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Kenyan protesters clashed with riot police on the streets of Nairobi on Thursday throughout a spreading nationwide outcry over the demise of a younger blogger in police custody.
Demonstrators gathered on the street to the nationwide parliament after officers reversed preliminary police claims that the demise in a police cell of Albert Omondi Ojwang, a well-liked younger social commentator, was from self-inflicted accidents.
Ojwang was arrested in his hometown in Homa Bay, western Kenya, every week in the past after allegedly publishing defamatory details about the nation’s deputy police chief on social media. He was later transferred to the central police station in Nairobi, 400km away, the place he died.
His demise on Sunday has reignited public anger at Kenya’s lengthy historical past of extrajudicial killings. A number of younger activists “disappeared” throughout protests in opposition to authorities makes an attempt to extend taxes to service public debt final yr.
The incident additionally coincides with a development of worsening state repression throughout a lot of east Africa as governments search to silence dissent.
Kenya’s police stated Ojwang had been arrested for “false publication” and claimed initially in a press release that he had died “after hitting his head in opposition to the cell wall”.
However state pathologist Bernard Midla instantly contradicted that account after an preliminary postmortem, saying that “head damage, neck compression and different accidents unfold everywhere in the physique” pointed to assault as the reason for demise.
The Kenya Nationwide Fee on Human Rights, which has launched an unbiased investigation after analyzing Ojwang’s physique on the mortuary, stated the case highlighted “a wider, deeply troubling sample of deaths and abuses in police custody”.
President William Ruto has since acknowledged that Ojwang died “by the hands of the police”.
“As we mourn his passing, allow us to patiently however vigilantly observe the progress of the investigations with out making untimely judgments or drawing conclusions,” Ruto stated.
The Unbiased Policing Oversight Authority, the police watchdog, is investigating Ojwang’s demise and has named 5 law enforcement officials who arrested him in Homa Bay County earlier than escorting him to Nairobi.
“We’re dedicated to making sure that everybody who was concerned within the crime is dropped at justice expeditiously and that no interference from any quarter is dropped at bear on the investigation,” inside minister Kipchumba Murkomen instructed the Senate.
The case has induced outrage amongst human rights activists and younger Kenyans who gathered close to parliament on Thursday, demanding that these concerned be held accountable.
The protests coincided with the presentation of the nationwide price range in parliament, scene final yr of large, spontaneous demonstrations in opposition to the finance invoice.
Finance minister John Mbadi is looking for to keep away from a repeat of final yr’s lethal protests, by elevating revenues to slender Kenya’s debt-to-GDP ratio of almost 70 per cent with out instantly elevating taxes.
