Kenya’s police force, which can trace a direct lineage back to its colonial-era forerunner, has played a starring role in the Kenyatta government’s management of the public health crisis during the Covid-19 pandemic. The very same Public Order Act that President Uhuru Kenyatta invoked to enable his government’s pandemic measures, is also a colonial relic. These colonial laws, which proved useful tools of repression for Kenya’s authoritarian first two presidents, survived the efforts to bring in constitutional reform and more democratic governance in the 1990s. Now, the Covid-19 crisis has allowed the state to fully rehabilitate the Act’s original function: policing by terror.
Source : Kenya Turns Its Covid-19 Crisis into a Human Rights Emergency
