By PETER MWAURA (Daily Nation)
It is a classical case of the pot calling the kettle black. That is, MPs in Kenya condemning China, as they did in an emotional outburst last week, for the sentencing of five Kenyans to death for drug trafficking and jailing at least 20 others to lengthy terms, ranging from 10 years to life.
Both countries have some of the most primitive punishment regimes for drugs crimes. They belong to a league of some 20 nations where if you are found with even a small amount of narcotics d you are liable to draconian punishment. These include Singapore, Malaysia, Iran, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
In Malaysia a mandatory death penalty is meted out to anyone caught with seven ounces of marijuana or half an ounce of heroin. In Saudi Arabia, drug traffickers get the same punishment as murderers and rapists — public beheading. In Iran, people caught with a few grammes of marijuana can be sentenced to receive up to 70 lashes.
In China, anyone caught trafficking 50 grammes or more of heroin is likely to be sentenced to life imprisonment or death. In Kenya, the situation is not significantly better. The punishment for trafficking hard drugs is life imprisonment and a fine of Sh1 million, or three times the market value of the drug, whichever is greater.
In China, the death sentence is normally pronounced as “death with two years’ probation”, and is generally reduced to life imprisonment at the end of the probation. That makes the sentence, for all practical purposes, the same as that prescribed by the Kenyan law. It is even lighter in the sense that it is not accompanied by a fine.
In Kenya, parliament passed in 1994 the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (Control) Act, which provides for the drastic and unbending punishment with no regard for rehabilitation, age, whether one is a first offender or why one uses drugs or traffics in drugs. Under the heavy-handed law, any person found with cannabis sativa (bhang) is sentenced to 10 years’ imprisonment. If one is found with any amount hard drugs such as heroin, the sentence is 20 years.
The punishment is even harsher for cultivating any of the prohibited plants, including cannabis. A person is liable to a fine of Sh250,000 or three times the market value of the prohibited plant, whichever is greater, or to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 20 years, or to both such fine and imprisonment. He also forfeits the land to the government.
Bad laws are like young chicken; they always come home to roost. Foreign minister Moses Wetang’ula has the embarrassingly moral task of convincing the Chinese that they should treat Kenyan drug offenders differently from others such as Ugandans, Zambians, Zimbabweans, Beninese and Nigerians who have also been imprisoned for life or lengthy terms, or executed, for drug trafficking in China.
China, not surprisingly, has so far shown no mercy to Africans caught smuggling drugs in China. On April 23, 2009, for example, Chibuzor Ezekwem, a Nigerian national, was executed for trafficking despite intervention by Nigeria. Mr Wetang’ula is being overly optimistic. He told Parliament last week that he intended to visit China “to see how we can commute the death sentences to life.”
He also wants “to see how we can exchange prisoners so that they can serve sentences in Kenya.” But prison conditions in China are better than in Kenya. Mr Wetang’ula will find the Chinese testy about drugs crimes. The disposition is historical. During the mid-1800s, the use of opium and the Opium Wars fought between Britain and China when the Chinese government tried to stop British merchants from illegally importing opium hugely shaped Chinese history and thinking about drugs.
China is also encircled by narcotic drugs-producing neighbours. Traditionally, the drugs flowed to Western countries. Now they have begun to flow into China, creating many problems for the Chinese. Kenya has no such historical justification for its stringent anti-drugs law.
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