Government Watchdog and Civil Society Groups Demand an Independent Inquiry into Assassination of Human Rights Defenders in Kenya

NAIROBI—The government's watchdog, the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights, and civil society groups in Kenya are demanding for an independent inquiry into the assassination of two human rights defenders in Nairobi last week. The two, Oscar Kingara Kamau, the founder of the Oscar Foundation Free Legal Aid Clinic, and John Paul Oulu were gunned down a week after meeting with an independent UN expert investigating police killings in Kenya.

"It is not a coincidence that the killings happened hours after the government spokesman Alfred Mutua, publicly denounced the Oscar Foundation for its alleged links to the illegal sect and promised unspecified action against them," said Florence Simbiri-Jaoko, the National Commission chair, in a press statement.

The widely condemned killings provoked protests in which the Kenyan police yet again shot dead a University of Nairobi student.

The United Nations Special Rapporteur on Extra Judicial Executions, Prof. Philip Alston, last week released a report that indicted Kenya's security forces for their involvement in extra-judicial killings. Prof. Alston called on Kenya's attorney general to resign for complicit inaction against rampant execution of suspects by the Kenya police. He urged the Kenyan government to dismiss the police commissioner Hussein Ali, for presiding over "a killer force." The Oscar Foundation was one of the civil society groups that provided both Prof. Alston and Kenya's parliament with information on extra-judicial executions.

Last year, at the 41st session of the United Nations committee against torture, the Kenya Government delegation acknowledged the occurrence of extra-judicial killings, including those carried out by agents of the state.

The National Commission is appealing to the Panel of Eminent Persons that negotiated Kenya's Grand Coalition Government last year to put pressure on President Mwai Kibaki and Prime Minister Raila Odinga to prioritize reforms in the police service, as was recommended by the Commission on Post Elections Violence (CIPEV) in Kenya. Civil society groups demand of the Kenyan government to demobilize organized criminal gangs as per the principles of agreement that set up Kenya's coalition government.