Rights groups call for Fr Kaiser commemoration

The Catholic Justice and Peace Commission of Kenya and the Kenya Human Rights Network on Thursday called for human rights activists to organise a commemoration service for 24 August, to mark the death of the American missionary priest Fr John Anthony Kaiser on that date last year. The Mill Hill missionary priest was found dead, with a gunshot wound to his head, at Morendat, on the Naivasha-Nairobi road, in what the groups believe to have been a murder incident, though security forces in Kenya and the US have considered it to have been suicide. The two groups called on those who were “committed to the [human rights] principles for which he died” to mark 24 August by saluting all the courageous men and women who have died in the cause of human rights, as well as to pressure the Kenyan government to order an inquest into Fr Kaiser’s death.

The circumstances surrounding Fr Kaiser’s death have not been fully or satisfactorily explained by the Criminal Investigation department of the Kenyan police, or the Federal Bureau of Investigation in the US, which concluded that the death was “more consistent with a suicide than a homicide,” according to the organisations. The priest’s death was but “the latest in a series of cleric and human rights activists who have died in mysterious circumstances, having clashed with government officials over their involvement in the promotion and protection of human rights,” they said. On 27 April this year, the Catholic bishops of Kenya issued a statement rejecting the FBI report and calling for an inquest in Fr Kaiser’s death.

In their statement on Thursday, the Catholic Justice and Peace Commission and the Kenya Human Rights Network also called on campaigners to urge the US government to review the FBI report in which it signalled that Fr Kaiser had probably committed suicide, but admitted that “this analysis is not a substitute for a thorough, well-planned investigation and should not be considered all-inclusive.” In addition, the groups called upon the Kenyan government to release the Akiwumi Commission report, which investigated the country’s land clashes of 1992-‘97. Fr Kaiser had presented his views to this Commission, implicating government officials in the clashes, in the year before he died, they added.