AFRICANEWS

Kenya

More on death row

Human rights

For the second year running, Kenya continues to have the highest number of death row inmates among those African countries which are not currently involved in any full-scale war

Kenya's number of prisoners on the death row is now the highest among those African countries which are not involved in any overt full-scale conflict. This is according to recent reports by human rights groups and it isthe second time in as many years for the country to have that record.

According to this year'sreport by the London-based Amnesty International, entitled Annual Report 1998,by the end of last year Kenya had 750 people awaiting execution in the country's prisons. This figureitself is an increase from the previous year'sof 739 people. During theyear (1997)a total of 74 people were sentenced to hang by the country's High Courts,a figure whichwas also another increase from the 1996 one of 63 people who were sent to the gallows.

This increasing number of death row inmates has raised concern among human rights activists considering the life threatening conditions of the prisons themselves are in and the fact that there has never been any execution since 1985. "There is no point in sendingmore peopleto the death row if we are not been able to deal with thosealready there. Some have been under death rowfor over ten years", says Robert Buke, a programme officer at the Kenya Human Rights Commission(KHRC).

And though noexecutions related to the capital punishment have been carried out in the country since the 1985 hanging of coup plotters implicated in an abortive August 1982 coup, human rightsgroups have pointedout the fact that prisoners ondeath row are already facing their fate as they continue to die from such prison conditions. In the country the penaltyofdeathis usually handed out to those who have either been convicted of treason, murder or robbery with violence. And ifexecutions are to be carried out they are not public and also differ. Mutineers face a firing squad while criminal offenders are supposed to be hanged.

Buke,a former political prisoner, hastensto add that being sent to prison in the country is the same as being sent to die. A fact confirmed by the Amnesty Internationalreport which recordeda total of630 deathsin the country's prisonslast year alone. These deaths, according to the group, were due to infectious diseases rampant in the overcrowded prisons, food shortage, lack of clean water, sexual abuse and inadequate medical care.

Prison deaths have also been addressed by Amnesty in the past. For example in aDecember 1995 report titled Kenya: Torture Compounded by the Denial of Medical Care had accused some sections of the medical fraternity in the country of colluding with prison authorities to deny ailing prisoners especially those charged with political offenses medical care. In its response the government merely accused the rights body of "presenting onlygeneralisations, of continuing factual inaccuracies and failing to acknowledge improvements in the protection of human rights in the country".

In Kenya a typical prison block measuresbetween 700-2000 square feet and will only be equipped with one or two toilets with most of these blocks having no water .The prisoners who sleep on the floor average between 100-200 per block and in most times are an odd mixture of hardened criminals and youthful adolescent delinquents increasing chances of sexual abuse for the younger ones.

Life in them, according to a 1996 report by the KHRC is simply hell on earth. An assessmentwhichAmnesty International also describes as correct considering the fact treatment in these institutions"is cruel, inhuman and degrading". But even as these warnings increase, the prison population continues to rise dramatically even with presidentDaniel arap Moi's pardoning of 4,288 prisoners last year. By the end of the same year the figure had risen by over 8,000 to stand at 41,000 prisoners. Even as executions stand unofficially frozen the number ofkillings of suspectedoffenders by the police have however been on a dramatic rise.

By the end of last year alone 70 people were shot dead by a special anti-crime police squad, the Flying squad,which many human rights activists have came to view as an unofficial hit squad."This squad contains nocrime, it's simply an execution unit",one rights activist is reported to have remarked after the shooting to death of an unarmed university student mid this year after he was mistaken for a robber.
As the number of death row inmates continues to rise, the government-appointed Standing Committee on Human Rights which came into being inMay 1996 has remained mum. Efforts to get an officialcomment from it have beenfruitless. This is due tothe fact that the committee which was formedto investigate the abuses itself has a limited mandate, thus some in it claim issues like death row are beyond its scope.

It is a situation which has led it to be labeled as being the regime's public relations tool on the issue. Its first reportsubmitted to president Moi was never made public neither has it ever held public sessions to hear complaints from members of the public.
Even another government constituted committee which set to look into the issue of reducing the number of custodial sentences in the country had notbeen known to have reported its findings by the end of last year.
Elsewhere human rights groups continue to charge the country with mistreating and torturing of inmates despitethe fact that the country is a signatory of the UN ConventionAgainst Torture, and other Cruel and Dehumanising Treatmentor Punishment which itratified in February last year. This follows the recent issue of massive torture which the police even admitted to have carried out in the North Eastern province after a colleague was killed by bandits. All the people who were arrested were subjected to severe torture which left most of them traumatised.

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