women who wear short skirts or pants, the sect also advocates in favor of female circumcision and has reportedly kidnapped women and forcibly mutilated them.

Women in Kenya, however, seem willing to stand up to these thugs. The BBC quoted one of the woman who was assaulted in February as saying, “I felt so bad, I felt so humiliated . . . [but she will keep wearing trousers because] It’s my right.”

Source:

Kenyan women protest at ‘trouser police’. The BBC, February 3, 2003.

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The girls, aged 9 to 14, were pulled out of school by their parents to make sure the government would not interfere, and forced to undergo the procedure. Kenyan woman’s activist Naomi Okul told the BBC that in this case, “The traditional operators used dirty knives and most of the grisl ahve infections in their wounds.”

Kenya only outlawed female genital mutilation for girls under 17 a few months ago, and the high rate of the practice among some of Kenya’s peoples is believed partially responsible for that nation’s extremely high maternal mortality rate.

Source:

Circumcision hospitalizes Kenyan girls. Muliro Telewa, The BBC, October 31, 2001.

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He also promised police protection for any young girl threatened with female genital mutilation.

Moi affirmed, however, that females 17 and older would be able to choose for themselves whether to undergo the procedure saying that, “for girls above the age of 16 years, it is their choice to be circumcised or not. Should they not want to be circumcised, they shall also be protected by the new law.”

According to the BBC, a 1998 survey found that 38 percent of Kenyan women aged 15 to 49 had undergone female genital mutilation.

Source:

Kenya bans FGM among young. The BBC, December 12, 2001.

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“You [women] can achieve more, can get more but because of your little minds, you cannot get what you are expected to get,” Moi said.

It didn’t help matters any that Moi chose to make his remarks at the opening of a regional women’s seminar in Nairobi.

Moi’s remarks were condemned and criticized by a wide range of leaders in Kenya from the head of the Catholic church to the chairman of the Law Society of Kenya.

Source:

Outrage at Moi remark. Joseph Warungu, The BBC, March 8, 2001.

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The World Health Organization estimates that worldwide up to 130 million women have been subjected to the practice. Although some Africans defend the traditional practice as necessary to ensure young girls remain virgins until marriage, 15 out of 28 African countries have outlawed the practice. Even so, up to 2 million young girls each year undergo such mutilation either legally in 13 countries or illegally in the others.

African activists want the European Union to strongly condemn the practice as well as create European Union-wide policies allowing women who fear they may become victims of the practice to seek asylum. Greek commissioner for employment and social affairs, Anna Adamant, suggested that the European Union should make foreign aid to African nations contingent on their agreeing to outlaw genital mutilation. That suggestion is sure to draw complaints of Western imperialism from traditionalist supporters of the practice.

Meanwhile in Kenya, where genital mutilation is not specifically illegal, two young women there recently had a court agree to take up a case they filed against their father who they believe is secretly planning a traditional female genital mutilation ceremony for them. In their lawsuit, the young women argue that the practice is an affront to morality and justice.

Sources:

EU tackles female mutilation. The BBC, November 29, 2000.

EU may ban aid to states that allow female circumcision. Andrew Osborn, The Guardian (UK), November 30, 2000.

Familyl in court over circumcision. Muliro Telewa, The BBC, December 1, 2000.

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