Mass protests swept across Kenya last week following the brutal death of 31-year-old political blogger and schoolteacher Albert Omondi Ojwang in police custody.
Demonstrations began on Tuesday in Nairobi, where thousands of young people and workers flooded the streets. Coinciding with the national budget debate in Parliament, protesters attempted to march on the building but were met with heavy police repression. Vehicles were torched, roads barricaded, and chants of “Stop killing us” and “Justice for Albert” were heard. Marches quickly spread to Kisumu, Mombasa, and smaller towns.
The government immediately responded with violence, deploying anti-riot police, unleashing tear gas, water cannons, and batons on the crowds. Images showed protesters choking on gas, bleeding from rubber bullets and tear gas canisters. Dozens have been injured, and several vehicles set ablaze.
Ojwang’s death has also triggered outrage within the education sector. The Kenya Union of Post Primary Education Teachers (KUPPET), which represents over 120,000 educators nationwide, has threatened to call a national strike. Teachers described his killing as an extrajudicial execution and demanded the resignation of Deputy Inspector General of the National Police Service, Eliud Lagat. “If that does not happen, we shall call on all our members to go on strike until justice is done to our slain colleague,” said Homa Bay Branch Secretary Jacob Karura.
On Monday Lagat resigned, pending completion of an investigation into Ojwang’s death by the Independent Policing Oversight Authority (IPOA).
The protests are erupting just as workers and youth are preparing to mark the one-year anniversary of the 2024 Gen Z uprising. A mass demonstration is already planned for June 25.
Ojwang was arrested on June 6 in Homa Bay County on charges of “defaming” top policeman Lagat, after publishing posts exposing high-level corruption in the police. He was transferred over 350 kilometers to Nairobi Central Police Station, where, in the early hours of June 8, just 70 minutes after being booked, he was dead.
Police claimed he died “after hitting his head against a cell wall.” The public instantly rejected this obvious lie. For millions of Kenyans living under constant police harassment, the explanation recalled infamous police killings in Apartheid South Africa: Imam Abdullah Haron allegedly “falling down stairs” in 1969; South African Communist Party member Ahmed Timol jumping from a police window in 1971; and Steve Biko, whose 1977 death was attributed to a hunger strike though he had been beaten to death.
A postmortem led by Dr. Bernard Midia soon exposed the police lies about Ojwang’s death. Midia detailed significant head trauma, neck compression, and multiple soft tissue injuries. “These were injuries that were externally inflicted,” Midia stated. CCTV footage from the police station was deleted, and the hard drives were wiped in a clear sign of a coordinated cover-up.
In an attempt at damage control, several lower ranking police officers have been arrested, including Constable James Mukhwana, the station commander Samson Talam, and a technician who erased the footage. Lagat, whose complaint triggered the arrest and then murder of Ojwang, initially refused to resign.
President William Ruto has tried to deflect blame, calling it the work of “rogue officers.” “Criminal elements in uniform must be held to account,” he claimed, while speaking at a police leadership meeting. Interior Cabinet Secretary Kipchumba Murkomen dismissed calls for resignations, defending Lagat’s role and insisting that accountability lies with the IPOA.
But IPOA is a sham. It rarely releases findings, and convictions for police killings are nearly nonexistent. It exists to give the illusion of oversight while protecting the security forces from real consequences.
Opposition politicians have meanwhile rushed to express cynical outrage. Wiper Party leader Kalonzo Musyoka condemned the killing as a “cruel execution,” stating, “They clearly tortured and murdered Albert Ojwang.” But Musyoka was Minister of Information and later Foreign Affairs under the brutal Western-backed dictatorship of Daniel arap Moi.
A 1995 Amnesty International report released during his tenure documented a horrifying pattern: “Since the December 1992 election Amnesty International has received numerous reports of police brutality, possible extrajudicial executions by the police—over 43 alleged criminals have been killed, apparently deliberately, in the first six months of 1995—and torture and ill-treatment by police and security forces.” It went on to describe routine torture of suspects, systematic abuse of political prisoners, and near-total impunity for the security forces, conditions indistinguishable from those under Ruto today.
Former Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua also feigned outrage, declaring, “I condemn this cowardly act by the killers and call for speedy investigations. Culprits must be brought to book.” These words come from a man who, alongside Ruto, directly oversaw the bloody crackdowns on anti-austerity protests in 2023 and 2024, when police were ordered to fire live ammunition into crowds, abduct youth from their homes, and unleash masked death squads.
Raila Odinga, the longtime opposition figure now in coalition with Ruto, expressed “horror” at Ojwang’s death, describing how he was “picked from Homa Bay and driven to his death in police cells in Nairobi.” But Odinga has been a partner in repression. Following the 2024 Gen Z repression, he joined the government and helped shield the Ruto regime from accountability. Since then, police killings and abductions have continued, journalists have been harassed, and even schoolchildren’s plays critical of the government have been violently suppressed.
Police killings in Kenya are a national plague. Every year, hundreds are killed by the security forces, with victims drawn overwhelmingly from the working class and rural poor, especially young people in informal settlements. The killing of protesters has escalated sharply. In 2023, the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights recorded 61 protesters killed and 73 abducted. In 2024, during the Gen Z uprising against the Finance Bill, at least 65 were killed, thousands arrested, and dozens disappeared without a trace. The BBC documentary Blood Parliament documented how senior police commanders ordered their officers to “kuua, kuua” (“kill, kill” in Kiswahili), before firing live rounds into unarmed protesters. That year, cases of enforced disappearance rose nearly five times compared to the year before.
The roots of this violence lie in the structure of Kenyan capitalism. Six decades after the Kenyan bourgeoisie promised democracy and social equality on the eve of independence, the country’s tiny ruling elite, fattened by corruption and the crumbs thrown by imperialism, presides over staggering inequality. Less than 0.1 percent of the population, around 8,300 individuals, control more wealth than the bottom 99.9 percent—over 44 million people. Oxfam predicts the number of millionaires in Kenya will grow by 80 percent over the next decade, even as poverty remains widespread. Roughly 40 percent of Kenyans live in poverty, with nearly a third experiencing food insecurity.
For this system to function, it requires violence. The police are tasked to protect wealth and suppress resistance. One in three Kenyans has experienced police harassment, often through illegal detention, extortion, or physical abuse. Police corruption is a structured pyramid, with bribes flowing up the chain of command to senior officials and, ultimately, to those in government. The police operate as a militarised death squad for the elite.
Meanwhile, the ruling class and its imperialist backers speak of reform. Donor countries like the US, UK, and European Union funnel millions into “security-sector reform” programmes that do nothing but expand police capacity for surveillance and repression to crush social opposition, defend private property, and enforce International Monetary Fund (IMF) austerity.
The Kenyan government’s intensification of violence on its population has only been emboldened by Donald Trump’s efforts in the US to carry out an unfolding coup to establish a presidential dictatorship. Having already deployed troops into Los Angeles, overseen violent attacks on immigrants, and repeatedly threatened military action against protesters, Trump’s campaign represents the front line of world imperialism’s descent into dictatorship. His actions give political oxygen to figures like Ruto, who are constructing their own police states to carry out IMF diktats and increase their personal fortunes.
Last weekend, millions across the US joined demonstrations against Trump’s policies. Protests against the drive to dictatorship in the US and Kenya show the working class must recognise that police terror, corruption, and poverty are not separate issues. Above all, they are not national issues. They are symptoms of the decaying capitalist system. What is needed is the socialist reorganisation of society, under the democratic control of the working class, to abolish inequality and secure the rights of all.