Scars of brutality: Survivors' trauma of 2023 police crackdown

The country might be slowly forgetting the violent crackdown of protests by police that left scores maimed and others killed, but the cracks of the incidents have changed the lives of victims and ushered in a new reality of fear, heartbreak and pain.

This came to the fore as the hearing of a case filed by survivors and family members of victims who were shot by police officers during a violent crackdown on protests organised by the opposition in 2023 began at the Kisumu High Court.

The crackdown happened between March and July 2023, a year before another round of protests organised by Gen-Z attracted a similar response of brutality from the police, leaving behind broken families and pain.

Wednesday,  Kenneth Omondi, a clinical officer who survived death by a whisker after he was shot in the chest, emotionally recounted how police officers in plain clothes shot him in front of his gate before hurling teargas canisters at him as he bled.

While testifying before Justice Alfred Mabeya, the medic who has been condemned to undergo frequent draining of blood from his chest says his life has never been the same again.

On the fateful day, he had been planning to go to work for his evening shift but had been waiting for tensions to calm down. He had been in the estate and did not imagine he was in the line of a threat.

“I had decided to check if everything had cooled down and buy supper for my family before proceeding to work,” he says.

As he stepped outside his gate, he saw two officers in plainclothes walking on the road. Moments later, he heard the men shouting at him and within a glimpse, he was shot by one of the men who was holding a rifle.

“I was trying to push my daughter and her friend, who had accompanied me back inside the gate when I was shot,” he said.

The two men then jumped into a police Land Cruiser and fled the scene after the shooting.

Unlike other victims of similar shootings, Omondi used his medical training skills to suppress the wound to reduce the bleeding and increase his chances of survival.

“I called a neighbour’s househelp who had come out to see what had happened to me, and she helped me tie my cloth around the wound to stop the bleeding,” he testified.

A well-wisher then took him on a motorbike and rushed him to a private facility before he was transferred to Migori County Referral Hospital for specialised treatment.

He told a quiet court how he spent the next five days with a bullet lodged in his chest until a surgeon came from Kisii to conduct the delicate surgery on him.

“The bullet perforated my lungs. It was by the grace that the bullet never went through my heart. I was in pain during the five days and could not even sit or lie because of the pain,” he said.

According to the medic, the days that followed were more traumatising as a contingent of police officers from the Directorate of Criminal Investigations came to the hospital to demand the bullet that had been removed from his body.

“A group of 14 men came to me looking for the bullet and only one identified himself, the rest were around the bed wanting to know who took the bullet,” he narrated, adding that the bullet had been kept by the hospital’s administrator.

It took the intervention of another medical officer, who told the men that the patient was still unwell and could not answer questions before the officers left.

“I felt intimidated, you are shot, almost lost your life, but people are coming to demand the bullet. In the evening, the administrator came to me to ask me if he could give the bullet to the DCI officers. But I refused and told him to wait for my uncle,” he said.

The family later handed over the bullet to the officers from the Independent Policing Oversight Authority (IPOA).

“I stayed in the ward for further management. He was still on oxygen. After that, I was told that I could not move without a chest tube for 37 days,” he said.

He says since the incident, he has been compelled to go to the hospital every three days for blood to be drained from his chest.

Since he was shot, the medical officer says he was assigned lighter duty by his employer because of his condition and cannot hold weight of more than five kilograms.

“I was given a disability index of 30 per cent and advised to avoid using lifts,” he says.

The father of two says he had been traumatised and has been compelled to escape to Tanzania every time there are protests and there are sounds of gunfire.

In the suit, 29 victims who were brutalised by the police during the protests have sued the government over their injuries and are seeking compensation. Nine of the petitioners are relatives of those who were killed by police officers during the protests.

They have listed the Inspector General of Police, the National Police Service, the Attorney General, and IPOA as respondents.

The Law Society of Kenya, Katiba Institute, Amnesty International, International Justice Mission, and the Kenya National Human Rights Commission have been listed as interested parties.

Justice Mabeya said the hearing of the case will be on a daily basis until it is concluded.

According to court records, one of the victims, Clinton Otieno, still has a bullet lodged in his body after doctors declared it was too risky to remove it.