Outrage after cops force rioting Maseno University students to crawl

Maseno University students during a riot at the college on Sunday, November 4, 2018. /COURTESY
Maseno University students during a riot at the college on Sunday, November 4, 2018. /COURTESY

Kenyans on Twitter have expressed their anger at the police for brutalising rioting Maseno University students on Sunday.

This was after videos emerged

of police forcing some of the learners to crawl on a murram road to a waiting vehicle.

Other videos showed the officer storming hostels to eject the rioting students. Gunshots are heard in the recording.

Embakasi East MP Babu Owino condemned the act saying it was time action was taken to end police brutality.

"What the police is doing to Maseno University students is WRONG and thus must be condemned in the strongest terms possible!," he said in a tweet.

The students were protesting the detention of their colleagues who had gone to Maseno police station to report an alleged attack on their colleagues on Saturday night.

The students paralysed transport and lit bonfires on the Kisumu-Busia highway, blocking flow of traffic for hours.

A twitter user, @mwanetuz, claimed the police used live bullets in the operation to flush out the learners.

"This is wrong. Firearms must only be used to save or protect life or in self-defense against imminent threat to life or serious injury," the user said.

Bravin, another user, reminisced when he studied at the University of Nairobi (UON) where GSU officers beat students in hostels and lecture halls for demonstrating.

Anti-riot police were in September last year captured assaulting and beating UON students using batons, whips and kicks at their halls of residence.

"It doesn't matter how many stones students throw at the police. Using live bullets on students is unacceptable. The police are trained well enough to handle terrorists and students aren't even half of what terrorists can do. The police have shields," Bravin said.

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Generali Kiprotich called on Interior CS Fred Matiangi to come in and easen the situation.

"Now the police who should be protecting the students are turning to be murderous. Definitely this is not how to go about it," he said.

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