ABSTRACT
Riot police equipped with heImets, shields, wooden batons, and tear gas circled the protesting mothers and slowly began walking toward them. The mothers of political prisoners demanding release of their sons sat singing under an open-sided canopy, protected only by Kenyan volunteers who waited on the grass in a circle around the canopy, arms locked with those next to them in defiance. One of the smallest yet most dramatic and effective human rights protests against the authoritarian regime of President Daniel Arap Moi was coming to a climatic moment.
