Shocking Africa TV censorship continues with Kenya's 3 biggest TV stations that remain on black out and censored after the dictator Kenyan government of Uhuru Kenyatta forced NTV, KTV and Citizen TV off the air on Tuesday.
The Kenyan TV channels - carried on MultiChoice's DStv and GOtv pay-TV platform by DStv Kenya and other pay-TV providers like Zuku TV, StarTimes and Bamba TV - have been censored for 5 days now because Uhuru Kenyatta's scared government was fearful that the channels would broadcast the symbolic inauguration ceremony of the opposition leader Raila Odinga.
The shocking Kenya TV black out continues despite an urgent order by Kenya's High Court on 1 February ordering the government to end its censorship, for the TV stations' signals to be restored, and for the government not to interfere with the operations and broadcasts of KTN, NTV, and Citizen TV pending a full hearing.
Judge Chacha Mwita, in a case filed by Royal Media Services and the Africa Digital Network (ADN), issued an order "stopping the government or its agents from stopping or interfering with the petitioners exercising of television broadcasting freedom. They are also restrained from interfering with the petitioners’ transmission sites in Limuru or any other place in Kenya."
Kenya's propaganda regulator, the Communication Authority of Kenya was also ordered to "immediately restore and stop interfering with the independent TV signals on Signet, Zuku, GOtv, DStv, StarTimes and Bamba TV".
Kenya's state-owned and pro-government TV channel KBC, and the privately owned and also pro-government K24 TV that have links with Uhuru Kenyatta's family, both remain on air.
Kenya's trash-dumb and propaganda-filled Interior Ministry secretary Fred Matiangi had the audacity to say in a statement that if Kenya's TV stations broadcast the faux swearing-in ceremony - considered by the government as an "attempt to subvert or overthrow the government" that it "would have led to the deaths of thousands of innocent Kenyans".
Kenya's propaganda tsar, Joseph Mucheru, Kenya's minister of information, communication and technology, said his government's censorship of media and TV is "a security issue".
The unprecedented Kenya media censorship is shocking for the East African country that has been one of the few brighter beacons on the African continent, besides South Africa, as far as media freedom is concerned, with the draconian and dictatorial blackout that is a huge step back for Kenya's democracy and its public perception as an open society.
Kenya journalists are calling for an end to the "unprecedented intimidation of journalists".
The Media Council of Kenya calls the move by Kenya's dictatorial government "the the greatest threat and assault on freedom of expression and media in Kenya's recent history".
"This shutdown erodes the gains so far made in developing a free and responsible media industry and should never happen in a robust democracy that Kenya boasts of," the Media Council of Kenya said in a Facebook post. "As guaranteed by the Kenyan Constitution, media freedom should be guarded jealously at all times."
