Police brutality: We have blood on our hands

Why did it take a foreign media house to reveal what every Kenyan knows happens, but rarely dares to say? Why did it take global outrage for our own institutions to even acknowledge these atrocities? Is our media muzzled by the State?

Let us not pretend this is new. Blood has long stained the hands of our law enforcers. The River Yala bodies. The missing young men from Majengo, Kibra, Kayole and Mathare. Protesters were gunned down in 2007, 2013, 2017, 2023. Children were shot while playing on balconies. Unarmed demonstrators executed.

Where were our voices then? Why did we not flood the streets with the same fury we show now? Why did we not flood our timelines, our WhatsApp groups, our pulpits and stages, with our rage?

There is something wrong about a country that selectively mourns its dead. That cries for Gen Z but was silent when bodies were pulled out of the Yala River. That weeps over police bullets in Nairobi’s CBD but shrugged when protesters were killed in Kisumu and Mathare.

Here’s the truth: many Kenyans are only outraged when the victims look like them, talk like them, or protest for causes they support. And if you can justify the murder of one Kenyan but condemn that of another, you are the problem.

There are no good deaths in the hands of a bad system. No justifiable bullets in the heart of a protester. No “acceptable” killings. We must grieve all of them or none at all.

We are still deep in the woods, and we are not getting out anytime soon. Not because we lack resources or intelligence or strength, but because we lack honesty. Because we lack the courage to confront our own double standards.

So yes, be angry. Be devastated. Demand justice for Gen Z. But while you’re at it, spare a thought for the nameless, faceless Kenyans who died in silence, without a BBC camera to record their last breath.

Joan Akinyi Opon