John Anthony Kaiser

John Anthony Kaiser (November 29, 1932 – August 23, 2000) was a Roman Catholic priest and Mill Hill father from Perham, Minnesota, US, who was assassinated near his mission at Morendat, near Naivasha, Rift Valley Province, Kenya.

John Anthony Kaiser was born in Perham, Minnesota, USA.

John attended Saint John's Preparatory School and St. John's University in Collegeville, Minnesota, for two years before he joined the army in 1954.

He was a paratrooper and advanced to the rank of Sergeant.

He graduated from Saint Louis University in 1960 with a BA in English Literature.

While in St. Louis, he joined the Knights of Columbus.

From here, he went to St. Joseph Seminary in Mill Hill, England, where he studied from 1960 to 1964.

Kaiser was ordained in St. Louis for the Mill Hill Fathers in 1964 and was sent to their missions in Kenya.

Kaiser spent 20 years in the missions in the Kisii Diocese.

Over that time the Catholic population had doubled so that 48 priests were ministering to more than half a million Catholics in the diocese, many living in grinding poverty.

In 1993, he was reassigned to the Maela refugee camp in the Ngong Diocese.

Refugees fled to the camp as a result of tribal violence, armed gangs driving them from their homes and then torching the buildings.

Kaiser and others thought the government was fomenting the violence as part of a land grab.

Amid international attention, on Christmas Eve, 1994 the camp was closed and the refugees were forcibly resettled.

Kaiser protested the closing, but he was arrested, beaten, and released into the bush.

Following these events, Kaiser was reassigned to preach to the more distant Maasai at Lolgorian Parish.

In 1998, at great personal risk, Kaiser testified before the Akiwumi Commission, investigating the causes of the violence and the closing of the camp.

In public, sworn testimony, Kaiser fingered prominent cabinet ministers in the incumbent government, as well as the then-President, Daniel arap Moi.

His testimony was quashed.

Kaiser had also helped two schoolgirls in summer 1999.

The girls claimed they had been raped by Julius Sunkuli, a cabinet minister in the Moi government.

Sunkuli is alleged to have offered money for an abortion, but the girl, a fourteen-year-old named Florence, decided to keep her baby.

Kaiser put the girls in touch with the Kenyan Federation of Women Lawyers, FIDA-Kenya.

The attorneys submitted the evidence to the government, but Sunkuli was never charged.

Instead, police stormed the building where the girls were hiding.

In November, 1999, the Kenyan government tried to deport Kaiser, claiming that his work permit had expired.

Kaiser briefly went into hiding in Kisii before he was granted a new work permit, but only after intervention by the US Ambassador Johnnie Carson and Bishop Colin Davis of Ngong.

In March, 2000, the independent Law Society of Kenya presented Kaiser with its annual Human Rights Award, for his public testimony before the Akiwumi Commission and his support of the two girls.

They called him "a study in courage, determination and sacrifice on behalf of the weak, oppressed and downtrodden."

Kaiser knew of the dangers of speaking out in Kenya, and of a fate which had befallen many others.

In a book about his experiences at the Maela camp, he wrote a warning.

"I want all to know that if I disappear from the scene, because the bush is vast and hyenas many, that I am not planning any accident, nor, God forbid, any self destruction. Instead, I trust in a good guardian angel and in the action of grace."

- "If I Die," John Kaiser

On August 23, 2000, Kaiser was shot in the back of the head at close range with a shotgun.

His body was found at 6 am the next day beneath two acacia trees by a butcher named George, at Morendat junction on the Nakuru-Naivasha road in Nakuru county, Kenya.

He was carrying documents he intended to present to the Akiwumi Commission.

He was also to testify against the Moi government before the International Criminal Court in the Hague in three weeks.

The first police officers on the scene thought he had been murdered.

The report of the commission was released on October 18, 2002.

It confirmed the charges made by Kaiser, "indicted ... senior officials", and "accused senior officials of giving inflammatory speeches and in some cases financing persons responsible for the violence."