Gitobu Imanyara

Gitobu Imanyara, a young lawyer and journalist, has been in the forefront of the democratic struggle in Kenya ever since the Moi government abolished multi-party democracy in 1982. Repeatedly arrested and harassed, he has unceasingly protested against the erosion of rights guaranteed in the Kenyan constitution, a document modeled on the U.S. constitution and drafted with the help of the late Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall.

In 1987, after spending more than two years in Maximum Security Prison on trumped-up charges associated with his work as a human rights lawyer, he founded the Nairobi Law Monthly described in the recently published Democracy Reader as "one of the boldest publications in Africa in the late twentieth century." A forum for public debate on the crisis facing constitutional rights in Kenya, the publication quickly earned the wrath of the Moi government which detained Imanyara on charges of not properly registering the magazine.

In 1990, following the revolution in Eastern Europe, Imanyara confronted the Kenyan government with a special issue entitled "The Historic Debate: Law, Democracy, and Multi-Party Politics in Kenya." He was arrested twice that summer, at one point held incommunicado in a prison psychiatric ward. Undaunted, he republished the "historic debate" issue upon his release and was subsequently assaulted and arrested again on sedition charges following publication of another issue of the magazine reporting on the proposed founding of a new opposition political party. While in prison, he was named International Editor of the Year by the World Press Review, which called him "the boldest voice for a free press in a country whose intolerant government does not hesitate to shut down publications and where most journalists practice self censorship."

Imanyara is currently the Secretary General of the Forum for the Restoration of Democracy - Kenya. He continues to serve as editor of the Nairobi Law Monthly, and with Endowment support, he has also started the Nairobi Weekly, to continue human rights advocacy and to nurture a civil society in his country.

Imanyara is not alone in Kenya, or indeed in Africa, in defending democratic values and human rights. He has written "It is possible to crush a human body, for it is frail and finite.... But no one, however powerful, can crush an ideal."