Police Are Still Routinely Executing

Police are still routinely executing young men according to the Release Political Prisoners Trust. This lobby group claims to have discovered at least 35 cases of young men who have been executed under the current reign of Police Commissioner Matthew Iteere. In all cases, the young men were killed by multiple gunshots from a high caliber weapon belonging to the police. Th RPP believe that there are many more such incidents that go unnoticed.

The youth that the police frequently execute are generally ex-gang members called matatu . The police also collaborate with the Saccos in identifying and killing these people and execute them openly.

An official related that:

"The pattern of killings involves profiling of young, mainly kikuyu men from Nairobi, Central and parts of North Rift and Eastern provinces. The men are arrested and held in police stations and are then subsequently killed and their bodies dumped in particular sites, (AllAfrica.com)

The report about the killing may not be so bad. After all this is a prevention of violence in a region that is prone to violence. Judicial authorities, or the police in this case, are supposed to exert peace in a region and are supposed to do so at almost any cost. Africa has been, and is a region, that is prone to sporadic violence. One may think that the police have a good excuse to do so.

This is particularly so, since we are prone to judge by Western criteria. In the West, police do not execute (or, a t least, rarely so). A checkered history with police shooting has prevented police from executing and compelled them to use more peaceful means. However, in times of possible danger when police, or others, are being attacked, the police may execute or shoot as point of self-defense.

Africa, one may argue, is a country where the police may often need to shoot since the entire country is in an alert of constant self-defense. Moreover, Africa does not share the conditions, the norms, or the history of the West and, therefore, rules such as those of police execution differ and the West cannot implement their regulations on a country where very different conditions apply.

The African police, therefore, it is thought may have very good reasons in executing troublesome young men, as long as these young men in question are proved to have either been involved in trouble or planning to be involved in serious public trouble in the future.

The problem is that the RPP reports, almost in passing, that in all documented cases no victim has been looked into or his case considered before the execution was perpetrated. No prosecution or investigation had been held either. Rather, the victim was summarily executed.

More so, police routinely threaten haphazard witnesses of these killings with, a t least, one witness, being abducted and killed.

This makes all the difference between justified and non-justified execution, and there becomes no difference between a police and a thug. The very fact that he police threaten witnesses indicates some apprehension on the official's part of his selection and execution of a particular man. One may, further, suspect that not only were some of the killings unjustified, but, using this approach and wilding this power, Africans police may arbitrarily target scapegoats of their choosing whom they wish to manipulate or who have, for instance, offended them or their families in the past.

It is no wonder, given the behavior of Africa's police force, that the country passes from anarchy to anarchy. The police, after all, demonstrate that violence and injustice is their rule. They are no better than thugs themselves. In return, young members protesting agisnt this state of injustice become strong quell the police. They become the next generation of law-makers and, having no respect for the law themselves, repeat the same pattern with no end in sight.