There is no room for abductions in a functioning state

One of the families whose kin was allegedly abducted overwhelmed during a press conference on Dec 27, 2024. [David Gichuru, Standard]

Abductions can never be justified in a functioning democracy. The only thing that keeps a state intact is the rule of law and adherence to the Constitution. It is actually the most important part of a president’s oath: To obey, protect, and defend the Constitution. Abductions only happen when one wants to bypass the justice system for short-term gains, but that always has disastrous results. 

You cannot suspend the law and have a functioning state at the same time. One must give. The justice system does not just exist to punish but also as a deterrent. The justice system also provides an avenue for building our jurisprudence. 

For example, if the matter of drawing the President’s silhouettes was seen as a contravention of any law, the courts would have provided the best place for legal arguments and in the end built a body of legal knowledge. As it is, the court has not been given a chance to interrogate the law on account of AI images that have been depicting the President in various unpleasant forms nor the trending silhouettes.

The Kenya National Commission for Human Rights places the number of people abducted since the Gen Z protests in June at 82. Some of the abductions that we have witnessed were actually in broad daylight. One example is the abduction of former Nandi Hills MP Alfred Keter. It was later justified by the police as an arrest. But people cannot just be forcefully picked up on the streets, and that termed an arrest unless reasonably justified. 

The consequence of an arrest is arraignment in court where the police can either proceed and charge or request more time for further investigations. For most of the 82 cases, if not all, that has not happened. In one of the incidents, we saw activists Bob Njagi and the Loughton brothers disappear for weeks before being set free. The court kept on asking for them to be produced in court, but they were never presented. This begs the question of whether we are dealing with crime or politics. 

It is also equally disturbing that the police have distanced themselves from the abductions despite all the evidence that part of its infrastructure is enabling them. While we can give the police the benefit of the doubt on the abductions, they cannot be spectators like the rest of us. The police have the capacity to investigate and arrest the perpetrators. The fears that the abductions are being executed by a specialised unit that may not be reporting to the established structures make perfect sense. In July 2024, we witnessed an incident where veteran journalist Macharia Gaitho drove to a police station expecting protection only to be bundled into a private vehicle within the vicinity of that police station.

The most depressing thing about the recent abductions is that those who have suffered the most in the past seem to be complicit now. Those who have needed, yearned, and cried for legal protection have developed temporary amnesia and no longer seem bothered by abductions. That is the exact reason the law must remain supreme.