Police in Kenya’s capital city, Nairobi have fired teargas in an attempt to scatter protesters who were demonstrating on Monday against what they say is a wave of unexplained abductions of government critics as well as detaining some of those taking part.
Dozens of Kenyans have in recent months, been kidnapped according to reports by human rights groups, who are blaming the extrajudicial arrests on Kenya’s police and intelligence services.
Kenyan authorities have meanwhile, reiterated that the government does not condone or engage in extrajudicial killings or abductions.
How It Happened
Several groups of young protesters marched in downtown Nairobi while small groups of others organised sit-ins even as clouds of teargas clung in the air. They chanted slogans against the government, with some of the demonstrators holding placards denouncing illegal detentions as police on horseback patrolled nearby.
Notable, Kenyan newspaper, Daily Nation had however, reported that 11 protesters had been detained during the protests.
The purported abductions had come on the heels of the anti-government protests that began earlier in June.
The demonstrations which initially began as a way to overturn planned tax hikes had eventually evolved into a movement that cut across Kenya’s traditional ethnic divisions, becoming the biggest threat to the incumbent President William Ruto’s government.
