There can be no justification for the violence police rained on helpless villagers in Mumias

It is 3 am and a frightened recently-widowed mother and her children are woken up by menacing demands of Fungua! Fungua! Fungua mlango ama tupite nayo (Open! Open! Open the door or we will break it down!)

The door crashes in! At 4 am this same fate befalls a pregnant mother of two a mile away.

No, it is not thieves. No, it is police armed with guns and truncheons in search of thieves in Mumias of Kakamega County.

Still, at the time of filing this report, seven guns and 184 bullets, which were grabbed by an unknown number of unknown people from the Bookers Police Post in Mumias Sugar Company on November 23, had not yet been recovered.

But the fearsome and loathsome General Service Unit (GSU) descended on neighbouring villages, estates and small businesses in the vicinity the very following day.

And, say victims, witnesses and the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights, embarked on an orgy of malicious molestation, intimidation and injury; demanding bribes with menaces; downright theft and destruction.

Put another way, police used excessive force in their search for stolen guns and bullets and on a defenceless people, inflicting on them undeserved injury and malicious damage to their properties and livelihoods.

Policemen punished civilians for their own spectacular failure to protect their station. Why? A couple of reasons have been canvassed.

One, that an attack on a police officer, station, post or other facility, is an attack on the government and police must use force to remind one and all of the power of the state and theirs as the defenders of it. Nonsense!

The people of Mumias have never challenged the power of the state or police.

And where is the evidence that the gun thieves were local people?

CONSEQUENCES
Two, that somebody in the vicinity knows something or saw something or suspects somebody and this person can only speak out or come forward if terror is unleashed on them and their neighbours.

Crap! Intelligence is the work of the police.

They did not detect anything before the raid and should make good by getting back the guns through intelligence-based investigations. Torture is not investigation.

Last, since the attack on the police post represents an attack on government, retribution by the GSU should be remembered by the people of Mumias for decades so that they may never dream of a repeat performance.

Rubbish! The flip side of this argument is that civilians will learn to forever give the police a wide berth.

So much for building bridges between brutal police and terrified public.

By the way, will police learn to better protect their guns after their loss and rampage in Mumias?

I doubt it. Will they care about the constitutionally-enshrined Bill of Rights?

Yes, if it is made clear that there is no law when police violate the law.

That means police must be punished when they violate the law.

If not, who will the public turn to when the gang is in uniform?

***
What happened in Mumias was replicated with deadlier force, on an industrial scale, and by the military in Kasese in western Uganda.

Here, says Kampala, a local king, backed by separatist militia, challenged the authority of the state by attacking police and soldiers.

Kampala alleges that President Yoweri Museveni called Omusinga Charles Mumbere twice on Sunday morning and asked him to restrain his militia but the king refused.

“So we had no option, after that we had to storm the palace and get these terrorists, and that is what we did,” says Brigadier Peter Elwelu, who commanded the Uganda Defence Forces’ assault on the palace.

The result? More than 70 people, most of them civilians, were killed.

THE ALTERNATIVE

Pictures show men stripped to their underwear, their hands tied behind their backs and dead.

Did President Museveni and Brigadier Elwelu not have an option but kill?

They had a tried and tested option. They would have laid siege to the palace which militaries are trained to do.

They would have shown the king and his loyalists the military assets arrayed against them and given them a surrender ultimatum.

The King & Co, with neither entry nor exit, no fresh supplies of basic amenities and subjected to psychological and physical torture, could not have survived, say, a week-long siege.

President Museveni and Brigadier Elwelu could have ended the Rwenzeruru Palace standoff peacefully.

They chose extra-judicial killings of those they swore to protect. President and Brigadier committed crimes against humanity.

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