Nairobi — A State human rights watchdog on Tuesday criticised the government for introducing archaic, colonial, retrogressive and dictatorial regulations that were meant to undermine press freedom in the country.

The Kenya National Commission on Human Rights said that in gazetting the new broadcast media laws, the government had proved that it had lost touch with reality. "Prime Minister Raila Odinga came out to resolve the contentious issues with the media and now a Permanent Secretary is doing the opposite. Who is calling the shots?" posed KNCHR vice chairman Hassan Omar.

He asked the government to revoke the regulations because such suspicious operations portrayed it in bad light. He said that just like lawyers and doctors self-regulate, the media should be allowed to do so.

Meanwhile, the civil society, political and trade unions joined the media in condemning the new laws. The Media Owners Association has said that the regulations were crafted in bad faith. "We think the regulations were done in bad faith and we have no intention of respecting them," said MOA chairman Linus Gitahi as he called for consensus on the way forward. "The idea was to form a Broadcasting Council to develop the regulations," Mr Gitahi said. "No other body should have done that."

The International Center for Policy and Conflict, Release Political Prisoners Trust and several trade unions reacted furiously to the laws that also banned them from getting licenses to run television or radio stations, saying that the era of such "narrow-minded" leadership was long gone in Kenya.

The chairman of the Kenya Editors' Guild, Mr Macharia Gaitho, described the regulations as retrogressive and obnoxious. The ministry of Information, he said, had employed subterfuge and deceit in publishing the regulations despite an agreement with media stakeholders last year. Mr Odinga mediated the dispute.

Mr Gaitho recalled that when the industry opposed repressive amendments to the Communications Act, Mr Odinga called a meeting attended by both the ministry and media representatives. Both sides agreed on a proposal tabled by Attorney-General Amos Wako, that removed the clauses seen by the media as repressive.

However, Mr Gaitho said, the ministry had gone behind the agreement by re-introducing, under the guise of regulations, the offensive sections struck out from the Act.

Elsewhere, the Parliamentary Committee on Communication is set to hold a meeting with stakeholders in the media industry to address concerns raised by the gazettement of the new laws.

The committee's chairman, Mr James Rege, said on Tuesday that the meeting will comprise members of his committee, government representatives, media owners and the Media Council of Kenya. "I believe that such a meeting would help unlock any issues that the gazettement of the new broadcast laws may have created," he said in a telephone interview with the Nation.

The toughest rules include censorship of content, limiting sex talk on FM radio stations and adult movies on television to after 10 pm, banning cross media ownership and setting rules for political coverage during general elections.

In Kitale, Ufungamano initiative secretary Bishop Julius Mbagaya and Kitale's Catholic diocese bishop Maurice Crowley said they will support the media in the war to block the new laws which they described as dictatorial.