By Human Rights Watch
Published August 2, 2022
Kenya’s history of election-related violence and the failure of the authorities to address accountability for past abuse by police heightens the risk of police brutality around the general elections slated for August 9, 2022.
With just seven days to another general election, Kenyan authorities have yet to take steps to ensure justice for police abuses that characterized the 2017 general elections.
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Families of victims of past elections, activists, government officials and police officers have expressed concerns about possible violence if the August 9 presidential election results are disputed.
“The failure to tackle police abuse in previous Kenyan elections risks emboldening them to continue their misconduct around this year’s general election,” says Otsieno Namwaya, East Africa director at Human Rights Watch. “Kenya’s government needs to enforce police accountability, including by restarting stalled police reform, and ending political interference of the police to end this worrying trend.”
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Addressing the lack of accountability for police abuses has been hampered by political interference in police work, investigative failures by the oversight authority, a lack of police cooperation in investigating abuses by police, a lack of political will to end the abuses and ensure accountability, and stalled police reforms.
Another problem is the lack of budgetary independence of the police service and the Oversight Authority, which government officials have leveraged to undermine the independence of the two institutions. Kenyan authorities have also undermined the quest for accountability by their actions, including stopping the police vetting process in 2014, reinstating vetted officers earlier fired for their role in abusive practices, and weakening laws enacted over the past decade that aimed to enhance police accountability.
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Many of the people interviewed for this report say they are worried that police will respond abusively to violence or public protests around any election results’ disputes after the August voting. Several activists express concerns that the elections come at a time when the country is experiencing ongoing extrajudicial killings and disappearances, including those with alleged police involvement.
Rights groups have documented excessive use of force by police, including execution of suspects and innocent bystanders between 2018 and 2020. Even though the identities of some individual officers implicated in the killings are known, Kenyan authorities have done little to end these killings. Kenyan authorities have also failed to investigate reports of threats by police against activists calling for accountability.
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Current and former employees of the Oversight Authority say police and other government officials frustrated the authority’s efforts to investigate and prosecute officers implicated in the 2017 killings.
One former official said that, despite repeated written requests and a court order during an inquest into one of the killings, the police have declined to release the operational orders that were crucial to the authority’s ability to identify the officers who did the killing. The current and former officials say that police and other senior government officials intimidate witnesses, shield errant officers from justice, refuse to abide by legal requirements to inform the Oversight Authority whenever a death occurs, and block officers from testifying against other officers. One says that allowing police to operate without name tags makes it difficult for victims and witnesses to identify abusers.
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Allowing police officers to block investigations into serious abuses not only undermines justice for the victims, but also negatively impacts police credibility.
The Commission of Inquiry into the post-election violence of 2007 found that police had raped, looted, and killed at least 405 people, among other abuses, and recommended police reforms to address systemic failures and partisanship within the police as well as some level of civilian oversight.