Kenyan
police tortured, raped, and arbitrarily detained at least 1,000
refugees in the country’s capital, Nairobi, between mid-November 2012
and late January 2013, Human Rights Watch said in a report released
Wednesday.
The
68-page report, “You are All Terrorists: Kenyan Police Abuse of
Refugees in Nairobi,” is based on interviews with 101 refugees, asylum
seekers, and Kenyans of Somali ethnicity, the rights group said.
The
report documents how police used grenade attacks, and violence by
unknown attackers in Nairobi’s mainly Somali suburb of Eastleigh and a
government order, as excuse to relocate urban refugees to camps where
they were raped, beaten and extorted. At least 1,000 people were
arbitrarily detained.
The police described their victims as “terrorists,” and demanded payments to free them. The assault lasted 10 weeks.
“Refugees
told us how hundreds of Kenyan police unleashed 10 weeks of hell on
communities close to the heart of Nairobi, torturing, abusing, and
stealing from some of the country’s poorest and most vulnerable people,”
said Gerry Simpson, senior refugee researcher for Human Rights Watch
and author of the report. “Randomly attacking men, women, and children
in their homes and in the streets is hardly an effective way to protect
Kenya’s national security.”
Human
Rights Watch accused the United Nations refugee agency of failing to
document and publicly report the abuses, and called Kenyan authorities
to initiate immediate and independent investigation into the
allegations.
Key
members of Kenya’s government, including the country’s president, Uhuru
Kenyatta, currently face serious allegations of crimes against humanity
and are wanted by the International Criminal Court to stand trial.
This
week, Mr. Kenyatta received the backing of the African Union which
raised a resolution asking that he be tried in Kenya, and not The Hague.
In
January, Kenya’s High Court ordered the authorities to suspend the
refugee relocation plan –under which 55,000 refugees and asylum seekers
are supposed to leave Kenya’s cities and move to squalid, overcrowded,
and closed refugee camps – until the court decides whether it is lawful.
Human
Rights Watch said it received testimonies from Somali and Ethiopian
refugees and asylum seekers who had lived for many years with their
families in Eastleigh, who narrated how police rampaged through the
suburb beginning on November 19, 2012, a day after unidentified people
attacked a minibus, killing 7 people and injuring 30.
Interviewees
said officers from four of Kenya’s police forces – the General Services
Unit (GSU), the Regular Police (RP), the Administration Police (AP),
and the Criminal Investigations Department (CID) – abused them, with the
GSU committing the majority of the documented abuses.
Seven
women described how police raped them in their homes, on side streets,
and on wasteland, in some cases with children close by. One of the women
who was raped said police also raped three other women in the same
attack.
Forty
refugees, including many women, described how police beat, kicked, and
punched them and their children in their homes, in the street, and in
police vehicles, causing serious injury and long-term pain, the rights
group said in the report.
Dozens
of people spoke about how police entered businesses and homes, often in
the middle of the night, stole large amounts of money and other
personal belongings, and extorted money to let them go free.
The
report also documents almost 1,000 cases in which police arbitrarily
detained refugees and asylum seekers in their homes, in the street, in
police vehicles, and in police stations – sometimes for many days in
inhuman and degrading conditions.
Kenyan authorities did not respond to the findings of the Human Rights Watch.
“The inaction deepens Kenya’s long record of impunity for law enforcement officers, who for many years have abused Somali Kenyans and Somali refugees in the country’s North Eastern region, including in the sprawling Dadaab refugee camp on the border with Somalia,” the group said.
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