Sylvester Muigai Ndungu.
“When I found him, half of his head had been split open. His clothing was soaked in blood.” These were the words of Lucy Kagure as told to the BBC following the death of her son, Sylvester Muigai Ndung’u. A 17-year-old became one of the victims of senseless killing by the police in Kenya.
He is one of the people who died following protests against the establishment of US-sponsored quarantine facilities in Laikipia. His mother says he had gone to pick up his uniform from his aunt and got caught up in the skirmish. No mother should ever be subjected to the pain of losing a child brutally at the hands of the police, whose mandate is to maintain law and order and not kill children.
Police denied their involvement in the unlawful killing. Their theory is that Sylvester was killed by a tear gas canister and not live bullets. What difference does it make? Both are weapons abused by the police during protests and have led to loss of lives many times over in Kenya. Police also had the temerity to register Sylvester as ‘unidentified male’ at the mortuary, where his mother found him after a frantic search for him for days.
Live ammunition
No human being walking the length and breadth of this world is unidentifiable. Only systems and regimes devoid of humanity, compassion and empathy would throw the body of a child unlawfully killed in a mortuary and have the audacity to strip him of his identity.
Sylvester’s death now must call for a rethink on the use of live ammunition and tear gas by the police. There have been far too many innocent lives lost during protests. Kenyans have the right to peaceful protests. Protests getting out of hand is no reason for the police to turn to killer machines and open fire on innocent and unarmed Kenyans, including children. Police in Kenya have made a habit of turning protests into war zones with no consequences. Picking out one or two police officers and punishing them for a crime more often sanctioned by their superiors is not the way to end police brutality.
Article 37 of the Constitution states: “Every person has the right, peaceably and unarmed, to assemble, to demonstrate, to picket and to present petitions to public authorities.” It is understandable that protests can get out of hand as they are, by their nature, emotive. However, unrest is still no excuse for the police to brutalise and unlawfully kill protesters in the name of maintaining law and order.
Police get overzealous in appeasing the powers that be, forgetting that the lives they are taking based on orders from above are their neighbours and in some cases, kith and kin. Police are meant to be their brothers’ and sisters’ keepers, not murderers.
Power to arrest
Police have the power to arrest those who cause disturbance during protests and arraign them; that is the fair legal process. They have no power to be the police, prosecutors, judges and executioners. Reasonable use of force does not in any way equate to taking innocent lives and unlawfully killing protesters. Such powers do not accrue to the police.
As the memorial for the June 25 Gen-Z killings is about to take place this week, there are concerns that police are bound to employ the same brutal tactics during demonstrations. June 25 should be the turning point for how Kenya controls demonstrations and protests. Kenya has cheapened human lives and has now gone as far as taking the lives of children, who, in many cases, are innocent bystanders. Many young boys have been unlawfully killed by the police when all they have been doing is running errands for their mothers.
It may be easier to heal from the loss of a child who died in an accident or illness, but a child lost at the hands of the police through brutality is not a wound that can easily heal. Many mothers still grieve from the death of their children at the hands of the police. June 25 is bound to reopen those wounds for many mothers who lost their children to police brutality following protests in 2025. For how long are mothers going to shed tears?
Sylvester’s mother says she brought him up on her own and looked forward to him growing up to be an exemplary citizen, as he hoped to become a priest when he grows up. The irony of him dying unlawfully in a church-going country is incomprehensible.
It is about time to rein in the brutal force used by the police during protests and at any time while out in the streets. Their tactics are undermining the constitutional notion that every life is sacred. Police in Kenya are playing God. They are not!
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The writer is a legal researcher ([email protected], @kdiguyo).
