NAIROBI—The UN Special Rapporteur Agnes Callamard has raised concerns over the number of Kenyans dying through extrajudicial executions.
The Rapporteur Agnes Callamard said cases of extra-judicial killings and police brutality are on the rise and that the police bosses have failed to take steps to comprehend the strict provisions of the law regarding the use of firearms and lethal force.
Callamard called for reforms in the police force to end what she said was the culture of impunity and disregard of the law, stressing the officers must work within the confines of the rule of law and respect for human rights.
According to the rapporteur, the increasing cases of extra-judicial killings can only be solved if the police bosses are held responsible for the behaviour of their juniors.
“Serial killers in uniform benefit from protection from those in authority. If the chain of command is held responsible, the trend will stop,” Callamard said.
The UN official, who was in the country to attend the Ushirikiano Mwema Kwa Usalama (UMKU) conference, expressed her shock in the manner in which security agencies mandated to protect locals were actually committing the atrocities and urged the independent police oversight Authority (IPOA) to take action and pursue all the reported cases to bring the vices to a stop.
She equated extrajudicial killings to denial of citizenship and added that extrajudicial killings point to a broader problem of police using excessive, unlawful force in the name of maintaining law and order and failing to comply with the law in ensuring all police killings are reported, investigated, and those responsible for unlawful killings are prosecuted.
“A victim’s family is devastated and loses hope in the country’s system,” Callamard said.
In her remarks, Independent Police Over- sight Authority (IPOA) Commissioner Praxedes Tororei noted that she was worried by the increasing cases of police killings and revealed that they have already convicted 6 police officers.
“I don’t know if police are killing more people or the citizenry are speaking out more, but there is an upsurge in cases of extrajudicial kill- ings. We cannot distance ourselves from these findings and we have already closed
6 cases with more 67 cases pending and which we are working on them,” she noted.
She said IPOA is closely working with human rights organisations to tame violation of human rights in the Coastal region and countrywide and urged the Inspector General of Police to hasten the implementation of community policing to improve the relations between the police and the public.
In the recently released statistics by the Mombasa based human rights group HAKI Africa dubbed “2019 State of Human Rights Report at the Coast of Kenya’ the Human Rights lobby group indicated that extrajudicial killing incidences in coast rose by 48 per cent in 2019 compared to 2018 where a total of 59 people were killed at the Coast.
The report singled out a March 2019 incident where 6 decomposing bodies of male adults were found at Tsavo West National park also revealed the Killings of Hesbon Okemwa a police officer in Lamu County and a DCI officer who was also killed in Taita Taveta county.
