The National Center for Education Statistics reports 19.7 million students will enter colleges and universities across the U.S. throughout the 2012 school year. For students interested in entering the field of journalism, it can be easy to forget that our first amendment rights, particularly freedom of speech and freedom of the press, do not exist everywhere. Furthermore, when traveling abroad to gather news, journalists are governed by the rules of the country in which they are working.
Peter Makori knows this all too well. He is a Kenyan based freelance journalist who was arrested more than eight times and beaten savagely with wooden panels, leaving him with numerous injuries to his head, hands, and feet. Makori’s reports contained a series of articles on prominent Kenyan cabinet minister Simeon Nyachae published in Reuters international newspaper.
Makori said of Nyachae, “He wanted you to fabricate things to make him look good.”
After being told by various political officials to publish a statement apologizing for the inaccuracy of his reports, Makori was arrested in July 2003 and charged with multiple crimes. The charges included: engaging in subversive activities, publishing alarming information, seditious information, and defamatory information.
While being held at Kissi prison, officials charged Makori with another crime—the murder of two local chiefs. Murder is the only crime in Kenya that does not allow for a bond and would force Makori to be transported to Kodiago Prison, an institution known for having one of the highest death rates among prisoners.
When asked what kind of evidence officials had to charge him with such crimes, Makori replies: “Evidence? Who questions the killings in Congo?”
Makori spent a total of five months in Kodiago Prison where he received routine beatings, ate expired food, and drank the unthinkable. “When I first got there I thought why don’t they clean this up?” referring to the raw sewage that flows throughout the cells of the prison. The prison guards told Makori that this was his drinking water. “I thought I will not drink this water…in the end I drank the sewage.”
Makori was released from prison in May 2004 and was told the charges were dropped. He came to the U.S. in 2006 on an Alfred Friendly Press Fellowship Pass and was granted political asylum in 2007.
Makori, 35, recalls the eager young man he once was: “I decided I would act as the voice for the voiceless. I was too young to comprehend some of the dangers, but now I see in retrospect what the consequences are.”
The dangers Makori refers to are reporting in a country that does not have a free press. “All my avenues were blocked because there was corruption by people of influence.” Still hopeful, Makori believes “nothing stays permanent, all things come to an end and eventually a free flow of ideas without seeking authority from any figure will be achieved in Kenya.”