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Veteran Kenyan journalist Patrick Mayoyo is seeking protection from the United Nations (UN) after he received threats following investigative reports he published.
Speaking to Kenyanpress on Tuesday, August 10, Mayoyo confirmed that unknown people have been tracking him down and that he now lives in constant fear.
“These people are hunting me down like a rat over some stories I did, my life right now is in danger,” Mayoyo told Kenyans.co.ke.
The veteran journalist says he started receiving threats after writing a piece titled: Kenya on the Global Radar Over Poaching and Trade in Wildlife Products, highlighting rampant illegal wildlife trade.
The threats, he says, intensified after he authored another opinion piece titled: World Press Freedom Day: Who Killed Them and Why? The opinion piece focused on the rising cases of journalists disappearing or getting murdered.
The piece, published on the World Press Freedom Day, exposed how two female journalists, among others, were killed by unknown people while in the line of duty.
“I am constantly being trailed and my daily activities monitored by a network of people. I am being terrorised by strangers who take my photographs on the streets without my authority among other violations,” Mayoyo says.
“I want the dubious activities against me by security agents stopped with immediate effect and my safety and security guaranteed.”
The award-winning journalist claimed that his food has been intoxicated in three separate incidents that have greatly contributed to his health deterioration.
He is now calling for the UN to protect him from the impending danger to his life.
Mayoyo is an experienced investigative journalist who has won a number of prestigious awards. He won the CNN African Journalist Awards 2014 (Environment category), 2014 African Climate Change and Environmental Reporting Award (online category and overall winner), and the 2013 East Africa Community Awards’ Environment Reporting award first runner-up.
In 2015 he won the European Commission’s Lorenzo Natali Media Prize. He is the former news editor for Nation Africa formerly known as Daily Nation.
