A tragedy unfolds as Kenya faces cost of enforced disappearances

Senator Okiya Omtatah (centre) and other protestors during anti-abduction demonstrations at Aga Khan Walk, Nairobi, on December 30, 2024. [Kanyiri Wahito, Standard] 

The last day of 2024 saw the national crisis over the enforced disappearances of young citizens unfold dramatically in three courts, watched by millions. As the second week ends with no sign of their release, what might be the climax of this Kenyan tragedy? Spoiler alert.

Respected former Tahidi High actor Xavier Nato sadly died this week. May he rest in peace. He would tell us all great scripts need a story focus, dramatic structure and a few powerful characters that speak to and elevate our own human experience. With several episodes of forced abductions of Gen Z activists, Ugandan opposition party leaders and Turkish refugees, the stage was set long before this wave of recent abductees.

There have been several unequivocal calls for their release since last week’s column. Statements by active citizens, university, youth and human rights organisations, religious leaders, opposition and ruling party politicians, foreign governments and the African Union went unheeded. This inaction then prompted public marches in solidarity with the disappeared across five counties, including Embu, Nairobi, Mombasa, Eldoret and Kajiado.

Under mounting online and offline public pressure, President William Ruto New Year’s Tuesday address officially acknowledged that security services had abused state power and carried out “excessive and extrajudicial actions”. The commander-in-chief promised the nation he would bring the abductions to an end.

Earlier that day, 30 activists who had successfully staged anti-abduction demonstrations filled and sang their way through Nairobi and Mombasa courts. In violation of Article 50(2)(g) that guarantees all suspects their right to a lawyer, activists had the day before been denied access to their lawyers across several police stations by commanding officers.

In an alarming twist, the Director of Public Prosecutions and Directorate of Criminal Investigations applied to detain the 23 activists, including a sitting Member of Parliament, for a further 14 days to access their phones and nearby CCTV cameras for evidence they had attempted to incite public unrest. Milimani Principal Magistrate Rose Ndombi’s ruling against their application was welcome.

As historians will remind us, pre-trial detention is an abuse of prosecutorial authority and power. Taking away the liberty of 23 individuals and then requesting an additional 14 days to go look for evidence is unconstitutional. The application was particularly unjust. The 23 were peacefully advocating as human rights defenders against several enforced disappearances, a matter of public interest.

While important, the main story of this Kenyan Christmas drama took place in another courtroom. Here, Billy Mwangi’s father, Gerald Mwangi, spoke for all the victims and their families. His testimony and question, “Your Honour, where is my son?” touched the hearts of the nation. This case will be closely watched in four days’ time when all parties return on January 8. Only the keeping of a presidential promise or the unconditional release of the abductees will avoid the next episode.

State officers with the power to release the abducted can draw a lesson from the world of theatre. All iconic theatrical tragedies are driven by growing sense of fate and a destiny with impending doom. The tragic flaws of the main characters reveal themselves with the inexorable slide to tragic circumstances that eventually become irreversible. More simply, the more you dig, the more the hole threatens to swallow you with the issue.

State officers can also take a tutorial from Argentina, Syria and Sri Lanka. Rather than frighten victims and their families, enforced disappearances became a rallying cause for those nations. With no legal justification for disappearing people, statute of limitations or international havens, decades on, the crimes of individual Argentinian military officers eventually caught up with them.

On January 15, the United Nations hosts the World Congress on Enforced Disappearances in Geneva. If not for the victims, their families or the national conscience, it would seem rational self-interest for Kenya Kwanza administration, as a member of the UN Human Rights Council, to avoid being the first agenda of this global conference and immediately release all the abductees.