Anti-riot police officers on patrol along Moi Avenue, Nairobi during anti-Finance Bill protests on June 27, 2024.
You have watched the viral video of Trevor Mureithi – the 20-year-old first year student at Multimedia University – down on the ground helplessly writhing in pain, as three anti-riot police officers set up a teargas canister to explode on him at the university premises last week.
He makes a last-ditch effort to drag his body to the side just in time before the missile blows up missing by a whisker his already brutalized lower limbs.
It’s not the image of the national police service Kenya would love beamed to the human rights world, but that is what God has given us, and we shall return to His house tomorrow with joy and thanksgiving.
Two years ago, when the Kenya Kwanza government went round the country promising university students freedom from sons and daughters of dynasty who did not believe in God, the whole country was pregnant with hope that finally heaven had answered our call for a leadership that stuck their gaze at policy issues affecting the most distressed demographic of our country. We voted with rage promising to punish the enemies of our friends.
It did not last long before the script flipped on us.
We cannot say we never saw this coming, but in everything we have been taught to give thanks. And so we shall return to the house of the Lord tomorrow to mark two years of pain and misery, but with joy and thanksgiving.
Watching that viral video of Master Trevor begging the police to spare his life, one is left to wonder what the police want from young people of Kenya.
The country is still healing from the chaotic scenes of two months ago when young people left home to peacefully protest at bad governance only for them to return in body bags.
The police have a bad reputation out here from that dark period in our country’s near history, but instead of working towards mending fences with those they have hurt deeply, they’re more determined to switch off the remaining lights by whatever means necessary.
Trevor, and his comrades in the struggle, did not do any wrong to warrant the hammer coming down on him in the manner in which it did.
His only crime was that his level of human dignity could not allow him and his college mates to live in unsanitary conditions inside student hostels, which included lack of clean running water, moody internet connection, faulty reading lights and a general lack of accountability in the fees they pay through the nose.
Instead of calling for a public participation forum to meet them halfway, the university management opened the gates for the riot police to walk all over the students with weapons meant for fighting the war on terror.
After hours of seeking safety praying for the mayhem to die a natural death, the riot police cornered Mureithi outside one of the hostels, walked on him like a tractor on virgin land before pulling the pin out of a teargas canister and throwing it next to his ailing body. It blows up right on cue, but luckily he moves his head away just in the nick of time.
Suppressing riots is part of the key performance indicators of police officers on duty for which their monthly pay slips are judged on. We understand that, alright, but why would a public officer charged with maintaining law and order stretch the boundaries of decency to plant an explosive devise next to a wounded university student who is visibly begging for grace?
Even if Kenya were to be a failed state and the police be under instruction to maim anything that moves, in what world would storming a university and brutalizing helpless students be part of your job description?
For far too long, this country has buried its head in religion and claimed to be a Godly nation where everything begins and ends with the bowing of heads even when it’s clear we do not mean those things we say under the guise of prayer. The level of brutality that the police have meted on young people in this country exposes the bitterness of the state towards the promise of the youth.
It’s disheartening watching able bodied men, who are supposed to be of sound mind, run over harmless children the age of their sons, with reckless abandon expecting the country to normalize that kind of retrogressive personality behaviour.
There are those public policy commentators who have pinned this backwardness down to the negative mental state of our policemen and women, urging for the need to have their training manuals revised to reflect 21st century realities.
There are providing excuses for bad behaviour and opening the door for more atrocities committed under the guise of poor state of mental wellbeing.
Police officers need to know that the God who gave them life is the same one who expects them to protect that of others – there shouldn’t be two ways about it. Walking over your son’s age mate in the manner in which those officers did to Trevor only goes a long way in boiling the blood of the young people.
When Trevor’s mum finally caught her breath and spoke on her son’s situation, she asked a pertinent question which the government should use to gauge the pulse of the nation: “As a normal Kenyan these days, what can you do? Go to the police station and again try and complain to the same people. We can't be able to stop them. They can always do the same thing again. They can do that to anybody else.”
It should worry the government that Kenyans are losing faith in the police service, our justice system, parliament, and any other state organ installed by our constitution to safeguard our rights to decent life and peaceful coexistence.
For a parent to speak helplessly like that, on a pertinent issue as that of the failure of the government to protect their children from harm, should be enough indicator to the level of public angst in the country right now.
At a time when the country is still nursing the pain from the events of June 25th, there is need for the new Inspector General of Police to get down to work and summon his officers for a national conversation about their relationship with the public, going forward.
History teaches that a stitch in time might save nine.
