Kenya’s foreign minister on Thursday said trade ties were the country’s priority as he responded to criticism about the kidnapping of a Ugandan opposition leader on its soil last year.
Kizza Besigye, 69, was abducted by armed men in the heart of the Kenyan capital in November and re-emerged a few days later at a military court in Uganda.
Kenya’s government had previously denied any involvement in Besigye’s abduction.
But in a television interview late Tuesday, Foreign Secretary Musalia Mudavadi admitted: “Kenya cooperated with the Ugandan authorities.”
In an interview with AFP on Thursday, he said Uganda was Kenya’s largest export market and Nairobi did not want to be seen as “fuelling or antagonising our neighbours”.
“If you destroy this relationship, how are you going to fill the earnings that feed into our budget?” Mudavadi said.
“We need to exercise restraint and decorum and respect in all our dealings… there is a lot at a stake,” he added.
Besigye is a former doctor to President Yoweri Museveni, who has ruled Uganda for nearly 40 years but turned against him and ran for the presidency on multiple occasions.
Rights groups say Besigye’s abduction and trial for treason, which carries a potential death penalty, are linked to next January’s election, when Museveni, 80, will once again seek re-election.
Mudavadi said Kenya “cannot play activism in matters of diplomacy”.
Kenyan presidential candidate Martha Karua, who is representing Besigye in his treason trial, this week denounced the admission that the government had assisted in the abduction.
“Kenya is admitting to being a rogue state,” she said, adding that the “arrangements of having Kenya security agencies assist in the abduction and rendition” were “completely outside of the law”.
Mudavadi did not respond to questions from AFP about the legality of Besigye’s deportation saying: “Kenya is not on trial.”
“There is an ongoing legal process taking place in Uganda. And if there is going to be any criticism, let it emerge from the court process in Uganda,” he said.
Activists say democracy and rights are being eroded across east Africa.
In neighbouring Tanzania, Kenyan activist Boniface Mwangi and Ugandan journalist Agatha Atuhaire were arrested and held “incommunicado” this week while attempting to attend the treason trial of another opposition leader, Tundu Lissu.
Tanzanian President Samia Suluhu Hassan said Monday that foreign activists would not be allowed to interfere in the country’s affairs.
The Kenyan government intervened to help secure Mwangi’s release on Thursday, Mudavadi said.
Atuhaire’s whereabouts remain unknown.
