How does it feel to pull the trigger against a fellow Kenyan? To watch the life drain from their eyes as their body crumples to the ground? To return home, wash the blood from your hands, and kiss your children goodnight as if you are not a monster? These are the questions that haunt a nation drowning in the screams of its own people; murdered, tortured, and disappeared by the very institutions sworn to protect them. The death of Albert Ojwang, a 31-year old teacher and social media activist, is not an anomaly; it is the latest chapter in Kenya’s long history of state sanctioned terror. Found dead in a Nairobi police cell with his face swollen, blood oozing from his nose and mouth, Ojwang’s body bore the unmistakable signs of torture; a grotesque masterpiece of pain inflicted by the hands of those who wear the badge of law. The police claim he “hit his head against a cell wall,” a lie so flimsy it insults the intelligence of every Kenyan who has seen this script play out before.
This is not justice. This is not law enforcement. This is a slaughterhouse disguised as a democracy, where the powerful feast on the weak, and the only crime is daring to speak against the butchers. Ojwang’s death is not an isolated incident; it is part of a pattern, a system, a legacy. Since 2017, over 1,264 Kenyans have been executed by police, their bodies dumped in rivers, left in quarries, or labeled “suicides” in custody. During the 2023 anti government protests, at least 31 people were gunned down, including infants like 4 month old Precious, who choked to death on tear gas as her mother begged for mercy. The police did not stop when they heard the baby’s cries. They did not stop when the blood pooled on the streets. They never stop, because they have never been made to.
The architects of this carnage are not rogue officers; they are the system itself. Politicians who incite violence, commanders who greenlight executions, and a judiciary that looks the other way. When Inspector General Japhet Koome resigned after the Mukuru quarry massacre, where nine mutilated bodies, mostly women, were found dumped near a police station, it was not justice. It was a theater. No one was prosecuted. No one was jailed. The killers simply changed uniforms and continued their work. Even now, as Ojwang’s family demands answers, the state responds with the same hollow promises: “investigations,” “interdictions,” and the eternal waiting game of a system designed to exhaust, not exonerate.
And what of the victims? What of the families left to bury their children, their siblings, their dreams? They are told to “be patient,” to “trust the process,” as if the process has ever delivered anything but more graves. Joyce Kemunto, whose baby died in her arms, still waits for justice. The parents of Samantha Pendo, a 6 month old bludgeoned to death in 2017, still wait. The thousands of families of the disappeared; like Farah Ibrahim Korio, snatched from a police station in Wajir and never seen again, still wait . They wait because Kenya’s government has mastered the art of forgetting. The British perfected it during the Mau Mau uprising, burning archives and burying evidence of their atrocities. Today’s regime needs no flames; it simply ignores the screams until the world moves on.
But the world should not move on. The world should bear witness. To the plainclothed officers who abduct activists in broad daylight. To the cells where men like Ojwang are beaten to death for a tweet. To the politicians who stand before cameras and call murdered protesters “terrorists” while their death squads reload. This is not governance; it is gangsterism with a flag. And until every officer who has ever raised a fist, fired a bullet, or turned a blind eye is dragged into the light, Kenya will remain a graveyard masquerading as a nation.
So let us curse them: not with the hollow words of prayers, but with the unrelenting fury of memory. May the ghosts of their victims follow them into every boardroom, every bedroom, every moment of false peace. May their names rot in the mouths of their children. And may history remember them not as enforcers of order, but as the cowards who killed their own people and called it duty. Albert Ojwang’s blood is on their hands. And no amount of lies will wash it away.
