- Human rights groups say police have long terrorised Kenyans and Covid-19 regulations have made beatings worse.
- They say poor people turned into ATMs by cops. They believe it’s a crime not to have money to bribe them.
Image: COURTESY
Last week demonstrators gathered outside the US Embassy in Nairobi to protest against the Minneapolis police killing of an unarmed black man, George Floyd, shouting “Black lives matter.”
The killing created worldwide outrage.
But the protesters had another message: Don’t forget Kenyan police and security forces also terrorise, disappear and kill people at an alarming rate.
Here’s a snapshot:
“I couldn’t stand the hunger from the pandemic and decided to see my MCA for help,” Jacob Odhiambo in Obunga, Kisumu said.
“I was attacked the moment I left the MCA’s home, beaten and dumped in a ditch to die,” Odhiambo, 34, said.
Image: JOHN CHESOLI
“I am lucky to be alive,” he told the Star.
Odhiambo said he was accosted on the way back, whipped, tortured, dragged along a tarmac road and left in a roadside ditch.
“I lost consciousness but woke up after heavy rains started. Because of the pain, I couldn’t move.”
He can’t remember if he was beaten by police alone, a vigilante group working with police, or both.
Boniface Ogutu, a human rights activist, said Odhiambo is among the few people who were horrifically beaten by police and lived to tell the tale. He said Odhiambo is too traumatised to report the attack.
Ogutu said most people victimised by the police also suffer due to intimidation or lack of knowledge about their rights, and the real number of sufferers is higher than reported.
“I know scores of people who don’t want to speak out or seek justice but they were beaten by the police. Most have damaged organs after the police used blunt objects.”
Rights groups profile 95 dead or missing
The Police Reform Working Group has profiled 95 people who have been killed, or disappeared since January this year on its website https://missingvoices.or.ke/facts-and-figures/
The groups include Amnesty International, Transparency International, the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights and Independent Medico-Legal Unit, among others.
To ensure the veracity of the data, they compiled all reports already published by organisations that have done field research and log their work once they fulfil the criteria of Missing Voice.
Once the website starts to receive tips, organisations of the Police Reform Working Group have created a referral system to follow up.
Human Rights Activist Boniface Mwangi said the figures are higher since most people are afraid to report or don’t understand the process of getting justice when victimised by police. They also add police are protected by the Interior ministry.
Interior CS Fred Matiang’i said last weekend, however, that rogue officers would not be tolerated and brutality must end. But he blamed a relative handful and said the vast majority of good police should not be tarred by the same brush of brutality.
Police spokesman Charles Owino said in an NTV interview on June 3, “Some of these police officers are very young, they can easily get drunk with the little power they have and do very wrong things.”
Image: ANDREW KASUKU
But Mwangi told the Star on the phone, “It is tough in slums, other informal settlements and for other poor people. The police see the poor as ATMs, where you just get money.”
“The police will fix you for a crime just to get a bribe. And they believe it’s a crime not to have money to bribe them.”
On Monday an officer allegedly raped a woman held at Manyatta police station on fraud claims. The woman, whose name cannot be made public, is recuperating at Embu Level 5 Hospital after undergoing surgery.
“The woman needs police protection after being discharged from hospital,” Embu nominated MCA Margaret Lorna Kariuki said.
Last Tuesday, Kenyans woke up to the killing of a homeless man in Nairobi’s Mathare area.
The elderly porter was allegedly shot dead by police officers who were enforcing the curfew at the Bondeni area.
“Here at home in Kenya, it’s not a race issue, not even a tribal one. When it comes to police brutality, we know it’s a class issue,” media personality Victoria Rubadiri said.
Another victim, carpenter Maurice Ochieng’, on Monday was pronounced dead on arrival at Kombewa Hospital in Kisumu after he collapsed at his workshop at Holo market. That followed injuries inflicted by police beatings, his wife said.
His crime?
he 40-year-old father of three was beaten and arrested for not wearing a face mask.
“Ochieng’ was briefly detained at Maseno police station but released when his condition worsened,” his wife Sela Akinyi said.
Yassin Moyo, 13, was shot dead 20 minutes before the 7 pm curfew on March 27 while on his third-floor home balcony in Kiamaiko estate, Nairobi. The case is infamous.
A police officer enforcing curfew was to be charged, others disciplined.
“I was watching the news at a friend’s house, while Yassin and my wife who was feeding our one-year-old child were seated on the balcony. Then I heard gunshots,” Yassin’s father, Yusuf Moyo, said.
“I heard my wife screaming and I rushed home to find Yassin wounded, gasping for breath,” he said.
Moyo said two shots were fired at his building. One struck his son in the stomach.
Yassin died at 3am while undergoing surgery and was buried on the same day at Kariakor Muslim Cemetery. He was a KCPE candidate at Valley Bridge Primary School in Nairobi.
“I met a mother who spent the night in the cold on election day 2017 to ensure UhuRuto were reelected. Today she is going to spend the night in the cold because her house was demolished by the very same government she believed in,” Boniface Mwangi said.
Ipoa swamped
The Independent Policing Oversight Authority established by Parliament in 2011, has opened investigations into 15 people killed and 31 others injured by police officers since President Uhuru Kenyatta announced a curfew would go into effect on March 27.
“About 87 complaints which include deaths, shootings, harassment, assaults resulting in serious injuries, robbery, inhuman treatment and sexual assault are currently being investigated by the Authority,” Ipoa said.
Among the cases, Ipoa is investigating that of a two-year-old girl who was tear-gassed in her parents’ house by police on patrol on May 26 In Kiamaiko, Nairobi.
Why? We don’t know.
The family, which stays on the second floor, said that the teargas exploded in their house. The child was suffocating. The police left.
The child is still medicated and suffers breathing complications and nosebleeds.
“She experiences regular shocks and is in and out of the hospital because of the police’s careless action,” the girl’s father Shamsu Abdikadir told the media at the Kiamaiko Social Justice Centre.
Mandela Cruvinix was also attacked by the police after he was found at home closing his mother’s window. Three officers descended on him with batons but he managed to escape when his family started shouting.
The family ran out to intervene and the police turned against them. They were saved by the community.
Then the cops had to run.
“Many others live in fear, nursing injuries and keeping away from heavily armed cops patrolling the slums and ghettos,” Kisumu rights activist Boniface Ogutu told the Star on the phone.