KENYAN COPS NOW VERSUS COLONIAL TIMES

Another Kenyan - a teacher and father - has died in the hands of police. 31-year-old Albert Ojwang was found dead in his Nairobi cell with what his family’s lawyer says are clear signs of physical abuse. He’d been whisked away hundreds of kilometres to the capital after criticising a local police chief online. The police insist Ojwang‘s fatal head injuries were ‘self-inflicted.’

Police brutality is rampant in Kenya, with high numbers of extra-judicial killings and abductions. One study in 2014 found that cops are five times more likely to kill Kenyans than criminals are.

The force’s violent, lethal methods smack of the impunity with which the colonial police used to treat the country’s Black citizenry. In this video, we compare the Kenyan police now with the colonial police back then and ask: whose interest are the post-independence security forces in the country really serving?