As the nation mourns retired President Daniel Moi, some critics
kept their eyes on the...
economic burden on the taxpayer by overzealous government officials and security agencies who committed human rights violations during his rule.
economic burden on the taxpayer by overzealous government officials and security agencies who committed human rights violations during his rule.
Between June and December
2019 alone, some Sh888million was paid out to cover for 52 cases of
survivors who had successfully sued for compensation over inhumane
treatment decades back.
More than 400 Kenyans have gone
to court and successfully argued that they were tortured by State
officials or officers during the Moi-era. Among them are lawyers,
politicians, journalists, former university lecturers, student leaders,
police and military officers.
While awarding some of
the survivors, judges ruled that they were persuaded that the
complainants had proved to the required standards that they were
physically tortured and subjected to unwarranted cruel, inhumane and
degrading treatment.
During
the dark days, the police would arrest persons perceived to be
dissidents and hold them in the infamous torture chambers at Nyayo
House, Nairobi. Among those who suffered were persons calling for the
return of multiparty politics or an end of then President Moi’s rule.
Thousands
of activists, students and academics have claimed they were held
without charges in the underground cells, some of them filled with
water. They were sometimes denied food and water.
They
include perceived leaders or members of movements such as Mwakenya,
February Eighteen Movement and Release Political Prisoners (which also
included mothers calling for the release of their 53 sons).
Others who faced the wrath of the government were editors,
contributors and distributors of Pambana, a publication deemed seditious
by the Kanu administration at the time.
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