A 21-year-old Kenyan man has been arrested for calling a politician a dog on Facebook.
Photographer David Ndung'u, a resident of Kikuyu outside Nairobi, allegedly posted an insult on the wall of Lewis Nguyai's Facebook page, which has almost 5 000 followers. Nguyai is Kikuyu's assistant minister for local government.
Ndung'u's comment reportedly read: “Call him Nguyai...nawa dais. HE is called ...NGUI INO...coz he is as useless as a dog...don't apologise 4 telling the truth....tell him 2 go 2 hell 4 we are....” (sic)
“NGUI INO”, loosely translated from Kikuyu, can be interpreted as meaning “this dog”.
Ndung'u's motive for the comment is unclear. But the assistant minister nevertheless reportedly printed the comments and filed a complaint with Kenyan police a fortnight ago. Police eventually detained the young photographer at his studio in Kikuyu two days ago, after Ndung'u had returned to the town from a business trip.
Subsequently, Ndung'u has been held in custody, as police wait for Nguyai to formally record a statement. According to Kenyan law, police in that country can hold a suspect on a charge of defamation until the complainant makes a statement to the police. Ndung'u will, however, be released if Nguyai fails to make the statement.
“The moment he records a statement with the police, the young man will be taken to court,” Opiyo was quoted as saying in Kenya's Daily Post.
Complaints of defamation on social media Web sites in Kenya have spiked amid growing numbers of Web users in that country - the East African nation has 10 million people connected to the Web, according to Internet World Stats figures.
Senior legal officer at the National Cohesion and Integration Commission (NCIC), Kyalo Mwengi, says his organisation alone has received 60 complaints in the last month, regarding defamatory comments made on social media Web sites.
“NCIC has set up a department to specifically deal with the material posted on Internet sites like Facebook and Twitter, and the monitoring will be intense as we approach the next general election,” said NCIC chairman Mzalendo Kibunjia.
Kibunjia added the commission faces hurdles in regulating posts on the sites, but experts are being roped in to try and ensure social media is not being used to incite violence or defamation.
“The law is not exhaustive on social media and it needs to be more comprehensive,” he noted. “When the law was written it was focused on radio and print media, then SMS; now Facebook and Twitter are a bit of a fresh area that we are expanding to.”
Share