Rights activist: No goodwill to hold police accountable

Human rights activist Davies Okombo. [File]

As cases of abductions and enforced disappearances surge, human rights activists cite lack of political goodwill by the Kenya Kwanza administration to hold rogue police officers involved in the vice to account.

According to Davies Okombo, a human rights activist, successive governments inherited the practice of misusing the police from the colonial government as a strategy to stifle dissent, saying the current regime could not end police brutality as it serves its interests.

“We lack political will to make police accountable for their actions and this has a historical background from the days of colonial rule when the British used police to enforce their rules and violate the rights of the people of Kenya. Immediately after independence, the government of that time also misused police and even began enforced disappearance,” Dr Okombo observed.

Citing the unresolved murders of JM Kariuki and Robert Ouko, he decried the culture of the government giving illegal orders to police to violate the very rights of Kenyans for which the President took an oath to protect.

“If you look at the theories of government, how governments came into being, how constitutions came into being and so on, it was all about the Leviathan state, the state that had excessive powers,” he said.

Dr Okombo maintained that the National Police Service had no powers on its own, reminding the officers that by abducting Kenyans, they were abusing the sovereign power of the people.

Last week, advocate  Abshir Ahmedsadak was abducted by armed men, while last month, Tanzanian opposition leader Twaha Mwaipaya was abducted in Machakos.