PREVIEW
A new bill could give police sweeping powers to ban or break up demonstrations and impose harsh fines and jail terms
Legislators are pressing ahead with new laws aimed at giving the police powers to break up demonstrations just weeks after the Generation Z protest movement swept across Kenya.
A bill by Geoffrey Ruku, an MP in President William Ruto’s Kenya Kwanza, would give the police sweeping powers to ban or break up protests and impose harsh fines or a jail term for offending demonstrators.
It would also require organisers of protests to give the police three days’ notice in order to get permission and for demonstrators to keep to specified routes.
Ruku’s private member’s bill will sit alongside the government’s own planned revisions to the Public Order Act which were set out by interior minister Kithure Kindiki during the vetting process by MPs on 1 August.
Kindiki insists that his plans will ‘designate public institutions in all arms of the government to designate areas in their precincts or in the vicinity of their precincts where a group of protesters who want to demonstrate or present a petition to that public institution can assemble.’
However, while Kindiki and others deny having any sinister intentions, the timing of the bill – as well as its contents – points to another worrying crackdown on the constitutional right to protest.
Kindiki survived in his post despite being held responsible by protestors for the death of dozens of demonstrators at the hands of the police, as well as an unknown number of cases of abduction, detention and torture by law enforcement authorities.
Despite some international pressure from the United States, the government has made no attempt to address the endemic brutality in Kenya’s National Police Force, or its culture of impunity. The Independent Policing Oversight Authority has little political backing and averages roughly one conviction for police violence per 2,000 complaints (AC Vol 65 No 15, Ruto struggles to regain control).
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