The desecration of our flag started long before the stadium incident

Youth during Gen Z protests in Nairobi. When youth carried the national flag to Parliament in the June and July protests, they were affirming their belonging to the republic.[File, Standard]

National symbols do not lose their sanctity in an instant. They erode when those entrusted with their defence betray their meaning. Therefore, the uproar over Somali youngsters allegedly desecrating Kenya's flag rings hollow.

To be honest, the desecration of our national flag did not begin last week. It began the day Gen Z youth, draped in the same flag, were gunned down in front of Parliament by police officers acting under the authority of the state.

Let us not be hypocrites. A flag is not sacred because of the cloth it is printed on. It is sacred because of the lives, values and freedoms it represents. When young Kenyans carried the flag to Parliament in June and July protests, they were affirming their belonging to the republic. They were declaring: this is our country too. State response was to mow them down with bullets, at the doorstep of the very House meant to give meaning to the flag.

If that was not desecration, then what is? Those now putting pressure on citizens to "say something" about the Somali youths are missing the point. Condemnation cannot be selective. It can not be loud when it involves a vulnerable minority but muted when the state itself violates the sanctity of the same flag. The government cannot wash its hands and pretend to be shocked at last week's incident. Children learn by imitation. If you ever find them relieving themselves behind the house at dawn, remember, they once saw their father or mother doing the same. The message here is: the state taught Kenyans how to treat their own flag. By turning it into a burial cloth for Gen Z martyrs, by staining it with blood at Parliament Road, by criminalising those who dared to wave it in defiance, the government itself authorised its desecration.

Let us also remember the context. Those Somali youths, whose arrest orders have been announced, were not acting in a vacuum. They were part of a society where the government itself models contempt for national symbols. A state that loots public coffers, weaponises security agencies, and rigs elections desecrates the flag every single day. Every bribe collected in the name of service, every abduction, every police bullet that silences dissent, all these are acts of desecration.

It is therefore hypocritical for this regime to unleash police on young Somali men for their actions while ignoring the deeper rot it has cultivated. The flag belongs to all Kenyans, Somalis included. Their frustrations can not be divorced from the larger national despair. They too, are citizens, equal stakeholders in a republic supposed to protect them, not criminalise them.

This is not to excuse wrong actions. Symbols matter. But justice demands consistency. You cannot cry foul at the symbolic gestures of frustrated youth while staying silent at the literal killings carried out under state command. A nation that ignores the cries of Gen Z while feigning outrage at symbolic acts of defiance is a nation walking blindfolded into hypocrisy.

What should worry us more than last week's incident is the dangerous precedent the government is setting. By ordering the arrests of these Somali youths while shielding police officers who murdered Kenyans in broad daylight, the state is institutionalising double standards. It is telling some citizens that their lives matter less, their voices count less, their grievances are expendable. That is the real desecration of the republic. Not just of the flag, but of the Constitution itself.

The flag has always carried a promise: unity, peace, and justice. Every time we see it raised, we are reminded of the blood shed by those who fought for independence. Yet today, the flag is being emptied of meaning. It no longer stands for shared sacrifice, but for state hypocrisy. It has become a banner of selective morality, defended when convenient, ignored when inconvenient.

The real task before us, therefore, is not to shout at Somali youths or issue token arrests. The task is to restore the sanctity of our symbols by living up to the ideals they represent. That means accountability for the killings outside Parliament. Reforming a police service turned into an armed wing of the regime. It means respecting dissent, protecting minorities, and ensuring equality before the law. Only then will our flag regain its sacred meaning.