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• July 21, 2008
• Brutal Sexual Assault: Is This What The Kenya Police Is All About?

  Posted: July 21st, 2008, 12:27pm EDT

  Kumekucha Exclusive
  
  Police recently sexually assaulted some prominent female members of the civil society who were protesting corruption in the country. I publish a copy of an email circulated by one of them giving details of the crazy assault....
  
  
  Sorry I have been out of the office for a couple of days . The last couple of days have been a nightmare for me and several other civil rights activists. We were arrested in a most brutal manner after police stormed the hotel where we were preparing to hold demonstrations over Grand Corruption ( Sale of Nairobi's Grand Regency Hotel, a property in receivership and therefore owned by the Kenyan people, by a cartel led by the Finance Minister, Amos Kimunya. Kimunya has since resigned in disgrace over the scandal) .
  
  On Tuesday, 8th July, when they arrested seven of us, the police also sexually violated and harrased me and a male colleague. One senior officer had the audacity to put his hand inside my trousers, fondle my private parts and my breasts. All this while the rest were busy brutalising us.
  
  Upon arrival at the police station, my colleagues sought to know from the senior police officer why he had sexually assaulted me. Without warning, this police officer, who we have since learned was the deputy officer commanding the Division ( very senior position) grabbed a police batton from one of the junior officers and set upon us in a most vicious manner. Other officers joined in, hitting, kicking and insulting us. It did not matter that some of us were
  already bleeding.
  
  We were later taken to court , charged with participating in an illegal assembly (never mind that we were inside a hotel and it was the police who stormed in) , and released on bail. The police also refused to record our complaint over the violations at the police station.
  
  We need friends of human rights, and friends of Kenya, at home and abroad, to do all you can in your various stations and networks to demand accountability from our government. The kind of police brutality and other forms of impunity that are evident in Kenya are alarming. Not only do they threaten the democratic spaces that we fought so hard to create. They are also, in my opinion, an early warning sign of things to come, and the imminent breakdown of law and order.
  
  We shall circulate a more comprehensive report with photos for your further action."