This directive caused uproar among the
civil society who termed it illegal and an affront to the legitimate
efforts to combat attacks. By Friday, 28th March, the
Inspector General of police Mr. David Kimaiyo had announced to the media
that the police should ignore the shoot-to-kill order by the Mombasa
County Commissioner.
In the time that it took the Inspector General to give directions on the shoot-to-kill order, the police had rounded up 100 villagers in the search for the terror suspects, detained 59 people
and apparently charged 49 of them for “loitering”. In Nairobi, tens of
youth were arrested in a swoop in one of the suburbs, many of whom were
later released.
As a response to the security situation, Kenya has ordered all urban-based Somali refugees to move into designated
camps in a bid to end attacks by militant Islamists. The Cabinet
Secretary for Internal Security Joseph ole Lenku further stated that
“Any refugee found flouting this directive will be dealt with in
accordance with the law”.
NO PROVEN CORRELATION
This
new plan by the Kenya government seeks to force 50,000 registered
refugees and asylum seekers back to under-resourced and already
overcrowded refugee camps in direct violation of a 2013 High Court ruling
that declared such forced movement of refugees a violation of their
dignity and rights to freedom of movement that would indirectly force
them to move back to Somalia.
In addition, the July
2013 ruling found that there was no proven correlation of the
restriction of refugees to the refugee camps and national security
issues.
It is not the first time that the Kenyan
authorities move to use completely unlawful and illegal means to target
members of Muslim community and Somali ethnicity regardless of their
citizenry. It is part of the national narrative that all terrorists in
Kenya are Muslims and all Somalis are terror suspects. Kenya is once
again using attacks by terrorists to stigmatize, target and harass
refugees and people of Somali ethnicity.
In a report
named “You are all Terrorists” released in 2013, the Human Rights Watch
interviewed 101 refugees and Kenyans of Somali ethnicity in which they
document torture, rape, extortion and arbitrary detention of individuals
in Eastleigh area of Nairobi.
The report details the
extent to which the police will go in abusing the rights of refugees in
Kenya – one woman narrates how she was walking home when she was accosted by regular police,
who beat her, put her in the police vehicle, raped her and dumped her
in an unknown location. There was no reason for this brutal attack,
other than to rape and abuse this woman.
Even as terror
attacks increase in frequency in Kenya, the government engages in
atrocities that have nothing whatsoever to do with national security,
acts that do not bring about investigations nor arrests of actual
criminals, acts of government-sanctioned terror.
NO INVESTIGATIVE REPORT
In
this “war against terror” women and children are targeted based on
their ethnic heritage regardless of whether they are refugees or Kenyan
citizens. To add a shoot-to-kill order on top of such flagrant human
rights abuses is to increase the frequency of extra-judicial killings by
rogue police officers who utilize government resources and their
authority to attack women and children.
It’s been one
week since the Likoni attack. Tens of people have been arrested, and two
“suspects” killed. Thus far, no investigative report has been brought
forward indicating how resources were utilized or to what extent the
activities of the police have managed to increase security for civilians
around the country. Despite the killings of “suspects” and the arrests
done, not a single terror group has come forward to claim responsibility
for the church attack and not a single government official is able to
pin-point exactly who was responsible for the attack.
In
the meantime – the ugly xenophobic narrative being spun by government
against Muslims and people of Somali ethnicity is swallowed whole by the
Kenyan public who feel that it is indeed plausible that women and
children who are asylum seekers could be behind terror attacks in Kenya,
which is why they should be forced back into refugee camps.
Whenever
there are terror attacks in Kenya, there is a huge uproar over the loss
of innocent lives; but when the police target people because of their
ethnicity, no one remembers that these human rights abuses are
themselves meted out on innocent people.
Twitter: @bettywaitherero
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