Kenya Won’t Let Lawyer Go to U.S. for Rights Award
The leading human rights lawyer in Kenya will not be allowed to visit Washington to accept a cash prize that goes with a human rights award, President Daniel Arap Moi said Friday.
The lawyer, Gibson Kamau Kuria, was formally presented the 1988 Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award in Nairobi on Thursday by Ethel and Kerry Kennedy, the widow and daughter, respectively, of the U.S. senator.
However, Kuria declined to accept the $30,000 cash prize that goes with the award unless it was presented to him in Washington.
Moi said Kuria “will not be given a passport to go . . . receive the cash award.”
“Why doesn’t he want to bring the foreign exchange here?” Moi said on government radio.
Moi spoke minutes after Kerry Kennedy, 28, executive director of the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Center for Human Rights, told reporters that Moi failed to convince her that Kenya is free of rights abuses.
Describing a meeting with Moi on Wednesday, Kerry Kennedy said: “He didn’t say anything that would justify some of the horrors that have taken place . . . .”
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