Over 10,000 Luos are calling for a referendum to allow them to leave Kenya and form their own country in response to claimed discrimination by the Kenyan government.
Petitioners from the Luo community, led by Ojijo Ogillo Mark Parscal, have asked the Milimani High Court to make orders ordering the government, through Attorney General Justin Muturi, to hold a referendum to allow Luos to leave Kenya.
“That the court orders the respondent (the Attorney General) to hold a referendum for Luos to leave Kenya and form their own state,” one of the orders sought says.
The nearly 10,000 petitioners want a referendum on a variety of grounds, including that the Attorney General (the respondent) has demonstrated consistent acts of discrimination, profiling, harassment, torture, and oppression of the Luos.
Over 103 years since declaration of Kenya as a colony by the colonialists in 1920, and up to 60 years after independence, Luos have consistently been profiled, hated, abused, threatened, tortured and harassed.”
“Unless the matter is addressed urgently, the ethnic profiling, discrimination, lack of development, and harassments shall continue and these shall prejudice, harm and limit the applicant’s submission to self-determination,” the applicants say.
“The right to self-determination consists of Luo rights to freely pursue their economic, social, and economic development, ideally through democratic governance,” he explains.
The petitioners also want the court to enable the Luos to secede from Kenya, claiming that denying them the right would amount to torture and colonisation, forcing the Luos to be a part of a community they do not want to be a part of.
