Debate on police executions calls for a broader approach

The execution of two young men in Eastleigh, Nairobi, last week, is just the latest incident of police violence against suspected criminals. As dramatic as this case was, it was not unusual. According to the Independent Medico-Legal Unit (IMLU), the police killed 144 people last year, of whom 122 were summarily executed.

What has been a bit perplexing for observers is that this violence is often accompanied by popular support. The ongoing debates about the Eastleigh shootings have shown this. But the three-day protest by Githurai residents against the arrest of a popular policeman for the death of a young man in their neighbourhood remains the most spectacular display of popular support for policeviolence.

In the wake of the Eastleigh shootings, the discourse has followed similar patterns. Those arguing for the police officers to be held accountable for their actions have come under tremendous attack from proponents ‘tough’ policing. Both of these views are incomplete and therefore misleading.

In my view, the dichotomisation of human rights and security is completely unhelpful, and is partly the reason why we never get things right. The human rights arguments are as inadequate for solving security and justice challenges for citizens as violence has been. The challenge for the proponents of the human rights approach is that they tend to treat human rights as if they exist outside the realm of politics. This is a fundamental misconception which is strongly challenged by people supporting violence that targets them.

When people have to deal with actual threats, the idea of human rights is laced with political undertones. Basically, it is difficult to convince people whose rights are not respected, to promote and protect the rights of (suspected) criminals. As South African scholar Julia Hornberger has argued, respecting the rights of suspected criminals in a context where nobody else’s rights are respected, appears as privilege. This, coupled with their perceived absence in other time, leads people to conclude that they only care about criminals.

Meanwhile, the proponents of violent policing seem to hold onto an idea of crime control that has been disgraced by history. As I have argued before, if violence – or the threat of it – was all we needed to deal with crime as the proponents of this view seem to believe, there would be no crime in Kenya currently seeing as we have not been lacking in violence. The persistence of insecurity shows that the hard-edged approaches do not work.

Evidently, none of these approaches can fully explain why things are they, and perhaps rightfully so. Comments suggesting that those who oppose police violence should call human rights activists the next time they are attacked by thieves, shows a complete misunderstanding of the issue.

Justice outcomes

The fundamental role of the state is to protect its people from threats. Among others, the state executes this mandate through the police. Even though the police are allowed to use force as they execute their role, the purpose remains to protect – not for them to become a threat. In other words, the work of the police is to generate both security and justice outcomes. That is, deal with insecurity and protect human rights. There are many ways of dealing with insecurity, including the use of force. The police ought to identify criminals and ensure that they are brought to justice. It is therefore troubling when police report that victims of extra-judicial killings were ‘well known armed robbers’ or ‘linked to a criminal gang.’ Instead of lining up to congratulate them, we should perhaps ask why people who were known to be criminals had not been brought to book.

But instead of questioning it, we tend to take the projected view with an undertone of exclusion for the undesirable members of our society. We seem to be carried by the idea, as a Githurai resident told me, that ‘thieves should not live among people.’ In other words, thieves are not human beings.

Once an individual’s humanity is brought to question, their rights can be taken away without consequence. This is the root of the support we see for police violence. It is also the reason why many people tend to conflate the two issues. The proponents of ‘tough’ policing wonder how the issue of rights can arise when police kill a non-human being. Of course, these seems innocuous and distant until the category of ‘killable’ people begin to expand. Here, Willie Kimani’s case comes to mind.

As long as we do not treat security and human rights as two sides of the same coin. We are doomed to fail every time.

—The writer is a researcher and analyst in Nairobi

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