Police in Kenya have often been accused of using excessive and unlawful force while in the line of duty. A new report published Wednesday by Human Rights Watch finds that police were involved in the killings of at least 21 people since August 2018, in just two of Kenya’s informal settlements.

On the evening of April 28, 2017, Isaac Kamau Mwangi left his mother’s house in Nairobi’s Kayole Estate to pick up his car at a car wash.

His sister Ruth Mumbi says those were his final hours.

“He was on his knees pleading with people who wanted to kill him,” Mumbi said, recounting what a witness had told the family. “The only thing that the boda boda driver heard was the shot and my brother screaming loud, calling out my name. I came to know the following day that he was killed by officers.”

Colleagues remembered Kamau as a devoted taxi driver; his family remembers him as a loving father of two. To police, however, he was a wanted highway robber.

100s of documented cases

Kamau’s death is one of hundreds of cases of extrajudicial police killings documented by rights groups in Kenya.

In its new report, Human Rights Watch accuses police of killing at least 21 suspects since August 2018 in Dandora and Mathare, two of Nairobi’s slums.

HRW researcher Otsieno Namwaya says the killings bore similarities.

“The common trend was that either the police brand somebody a thief and either warn the person or put their name on social media, and then a week or two later the person is found dead, or they ambush the person somewhere either in the house or on the street, arrest the person, or ask the person to kneel down and then shoot the person in broad daylight and sometimes in the full glare of the public,” Namwaya said.

The report says the Independent Policing Oversight Authority (IPOA), Kenya’s police accountability institution, has not done enough to stop police from killing people.

Since inception of the oversight body in 2011, there have been six convictions of police officers accused of extrajudicial killings.

Anne Makori, the IPOA chairperson, says the organization has investigated more than 5,500 cases and sent more than 1,900 others to the public prosecutor’s office, the ODPP.

“Because we have investigative powers, [when] we find the officer is culpable, we forward that file to the ODPP for prosecution, because we do not have prosecutorial powers,” Makori said. “As we speak, we have 164 files within ODPP and we have 49 files within the court system.”

Witnesses scarce

Mumbi says that in most cases, families like hers never find justice, as witnesses are usually afraid to come forward.

“For this case, the person who came to report to us, who saw what Kamau had gone through, was also afraid,” she said. “In fact, he changed his number, and he doesn’t even live in Nairobi.”

In the HRW report, Kenya’s police spokesman is quoted as saying, “Any officer who breaches the law must face the consequences as an individual.” He said the IPOA ought to investigate the killings in Dandora and Mathare, and “ensure the culprits are prosecuted.”

Source: Voice of America

Israeli police were bracing for another day of violent protests Wednesday after community activists called for renewed street demonstrations in response to the killing of an Ethiopian-Israeli teen by an off-duty police officer.

As crowds of protesters gathered in cities across Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu urged calm and said he was convening a ministerial committee to discuss all issues affecting Israel’s Ethiopian community, which suffers from poverty and discrimination and accuses the police of excessive force.

We will discuss all issues but we will also discuss something that is unacceptable, he said. We are not prepared to either accept or tolerate the blocking of roads and the use of violence, including firebombs against our forces, the burning of cars or any other property of citizens.

Police were deployed at demonstration sites throughout the country.

On Tuesday, protesters blocked major highways around the country, snarling traffic for hours. They also attacked police and vandalized vehicles in response to what they see as continued police brutality.

Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said more than 110 officers were wounded, including from stones and bottles hurled at them. The protesters burned tires and set a vehicle on fire, clashing with police and assaulting those who tried to break through their makeshift roadblocks. Overnight, the protesters continued rioting, flipping over a police cruiser. Rosenfeld said more than 130 suspects were arrested.

The demonstrations erupted after Solomon Teka, 18, was fatally shot in a Haifa suburb on Sunday and escalated after his funeral on Tuesday. The officer in question says he was at a public playground with his young children and felt their lives were in danger from a group of rioting teenagers. He says he opened fire toward the ground and had no intention of killing anyone. He is being investigated by internal affairs and remains under protective custody.

The protesters view the killing as part of a pattern of systematic discrimination and violence by police.

The Ethiopian Jews, who trace their lineage to the ancient Israelite tribe of Dan, began arriving in large numbers in the 1980s, when Israel secretly airlifted them to the Holy Land to save them from war and famine in the Horn of Africa.

The new arrivals struggled as they made the transition from a rural, developing African country into an increasingly high-tech Israel. Over time, many have integrated more into Israeli society, serving in the military and police and making inroads in politics, sports and entertainment. Israel has touted their success as proof of the country’s acceptance and diversity.

But the community continues to suffer from widespread poverty, and many in the community complain of racism, lack of opportunity and routine police harassment. Today, they number around 150,000 out of Israel’s 9 million citizens.

The Ethiopians immigrants have long alleged discrimination. In the late 1990s, it was discovered that Israel’s health services were throwing out Ethiopian Israeli blood donations over fears of diseases contracted in Africa. Some landlords have also refused them as tenants, and accusations have been raised that Israel has deliberately tried to curb their birth rates.

But frustrations only boiled into a public outcry with a younger generation far more willing to take on the establishment. Mass protests first erupted in 2015 after a police officer was filmed beating a uniformed Ethiopian Israeli soldier, and there have been sporadic demonstrations since.

Source: Voice of America