Kenya MPs accuse police of harassment

Kenyan MPs following proceedings in parliament during a past session. [Photo:File/Standard]

By ALPHONCE SHIUNDU

NAIROBI; KENYA: Members of Parliament have now complained that police officers are harassing them.

It is a clear case where the lawmakers are being forced to respect the laws that they make, sometimes, with the law-enforcers clobbering them or their aides to toe the line.

The chairman of House Committee on Administration and National Security Asman Kamama said the harassment had become rampant to an extent that lawmakers were bombarding his committee with requests to tame the police officers.

Kamama made the remarks after Nyakach MP Owuor Aduma told the House about the suffering he’s undergone for the past month in the hands of police officers in Kisumu.

Aduma spoke about how he’s been harassed and taken to court on “charges on offences that do not exist”.

“As small as I am, they say I am capable of breaking into Kodiaga Prison (Kisumu) and releasing all the prisoners in Kodiaga,” said Aduma.

The MP gave a harrowing account about how his driver was beaten up and subsequently tortured by traffic police officers. He said the driver was arrested and taken to a cell in Kisumu, tied, and hang upside-down.

The torture in the hands of the police officers, Aduma told the House, caused the driver to suffer spinal injuries. The driver is admitted at the Intensive Care Unit at the Kenyatta National Hospital in Nairobi.

“I have received various threats from some of the security agents in the country which I do not want to take likely,” said Aduma.

Aduma said that because of the police harassment and his quest to tame the runaway insecurity in his constituency, he had been unable to do his job as MP in the House.

The MP tabled a list of 72 names of people in his constituency who had suffered in the hands of police officers, and those who had been victims to the marauding gangs of criminals with bows and arrows.

Aduma said he had knocked on all doors in government, from the Ministry of Interior to the Inspector General, but he had not received any response.

“I am concerned that if we cannot save Kenyans from criminals who are using bows and arrows, then, it will be difficult to save them from the terrorists who have been attacking us in places such as Westgate (in Nairobi’s Westlands area),” said Aduma.

Kamama noted that Aduma was “not the only one” who had suffered in the hands of law enforcers.

“This harassment by police officers must be brought to a stop,” said Kamama.

He said the Inspector General David Kimaiyo ought to be summoned to tell the House why his officers were harassing Kenyans.

He said the photographs of police officers beating up Aduma’s driver showed “brutality” that was last experienced in Kenya in 1988 when the Moi regime was stifling opposition.

“Looking at those pictures, you’d imagine that we are back to the dark days. They are the pictures we used to see in the mwakenya days. You don’t expect to see such pictures in these modern times,” said Kamama.

Deputy Speaker Joyce Laboso said Aduma had been through a “traumatic experience” and thus his problems had to be addressed.