SUNJIR0

How did we get here?

- Following the passing of the “Kenya Finance Bill 2023” protesters took to the streets, at which point 6 people were killed by the police.
https://www.aljazeera.com/gallery/2023/7/13/deadly-anti-government-protests-roil-kenya
- Kenya’s public debt currently sits at nearly $80 billion USD, with a debt-to-GDP ratio of 68%
https://foreignpolicy.com/2024/06/26/kenya-ruto-finance-bill-protests-parliament-nato-eu-rutte-bolivia-coup/
https://www.ceicdata.com/en/indicator/kenya/government-debt--of-nominal-gdp
- Kenyan politicians earn 97 times more than the average citizen, the highest politician-to-population income inequality in the world.
https://www.vox.com/xpress/2014/10/21/7027417/politicians-overpaid-Kenya-inflated-wages
- Less than 0.1% of the population (8,300 people) own more wealth than the bottom 99.9% (more than 44 million people).
https://www.oxfam.org/en/kenya-extreme-inequality-numbers
- Immediately after Ruto became president in September 2022, he stopped subsidizing maize flour and fuel in response to the IMF.
https://jacobin.com/2024/03/imf-kenya-austerity-debt-william-ruto
- Ruto was taken taken to the International Criminal Court for his role in the 2007 post-election that killed over 1,300 people, but the case was dismissed on what many consider a technicality.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/apr/05/international-criminal-court-william-ruto-kenya-deputy-president-election-violence
https://www.hrw.org/news/2016/02/17/threat-justice-ruto-decision-cautionary-tale-icc-independence?gad_source=1

Kenya’s Parliament introduced the Kenya Finance Bill 2024 that would:
- Allow the Kenya Revenue Authority to access the financial accounts of any citizen without their consent.
- Increase taxes for use of internet, airtime, data, and money transfers (including but not limited to M-Pesa).
- Introduce a tax on digital content monetization, including income from sale of merchandise, crowdfunding fees, sponsored content, and online ads. This tax is in addition to, not a replacement for, content creator’s normal income tax.
- Increase taxes on fuel, bread, vegetable oil, sanitary products, diapers, batteries, and more.
- Change how taxes are calculated on alcohol and tobacco that could see a 40% or higher increase on items.
https://chatgpt.com/g/g-JBq7D0E5x-finance-bill-gpt

Deadly anti-government protests roil Kenya

Six people were killed in clashes between Kenyan police and demonstrators protesting against tax hikes.

Al Jazeera
Jul 2, 2024 at 3:59pmWeb
Show threadSUNJIR0Jul 2, 2024

In May, action began online primarily led by Gen Z through the hashtag #RejectFinanceBill2024 calling for people to contact their MPs to vote against the bill.
https://theconversation.com/kenya-protests-gen-z-shows-the-power-of-digital-activism-driving-change-from-screens-to-the-streets-233065

When this proved ineffective, people began calls to #OccupyParliament, marking the move to in-person protests starting on June 18th. This protest faced police resistance with tear gas and arrests, sparking outcry. Subsequent protests led to amendments to the bill but were met with more police violence, provoking calls for strikes and further protests across Kenya and the hashtag #RejectNotAmend.
https://www.financialfortunemedia.com/the-rise-of-africas-gen-zs-from-tiktok-x-to-the-streets/

Since the protests began, the police and Kenyan military have killed dozens (though the exact number is unclear), this combined with increased scrutiny of the president’s role in the austerity measures and (past and present) violence against civilians have led to the outcry that even if the bill is shelved, #RutoMustGo.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/6/27/kenya-protesters-call-for-president-rutos-removal-after-tax-bill-dropped

Before kicking off in person, the protests started online on TikTok, Instagram, and X. When the protests made their way offline, protesters distributed posters with organizing information, documentation of police brutality, and opportunities for mutual aid through these platforms.
https://theconversation.com/kenya-protests-gen-z-shows-the-power-of-digital-activism-driving-change-from-screens-to-the-streets-233065

As outcry was building around the bill, developer Kenyan developer Kelvin Onkundi created a GPT (like a specialized instance of ChatGPT) trained on the contents of the bill to help answer any questions citizens might have.
https://theconversation.com/kenya-protests-gen-z-shows-the-power-of-digital-activism-driving-change-from-screens-to-the-streets-233065
https://chatgpt.com/g/g-JBq7D0E5x-finance-bill-gpt

Kenyan politicians had their personal and business phone numbers leaked. Digital activists compiled these numbers and shared them across socials. One MP reported that they received over 30,000 texts as a result.
https://theconversation.com/kenya-protests-gen-z-shows-the-power-of-digital-activism-driving-change-from-screens-to-the-streets-233065

When Safaricom began throttling the internet causing region-wide connection issues, activists immediately began sourcing eSIMs from international telcom providers to ensure people could remain connected.
https://mastodon.social/@netblocks/112683046719533144
https://www.instagram.com/p/C8piBRpKllMR6FaX7JH1NKlA_6uCiDdBwo4xSc0/?img_index=1

Not only did the bill increase taxes for many physical goods, there were proposed tax hikes for digital goods and services, for use of data and mobile money transfers, and the erosion of the data protection act that would’ve allowed the KRA to access any citizen’s financial accounts.
https://chatgpt.com/g/g-JBq7D0E5x-finance-bill-gpt

Kenyan police and military have been making unlawful arrests and abducting people, primarily highly visible activists with large followings on social media.
https://www.standardmedia.co.ke/national/article/2001497817/concern-as-gabriel-oguda-more-influencers-allegedly-abducted-ahead-of-demos

Despite assurances from the government that there would be uninterrupted internet, on June 25th, there was a major disruption to internet connectivity throughout East Africa, with Kenya facing the greatest impact. Safaricom claimed that this was due to a undersea cables, but the internet freedom watchdog Netblocks has not found any evidence to support this claim.
https://mastodon.social/@netblocks/112683046719533144
https://nation.africa/kenya/news/kenyans-experience-interrupted-and-slow-internet-connections--4669366
https://techcabal.com/2024/06/27/safaricom-internet-outage-kenya/

Kenya protests: Gen Z shows the power of digital activism - driving change from screens to the streets

Kenyan activism is witnessing a shift from ethnic-based mobilisation to issue-based activism.

The Conversation
Show threadSUNJIR0Jul 2, 2024

With conflicting reports concerning police and military killings of civilians, the truth is caught somewhere between a media blackout and misinformation campaign that both favor the people in power.
People on social media have have reported mass killings by officers in Githurai, Juja, and Rongai with some placing civilian deaths at over 200. There are currently videos circulating of Kenyan police and military shooting indiscriminately, attempting to run protesters over with armored vehicles, and photos of children riddled with bullets at the hospital. Regardless of the number dead, the lack of reporting on the violence in these three locations at all could be considered a media blackout.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W0rbEweNuOU
https://www.nyongesasande.com/voices-silenced-remembering-the-martyrs-of-githurai-under-the-shadow-of-william-ruto-governance-in-kenya/
https://www.the-star.co.ke/news/2024-06-26-seven-bodies-booked-at-city-mortuary-after-anti-tax-protests/
https://nation.africa/kenya/counties/kajiado/anti-tax-protests-in-ongata-rongai--4672332
https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2024/6/27/not-afraid-to-die-kenya-tax-protests-inspire-broader-demand-for-change

However, the 2022 presidential election was rife with mis- and disinformation that if effective would result in positive outcomes for Ruto, including doctored videos of Barack Obama endorsing him for president. But even more similar to the reports of violence during these protests were the false claims that wild animals were on the loose and that the military had been deployed on the day before the election. Though we have good reason to believe that the police and military have killed people in these three locations, bad actors could be exaggerating the death toll to discourage people from protesting for fear of violence or death.
https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/africaatlse/2023/01/05/disinformation-was-rife-in-kenyas-2022-election/

Social media algorithms are a black box controlled by forces we are not permitted to understand. As the protests went on, many people posting about them on Instagram started to speak out around a sharp decline in views on content related to the ongoing struggle, while X users noted that the UI was using deceptive design to deprioritize #RejectFinanceBill2024
https://x.com/Shad_khalif/status/1803429735755583494

It is not a coincidence that many of the first major arrests and abductions were of people highly visible on social media, and the same can be said of police knowing protestor gathering points and routes. Because the state has access to social media, publicly posting about organizing plans opens yourself and your fellow protesters up to extreme risk.

State power and the techno-political power of social media empires go hand-in-hand. Global Witness reported that Facebook approved hate speech advertisements that promoted ethnic violence leading up to the 2022 election. As a result, Kenya’s National Cohesion and Integration Commission threatened to suspend Facebook’s service; however, several ministers blocked this action.
https://www.globalwitness.org/en/blog/is-facebook-putting-kenyas-democracy-at-risk/
https://www.voanews.com/a/kenyan-ministers-say-government-not-banning-facebook/6682585.html

Use mainstream platforms like Instagram and X for sharing educational materials, calls to action, and mutual aid; things that benefit from the network effects of millions of users, that you would not mind a cop seeing.

Donate what you can (money and eSIMs) to folks on the ground. For those outside of Kenya, both Wise and Sendwave allow you to send to M-Pesa accounts directly.
https://www.instagram.com/p/C8piBRpKllMR6FaX7JH1NKlA_6uCiDdBwo4xSc0/?img_index=1
https://wise.com/
https://www.sendwave.com/en

If you’re planning on taking any sort of mass action, organize securely using tools like Briar, Matrix, or Signal. If you want to reach more people than you can on messaging apps, consider joining or creating a private Mastodon server.
https://www.instagram.com/p/C8m_cTltPoT/
https://matrix.org/
https://servers.joinmatrix.org/
https://signal.org/
https://joinmastodon.org/

As you see evidence of human rights abuses (particularly around the massacres in Githurai, Rongai, and Juja) submit the media to archives. Archive.org allows you to upload various kinds of media, Sound Of Nairobi is creating an audio archive, and African Digital Heritage is creating a People’s Archive.
https://archive.org/create/
https://www.instagram.com/p/C8mgpnKIEHM/

LSK calls for independent investigations on ‘massacre’ meted on Githurai residents on Tuesday night

YouTube