Brutal police attack on pupils does not augur well for our rights and freedoms
What you need to know:
- Criminalisation of activism and civic engagement by the Jubilee administration has gone to 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.
- In 1963, white members of the clergy criticised Rev King for disobeying the law. In his letter from a Birmingham jail in 1963, Dr King told them he had no moral obligation to obey bad laws.
- The brutalisation 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 are under investigation.
Monday was a public holiday in the United States. My 10-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 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 Lang’ata Road Primary School.
The two incidents bear such striking similarities that one need not go back half a century to explain why Dr Martin Luther King sacrificed his life for civil liberties.
The victims in both cases were unarmed black children. State officers entrusted with providing security for all citizens were the culprits. In Birmingham, the notorious segregationist public safety commissioner, aka police chief Bull Connor, unleashed water cannons, fierce police canines, and white armoured trucks against unarmed black children who were agitating for school integration and equal rights.
OVERZEALOUS POLICE
In Kenya on Monday, six-year-olds were tear-gassed 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 the children.
It is difficult to highlight any differences between Monday’s unprovoked police brutality and Bull Connor’s nonsense in Alabama in 1963, or even the June 16, 1976, Soweto uprising, where 23 unarmed black school children were killed by apartheid police.
The zeal exhibited by the police officers 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.
Criminalisation of activism and civic engagement by the Jubilee administration has gone to 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 lob tear gas canisters at children. There is no justification for chasing six-year-olds on the busy and dangerous Lang’ata Road.
SOCIAL INJUSTICES
The children did not attack anyone and even if they did, common sense dictates that pupils would have to be superhuman to injure heavily armed riot policemen.
Further, what was the point of positioning armed policemen at the school before the skirmishes? Activists? So what if activists were involved?
In 1963, white members of the clergy criticised Rev King for disobeying the law. In his letter from a 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.” 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 that great leader’s 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.
WHICH WAY, KENYA
Usually, this day would pass like any other in Kenya. Not so January 19, 2015. As if to mockingly remind Kenyans of the symbolism of Martin Luther King Day, the Kenyan police chose to introduce our children to Jim Crow and Bull Connor tactics through unprovoked use of force.
The brutalisation 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 are under investigation.
NGOs have been deregistered and one newspaper has been threatened with the axe for undisclosed malpractices. The controversially passed national security laws are yet to be implemented, but it already feels like 1975, when it was treasonable to “imagine” the death of the president. Which way, Kenya?
Mr Kaberia is the assistant director of International Programmes at the University of the District of Columbia
