Police Brutality Continues to Play a Central Role as Kenyans Demand Better Governance

The shooting of the face mask vendor was captured on camera by bystanders, including graphic pictures from the on-ground crew of the Associated Press. The victim, 22-year-old Boniface Mwangi Kariuki, was confronted by two police officers who assaulted him before one of them shot him in the head at point-blank range.

The Kenyatta National Hospital, where Kariuki was taken after he was shot, stated earlier today that Kariuki is under intensive care and on mechanical ventilation, following surgery to remove the bullet that struck the left side of his head. The hospital noted that Kariuki suffered “severe brain injury and excessive damage.”

16 people were admitted to the Kenyatta National Hospital, including an unidentified patient who sustained a skull fracture from an apparent assault. Four patients are scheduled for surgical procedures.

Many Kenyans have grown weary of the police, due to widespread brutality by officers, as exemplified in the Ojwang and Kariuki cases, as well as the fatal force that peaceful protesters are often met with.

“The perception towards the police has dropped a lot since [last year’s protests], considering it was still low then, but it has actually dropped a lot,” Mack Marangu, an IT consultant and community mobilizer, tells OkayAfrica. “We’ve experienced a lot of killings from the police and a lot of injuries.”

Kenya’s National Police Service (NPS) is widely seen as preserving the government’s interests through brutal crackdowns and repression of civil rights. In addition to fatal murders and injuries to unarmed demonstrators, the police have been accused of rampantly abducting activists and citizens critical of the government and high-ranking officials, a trend Kenyan President William Ruto promised to stop – and has failed to do.

Tuesday’s protests were particularly jarring for the widespread reports that police were seemingly colluding with hired, armed thugs. In several viral videos shared to social media, men wielding clubs can be seen running alongside police vans, reportedly headed towards where demonstrations were happening. Also, several images shared on social media showed police officers carrying laptops and a smart TV, allegedly spoils of a looting spree. However, the NPS said the laptops were recovered from a suspect, a statement most Kenyans online aren’t buying.

It’s similar but also different to last year’s protests, where thugs looted buildings and committed arson to give police officers reasons to attack protesters. “They paid goons who were armed with sticks and stones, and on motorbikes, who literally caused a lot of havoc. They were fighting the protesters, and a lot of protesters were injured,” Marangu says of Tuesday’s demonstrations.

While the protests in the past week-plus have been centered around calls for justice for Ojwang, who died after being abducted and tortured by the police, they tie into the long-running agitation by Kenyan youth for better governance. A year ago, mass protests took place after an unpopular finance bill was signed into law. President Ruto scrapped the bill a few days after the protests started; however, his government is now deeply disliked by many young Kenyans.

Considering the trend across Africa, Kenyans will be facing an incredibly difficult task in attempting to demand better governance from their leaders through protests. However, Marangu believes that there’s a level of tenacity the Kenyan youth population has attained over the past year that should help lead to impact.

“Before last year’s protests, people hadn’t been protesting in Kenya for a while,” he says. “People were used to stashing things down, waiting for change to just happen, but we witnessed a lot of corruption in the government early last year, so when people went to the streets, they weren’t only against the finance bill. We wanted the government to improve the way it accounts for public money and to reduce wastage, but this change has not been reflected in the budgets that have been read, and even this year’s finance bill.”

Despite the odds against any civil rights movement, especially with the track record of police brutality playing a central, ominous role in protests in Kenya, Marangu sees widespread participation as a huge win. “This is really important because there’s a lot of impunity in government, and leaders do not want to pay any attention to what the citizens are saying,” he says.

“Success right now looks like more and more people turning up for these protests because that is how we’re continuously raising awareness for the injustices that are currently occurring and we hope that we are able to send a message, not just to the government, but to the rest of the Kenyans who are still not yet awake to the fact that we have a hardheaded regime in government.”