PBI-Kenya supports Missing Voices coalition’s efforts to stop extrajudicial killings and enforced disappearances by the police

Photo: On March 24, 2021, Missing Voices released its 2020 report on police killings and enforced disappearances in Kenya.

On August 17, The Guardian reported: “The Kenyan police killed 157 people in 2020, up from 144 the previous year, according to Missing Voices, a group of organisations investigating unlawful killings in Kenya.”

Missing Voices also notes: “According to our data, 31 people have been killed by the police or disappeared [as of June] 2021.”

The Missing Voices coalition is supported by numerous organizations, including the Nairobi-based Peace Brigades International-Kenya Project.

The Guardian article tells the story of lawyer Willie Kimani who was killed by the police in Nairobi in 2016. Kimani was representing Josephat Mwenda who had been shot and injured by the police the previous year.

The article notes: “Five people, among them four police officers, are on trial over the killings [of Kimani, his driver and Mwenda], but proceedings are far from over.”

The article also tells of Nura Malicha who was shot dead in 2015 by the police at his workplace. The case is still at the hearing stage. And of Samantha Pendo, a baby who died in 2017 after being struck on the head by a police baton. An inquest found that five senior police officers were responsible, but the court case has yet to begin. And of university student Carilton Maina who was shot dead 2018. The officer who allegedly shot him pleaded not guilty to murder in 2020. Now the inquest file has been declared missing.

The Star has reported: “[Missing Voices] says the 157 cases were a result of 131 separate incidents and that 83 per cent of the cases have not been investigated. A paltry 3.5 per cent of the cases have the alleged perpetrators arrested and 7 per cent are under investigation by IPOA [the independent policing oversight authority].”

The full article in The Guardian can be read at ‘The wounds won’t heal’: Kenya’s agonising wait for justice on killings by police.

For more, please see the Missing Voices website, Twitter account and Facebook page.