Kenya Police Face Reform After Scathing Accusation

This year`s election crisis created powerful new pressures for significant change.

Kenya's police face unprecedented reform after scathing accusations of murder, rape and routine brutality during a bloody election crisis.

Years of criticism of the police gained new momentum from an official report into the crisis early this year in which they were accused of killing more than 400 people in two months of ethnic mayhem in which at least 1,300 died. Television pictures of a policeman shooting two unarmed civilians from behind and reports of wild firing into protests and crowded slums added to the images of chaos and ethnic bloodshed that spooked both investors and tourists and gravely damaged east Africa's biggest economy.

The Waki commission of inquiry report said the police also committed gang rape and looting and were unprepared and incapable of dealing with the rioting and ethnic bloodletting. "Their actions resulted in the senseless death of scores of innocent citizens which is in direct contravention of the Constitution of Kenya," the report said, adding that police were also used by politicians and divided along tribal lines.

It painted a picture of a police force as bad as any on a continent where the enforcers of law and order are seen in many countries as being more a problem than a source of reassurance.

In one damning passage, it said: "Sometimes the victims, on seeing the approach of state security agents, expressed initial relief at the arrival of police who could afford them help and protection, only to be overpowered and gang-raped by them."

As part of efforts to end a historical cycle of impunity in Kenya and transform its reputation with investors the government is preparing reforms recommended by the Waki commission. They will include the merging of a separate colonial-era force run by provincial authorities into the central police command, and the creation of an independent complaints body.

ESSENTIAL REFORMS

Attempts to reform the police after President Mwai Kibaki first came to power in 2003 promising to end decades of misgovernment achieved little. But this year's election crisis created powerful new pressures for significant change.

Hassan Omar, Vice Chair of the government-funded Kenya National Commission on Human Rights, told Reuters the reforms were critical to a government plan to transform Kenya into a middle-income country by 2030.

"You cannot say you are trying to fight poverty, you are trying to do every other thing that is right in terms of the vision of the country and not reform the police towards democratic policing," he said.

"It is fundamental because most realisations of our rights as a country have been frustrated because of an excessive, unaccountable, corrupt, inept police force."

But although there is optimism in the wake of the crisis about significant reform, it will not be easy to change a police culture dating back to British colonial rule.

"From the colonial days the police force used violence, they tortured people, it was expected practice ... the training was based on that," said political analyst Amboka Andere.

"They make a lot of money from this way of doing business, harassing people ... nobody wants to end up in police cells, you know what is going to happen to you," he added.

The human rights commission recently accused police death squads of murdering around 500 alleged members of the notorious Mungiki criminal gang last year.

The police denied the allegations and police Commissioner Hussein Ali, in testimony to the Waki commission, strongly defended the actions of his force during the election crisis.

Human rights and medical aid groups have also accused the police and army of the killing and torture of civilians in a conflict against rebels in the western Mount Elgon region.

SCANDAL

In 2006, the head of Kenya's detectives had to resign over a political scandal caused by a night raid on the offices of the Standard newspaper by hooded members of an elite police squad.

The raid, apparently politically motivated and linked to the bizarre case of two shadowy men alleged to be Armenian brothers and drug traffickers with high-level protection, drew condemnation by diplomats, domestic and foreign rights groups. Police investigative ability is also very weak according to experts. The Waki report sharply criticised investigations during the crisis as superficial.

After a primitive bomb explosion in central Nairobi killed one person last year, security experts and diplomats said police had allowed the public to walk over the crime scene, destroying evidence. One man was arrested but soon released. Police regularly top the list of most corrupt institutions in Kenya, accused of exploiting fear of violence and imprisonment to extort money. Stories abound of innocent citizens having to buy their way out of police cells.

But Andere said the police in many ways mirrored public attitudes to crime.

"It is more complicated than just a question of the police being brutal. In any case they are not more brutal than the public. You have seen what members of the public do here when they catch a thief. They will lynch them."

Reforms of the police are scheduled to take two years and may include the removal of Commissioner Ali, an army general appointed five years ago to shake up the force but accused of systemic failures during the election bloodshed.

Omar said reforms would meet the timetable as long as the political will engendered by the crisis lasted. "It did not happen until we were almost thrown into the brink of civil war and the collapse of the country."

"I want to believe that because of the pressure of the Kenyan people and the international community, we might this time just pull through. We might have some reforms."