Civil society groups now say independent international bodies should investigate police response to the Azimio protests in 2023 and the June 2024 Gen Z revolt that led to deaths and injuries.
The consortium of lobbies that include the Kenya Human Rights Commission, Transparency International, Defenders Coalition, Creco, Tisa, Okoa Uchumi, Inuka and ICJ among others, say the government cannot be trusted to investigate itself when its security agents are the suspect.
“We want bodies like the United Nations to step in and investigate what really happened during the Azimio protest of 2023 and the Gen Z protest of June when massive deaths, arbitrary arrest and abductions ensued,” Davis Malombe, the executive director of KHRC said.
“We cannot trust the very government that has committed these atrocities to be the one to investigate what happened. The best they will do is to cover up and this means families will remain without justice,” Malombe said.
The statement by the lobbies follows findings by the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights that it documented 1,376 cases of arbitrary arrests, 610 cases of injuries and 74 enforced disappearances from June 18 to November 2024.
KNCHR says these injuries were sustained in the course of the demonstrations and ranged from deep fractures, bullet wounds and soft tissue injuries.
Others are inhalation of tear gas and that most of the injuries were inflicted by the security officers against the protesters.
The civil society bodies say the report was a validation of the concerns among Kenyans that the country was headed in the wrong direction, and that the alleged police atrocities were reneging on the President’s promise.
“Ironically, it’s this President who promised that none of these acts of human rights violations were going to take place under his administration,” they said. “What we witnessed during the pro-good governance demonstrations against the Finance Bill 2024 in June and July was at a scale we never witnessed even at the height of the Moi dark days,” they said.
“We believe that Ruto’s regime ought to be investigated for the country to establish what exactly happened during the 2023 Azimio-led demonstrations and the 2024 Gen Z-led #rejectFinance Bill demonstrations.”
KHRC’s senior advisor on transitional justice Martin Mavenjina said the country’s human rights record continues to be stained by the sustained cases of abductions, extrajudicial killings and enforced disappearances now involving international victims.
Mavenjina said the news that Ugandan opposition leader Kizzah Besigye had been abducted in Nairobi as he attended the book launch by Martha Karua plus the recent refoulement of Turkish nationals seeking asylum in the country is alarming.
“These incidences are not isolated. This government is now exposing its bad manners for all to see, even at the international scene. Nairobi has become a play ground of foreign intelligence agents and no one is safe,” he said.
The lobbies also dismissed before hand the State of the Nation Address by the President to be delivered on Thursday in Parliament as a public relation exercise that will be tone deaf and withdrawn from reality of most Kenyans.
They said their statement was to counter the President’s version of the state of the nation to relay what they believe as the true state of affairs.
“As President William Ruto prepares to present his State of the Nation Address to the joint sitting of Parliament on Thursday, we wish to issue this people’s state of the nation report to help Kenyans understand that the President’s report shall largely be a PR address to tick boxes as required by Article 132 of the constitution,” the lobbies said.
The lobbies also lambasted state
bodies like ODPP for alleged laxity
in doing their jobs, making corruption thrive with impunity and
without accountability.
