Amnesty International call for 5 conditions police should follow on Tuesday's protest

The Star Kenya

Amnesty International director Irungu Houghton on Friday gave five standard operating procedures the police service should review for the coming Tuesday's protest.

Transcript

00:00and concerned, deeply concerned, and perhaps even outraged by the killing of Rex Kanike last night.

00:09In what was a remarkable day of where we had thousands of Kenyans on the streets of Nairobi

00:15and with the exception of the arrests that we saw and of course the 200 injuries there was no

00:23fatality. But under the cover of darkness we have been sad and shocked like the rest of Kenyans to

00:29hear that a young Kenyan has been killed by a police officer. We will call for the following

00:38five actions or standard operating procedures to be reviewed moving forward to next week when we

00:46expect another round of protests. The first is that the National Police Service must desist

00:54from using non-uniformed officers while facilitating the right of Kenyans to protest.

01:02The use of non-uniformed officers makes it very difficult to be able to see

01:09whether these are police officers who have an oath of protection to the public

01:17or they are hooligans or goons or just armed criminals that are taking advantage of the

01:22situation. So we are calling on the Inspector General to cease the use of non-uniformed officers.

01:31Secondly we are calling on the National Police Service to release statistics

01:34on the numbers of Kenyans that their police officers have injured and now killed. We would

01:40like to see the same level of attention paid to the police inspector who tragically lost

01:46his arms while handling a tear gas canister applied to the family of Rex. We would like to

01:53see somebody at the level of a Cabinet Secretary also give their sympathy and compassion to the

01:59family of Rex, the late protester who was killed last night. We would also like to see the arrests

02:06of the officers involved in that operation so that we are clear that the National Police Service

02:13and the Executive do not support the idea of using live ammunition on peaceful protesters.

02:22Until we see that officer arraigned in a court of law it is not clear whether he was acting

02:27with the instructions of commanding officers or essentially was a rogue police officer.

02:33These are our demands as we continue to monitor, as we continue to protect Kenyans, as we

02:40continue to uphold the constitutional article of the right to assembly of our constitution.

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