Amnesty International director Irungu Houghton on Friday gave five standard operating procedures the police service should review for the coming Tuesday's protest.
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00:00and concerned, deeply concerned, and perhaps even outraged by the killing of Rex Kanike last night.
00:09In what was a remarkable day of where we had thousands of Kenyans on the streets of Nairobi
00:15and with the exception of the arrests that we saw and of course the 200 injuries there was no
00:23fatality. But under the cover of darkness we have been sad and shocked like the rest of Kenyans to
00:29hear that a young Kenyan has been killed by a police officer. We will call for the following
00:38five actions or standard operating procedures to be reviewed moving forward to next week when we
00:46expect another round of protests. The first is that the National Police Service must desist
00:54from using non-uniformed officers while facilitating the right of Kenyans to protest.
01:02The use of non-uniformed officers makes it very difficult to be able to see
01:09whether these are police officers who have an oath of protection to the public
01:17or they are hooligans or goons or just armed criminals that are taking advantage of the
01:22situation. So we are calling on the Inspector General to cease the use of non-uniformed officers.
01:31Secondly we are calling on the National Police Service to release statistics
01:34on the numbers of Kenyans that their police officers have injured and now killed. We would
01:40like to see the same level of attention paid to the police inspector who tragically lost
01:46his arms while handling a tear gas canister applied to the family of Rex. We would like to
01:53see somebody at the level of a Cabinet Secretary also give their sympathy and compassion to the
01:59family of Rex, the late protester who was killed last night. We would also like to see the arrests
02:06of the officers involved in that operation so that we are clear that the National Police Service
02:13and the Executive do not support the idea of using live ammunition on peaceful protesters.
02:22Until we see that officer arraigned in a court of law it is not clear whether he was acting
02:27with the instructions of commanding officers or essentially was a rogue police officer.
02:33These are our demands as we continue to monitor, as we continue to protect Kenyans, as we
02:40continue to uphold the constitutional article of the right to assembly of our constitution.