Kenya Leader’s U.S. Visit Soured by Reports of Human Rights Abuses

President Daniel Arap Moi returns home today from a surprisingly cool reception in Washington that Western diplomats here attribute to the sharp deterioration of Kenya’s human rights situation in the last year.

What was supposed to be a chummy visit by Moi, a longtime ally of the United States, turned sour last week when the State Department pressed him for an investigation into recent allegations of beatings and torture of political dissidents in Kenya.

According to the diplomats, the restrictions on human rights are primarily the result of Moi’s attempts to increase his power plus his growing concern about threats to his rule.

In the most serious allegations thus far, a university professor and two attorneys sued Moi’s presidential police force, alleging in detailed affidavits that they had been beaten with tree limbs and strips of tire rubber, denied food for days at a time and confined in prison cells partly filled with water to get them to confess to false charges of being members of Mwakenya, an organization that advocates the overthrow of Moi’s government.

Growing Intolerance

Then, in a stark demonstration of the power of Kenya’s police, Gibson Kamau Kuria, the lawyer who embarrassed the government by filing those court papers in February, was himself picked up. Last week, two weeks after his disappearance, the government finally acknowledged that Kuria was in detention and accused of sedition.

Moi, Kenya’s president since 1978, has grown increasingly intolerant of any criticism of his policies in recent months. He survived a coup attempt by the air force in 1982 and is now said to fear that members of Kenya’s powerful Kikuyu tribe are plotting to overthrow him. But diplomats say they see no imminent threats to Moi’s rule, even among his political opponents.

Since Moi launched a campaign against the clandestine Mwakenya group last year, at least 70 Kenyans have been charged with sedition. Each of them has pleaded guilty. Eleven additional people, including the attorney Kuria, have been arrested without charges and are being held for alleged political crimes under the Preservation of Public Security Act.

Allegations Worry U.S.

Moi has enjoyed a warm relationship with the United States because of his pro-Western economics and his anti-Communist politics, a combination valued by Washington in sub-Saharan Africa. Kenya is a popular base for international businesses, relief organizations and foreign journalists covering Africa.

Moi’s high-level reception in Washington last week was intended to underscore the importance of Kenya’s friendship with the United States, and he met with President Reagan, Secretary of State George P. Shultz and Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger, among others.

Moi also complained mildly to Congress about the decline in U.S. aid to Kenya, from $111 million in 1984 to just $53 million this year, but otherwise the trip, in its early stages, seemed to be going well.

The State Department praised Kenya as a “model for political and economic stability” in Africa--but then last Friday, in the middle of Moi’s visit, it took the unusual step of issuing a statement expressing concern about new allegations of police torture in Kenya and urging Moi’s government to investigate. This statement followed several published reports about the affidavits, alleging that detainees were tortured to obtain confessions.

‘I Have Nothing to Hide’

Moi refused to answer questions about the allegations, but he alluded to them later in London, telling a group of Kenyans that “we have nothing to hide. I have nothing to apologize about.” Moi has in the past said that criticisms of Kenya’s human rights record were inspired by unnamed foreigners who are jealous of Kenya’s political stability and economic success.

Kenya’s police officials have denied allegations of torture.

Diplomats predicted Sunday that the U.S.-Kenyan relationship would be permanently altered by the events in Washington. “Everything that has characterized our relationship with Kenya in the past year changed overnight with Moi’s visit to Washington,” a U.S. diplomat said.

In recent months, Moi has attempted to increase his power and, in the process, stripped the independence of the attorney general and Parliament. He has also accused the church, a politically powerful institution here, of subversive activities.

Poor Human Rights Record

The typical political arrest begins with a suspect being picked up by security officers and not heard from again until he appears in court to confess to the charges. Most have been sentenced to four years in prison.

U.S. Rep. Howard Wolpe, a Michigan Democrat who is chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee’s subcommittee on Africa, called attention to Moi’s poor human rights record during a visit to Nairobi in January. In response, Moi said Wolpe had political dissidents in Kenya “on his payroll.”

Little was known publicly about what happened to political prisoners in Kenya until Kuria, the Nairobi attorney, filed his court papers in February alleging that police had tortured three current detainees.

Mirugi Kariuki, an attorney picked up late last year, said in his affidavit that over a nine-day period in December, he was “savagely beaten all over many times by more than 11 police interrogators,” that one officer stepped on his genitals as he lay on the floor of his cell, that he was sprayed with water before being questioned, that the officers used whips and wood sticks and rubber strips to beat him and that he was kept naked in a cell with water on the floor.

Allegations of Torture

Makaru Nganga, a university professor, alleged that from April until July last year he was kept naked in a dark cell partially filled with water, denied food and drinking water for four to seven days at a time, beaten with sticks and threatened with being permanently crippled unless he confessed to a false charge. Nganga also said he was forced to drink the water in his cell, which was mixed with his bodily wastes, and that he was sprayed with water from a high-pressure pipe five times a day.

Nganga and Kariuki remain in custody, and neither has been charged.