No freedom of speech in Kenya

What do you do if you are a corrupt African government and a newspaper keeps publishing unwelcome stories about you? This:

In the early morning hours of Thursday, around 1am, two groups of hooded, armed people staged simultaneous raids on the editorial offices of the KTN Television and the Group’s printing press on Likoni Rd in the Industrial Area of Nairobi. At both premises, they roughed up security officers on duty and managed to get access into the building.

In the I&M building on Kenyatta Avenue, one of the men in the group identified themselves as police officers and demanded access, which was granted.

The team herded our security men into a corner and demanded access into the editorial floors and the transmission room. In the transmission room, they took away a computer, some power units and affected the cables. That action effectively disabled our transmission and we have been off air since that time.

They did go into the KTN floor, where they took away several central processing units for computers used by the station’s journalists. They also took away CPUs from the commercial floors and did extensive damage to the surveillance camera units.

In the printing press plant, they vandalised the press, broke glasses and disabled the unit that at that point was printing. They took away computers from the circulation offices and burnt tens of thousands of copies of newspapers that were ready for dispatch. We are therefore unable to serve some of these markets this morning.

The government has denied any responsibility, but the gunmen didn't just identify themselves as police: according to the BBC report, they also detained four workers at KTN - and took them to the central police station for interrogation. So much for the government's "deniability".

This isn't even legal intimidation. Instead, its the government using outright thuggery against the press in an effort to prevent them from doing their job. Which is a sure sign that they have something to hide...

Update: The Kenyan government has admitted responsibility for the raid, claiming it was a matter of "state security". And if you believe that, there's a mountain in Africa I'd like to sell you...