Yes, let’s execute criminals but start with those looting nation

A police officer subdues a suspected criminal in Nairobi’s Eastleigh suburb. Fighting crime does not mean the suspension of laws. PHOTO | COURTESY

What you need to know:

  • We are treading into dangerous and lawless territory when we allow the police to become the judge, jury and executioner.
  • Those who made illicit fortunes from corrupt dealings with government have no moral authority to ask for tough action on crime.

The viral video of a public police execution of two suspected gangsters in Nairobi’s Eastleigh suburb has generated intense debate: Was it justifiable justice or cold-blooded murder?

My own very unscientific analysis of the social media chatter — from climes where the Internet is severely restricted and I had no access to Facebook, Twitter or even Google and Gmail until a belated discovery of the VPN that gets one around the Great Firewall of China — indicates a sizeable majority in favour of the drastic police action.

These views come not just from “common” folk tired of the high level of crime, but also from some fairly erudite and presumably well-schooled lawyers.

A notable voice came from a prolific social media commentator, a lawyer with a chip on his shoulder, who displays particular dislike for the media, civil society and all individuals and organisations that do not toe the straight and narrow path of his ethnic-political persuasion.

KILL OR BE KILLED
The other came from another lawyer, who is better known for flaunting his expensive socialite lifestyle on social media and showing off his acquisitions, properties, and encounters with the high and mighty.

Both argued that the police have every right to kill criminals, pointing out that the law does provide for the use of lethal force.

They went further to argue that in a state of war, or when confronting terrorists, bandits, cattle rustlers and other dangerous armed criminals, the police are in direct line of fire, and have to kill or be killed.

Those are popular arguments that will find resonance with the many Kenyans forever at the mercy of violent criminals.

Indeed, many used the opportunity to recount their own terrifying experiences at the hands of carjackers, muggers and armed robbers.

Memories were brought back of the loss of innocent lives in Garissa, Westgate, Mandera, Mpeketoni, the American embassy in Nairobi and other terrorist attacks.

RULE OF LAW
There were also references to the large number of police officers who are paying with their lives so that the rest of us can live in safety and comfort.

These are all valid and justifiable points of view. But unfortunately, they are grounded in emotion and frustration rather than logical and sober appraisal.

From a legal standpoint, those arguments are, at best, pedestrian, and based on deliberately misleading and dishonest grounds.

Yes, Kenya is in state of war against Al-Shabaab and associated terrorist groups.

One may stretch this argument further to encompass the on-off campaign against cattle rustlers, bandits and ethnic militias in the lawless and ungoverned northern reaches; or the fight against armed and dangerous criminals in the sprawling urban jungles.

Fighting crime, however, does not mean the suspension of laws.

We may cheer the extermination of reportedly armed and dangerous criminals, but must also pause to wonder whether they really were criminals.

After all, we have only the word of the very same police officers who carried out the executions.

CORRUPTION
We are treading into dangerous and lawless territory when we allow the police to become the judge, jury and executioner.

The case in reference clearly shows that the suspects had been subdued and were no longer a danger to the public or to the policemen.

In a civilised democracy, they would have been arrested and taken before a judge, and if found guilty, sentenced appropriately, to hang by the neck, if need be.

But what we are increasingly seeing is that Kenya is a not a normal civilised democracy.

It is a lawless country where the forces of law and order allow crime to get out of hand, and then resort to unlawful actions to appease public anger.

It is highly hypocritical for us to advocate the extrajudicial execution of common criminals, and yet we cheer on a government that consorts with criminal kingpins and refuses to act on the high-level corruption that breeds the social-economic conditions that lead to runaway crime.

GRAFT SCANDALS
Those who made illicit fortunes from corrupt dealings with government have no moral authority to ask for tough action on crime.

If we are serious about extrajudicial action on crime, let us start from the top; by rounding up all the suspects from Goldenberg, Anglo Leasing, National Youth Service, Ministry of Energy, land grabbing, et cetera, for a public firing squad at Nairobi’s Uhuru Park!

Email: [email protected] Twitter: @MachariaGaitho