Kenya: Monday, January 19th 2015 was a public holiday in the United States. My ten-year-old son and I were browsing through videos of the civil rights movement as I sought to explain the essence of Martin Luther King day, when I suddenly decided to switch to Kenyan news.
The images we saw on various Kenyan news channels left me wondering whether I should continue showing him the black and white footage of the 1963 Children’s march in Birmingham, Alabama or just let him watch the January 19, 2015 police brutality against children at Langata Road Primary School.
The two incidents bear striking similarities that one does not need to go back half a century to explain why Dr. Martin Luther King sacrificed his life for civil liberties. The victims in both cases were black children. The victims in both cases were unarmed. State officers entrusted with providing security for all citizens were the culprits in both cases.
In Birmingham, the notorious segregationist public safety commissioner aka police chief Bull Connor unleashed water cannons, fierce police canines and white armored trucks (they had to be white to show white supremacy) against unarmed black school kids who were agitating for school integration and equal rights for blacks and whites.
In Kenya on Monday, six-year-olds were teargassed and chased around with police dogs in tow just because they wanted to have their playground back. Like President Kennedy in 1963, President Uhuru Kenyatta did not immediately condemn the violence against children.
It is difficult to highlight any differences between Monday’s unprovoked police brutality and Bull Connors nonsense in Alabama in 1963 or even the June 16, 1976 Soweto uprising, where 23 school children were killed by Apartheid police. In the American and South African cases the culprits were racist white police officers against unarmed black high school children.
In Kenya, the culprits are black, African, Kenyan police officers terrorizing black, African, Kenyan primary school children. In the American and South African cases the violators were acting under “legally” sanctioned racial barbarism, whereas in Kenya they were acting in complete contravention of the law.
In America and South Africa the police were supposedly dispersing youths advocating for political and civil liberties, whereas in Kenya the children were brutalized for seeking a most basic right any child in the world over would love to have; a playground.
The zeal exhibited by police officers in brutalizing the children is symptomatic of a society whose moral integrity has ground to a halt, a society where state officers will kill in the name of law enforcement. Criminalization of activism and civic engagement by the Jubilee administration has gotten into the heads of police officers who seem to believe that nobody has a right to question the “wisdom” of the government and its supreme leadership.
Regardless of who owns the contested playground, only a moron would lobe teargas canisters on primary school children. There is no justification for chasing six-year-olds on the busy Langata road where they could have been easily killed by speeding motorists.
Regrettably, this is not a case of self defense. The children did not “attack” anyone and even if they did, common sense dictates that primary school kids would have to be superhuman to injure heavily armed anti-riot policemen. Further, what was the point of positioning armed police at the school before the skirmishes? Activists? So what if activists were involved? The officers involved, regardless of whose orders they were following should be ashamed of themselves.
In 1963 white members of the clergy criticized Rev. King for disobeying the law. In his letter from Birmingham Jail in 1963, Dr. King told them he had no moral obligation to obey bad laws. Instead, he challenged them to address social injustices as the cause of the disobedience.
He revisited discrimination and other atrocities against black people before concluding that “injustice anywhere is injustice everywhere.” Similarly, the Kenyan police had a moral obligation to defy immoral orders at Langata Road Primary School. Unless Kenyans do something as a people, police will soon be using live bullets to stop “dangerously” armed children at a kindergarten near your house.
Martin Luther King Day is not just about his birthday but rather about the struggle for freedom, justice and civil liberties around the world. On this day humanity is reminded of the fact that injustice anywhere is injustice everywhere. Usually, this day would pass like any other day in Kenya. Not January 19, 2015. As if to remind Kenyans mock the symbolism of the Martin Luther King Day, the Kenyan police chose to introduce our children to “Jim Crow” and “Bull Connor’s” tactics through unprovoked use of force.
The brutalization of our children is just the first step towards the establishment of a police state. One Kenyan is in jail for “insulting” the President while others remain under investigation. NGOs have been deregistered and The Star newspaper has been threatened with the axe for undisclosed malpractices. The controversially passed national security law is yet to be implemented but it already feels like 1975 when it was treasonable to “imagine” the death of the President. Which way Kenya?
Kaberia is the Assistant Director of International Programs at the University of the District of Columbia.
