Kenyan bishops condemn police crackdown on tax protests

After a week of demonstrations against tax rises and clashes with police, Kenyan protestors demanded broad political and financial reforms.

Youth-led protests in towns and cities across Kenya had calmed by Friday, but the Kenya Human Rights Commission estimated that 23 people had been killed and more than 300 others injured by the police response. Medical personnel reported that many of the injured had suffered gunshot wounds.

“While appreciating several occasions the police have tried to act rightly, [we] decry and condemn in the strongest terms, the use of force by the police, the arrests, and the indiscriminate and unnecessary use of live bullets,” said a statement from Archbishop Maurice Muhatia Makumba of Kisumu, chairman of the Kenya Conference of Catholic Bishops.

“The police should focus on criminals who implant themselves in peaceful protests to create chaos and rob or destroy property,” the statement said. “Unwarranted attacks on peaceful protesters cannot be justified.”

Widespread opposition to tax rises in a government finance bill prompted many people to take to the streets on 18 June, calling it “economic terrorism”. Organising under “Generation X” and “Gen Z” banners, young Kenyans led the protests which peaked on 25 June, when some stormed the parliament building and set fire to it moments after legislators had passed the bill.

On June 27, however, President William Ruto refused to sign the bill into law, saying he had “conceded” and would withdraw it.

“I propose an engagement with young people of our nation to listen to their issues and agree with them on their priority areas of concern,” said Ruto.

He said the government would conduct “a multi-sectorial, multi-stakeholder engagement [to] be held with a view to charting the way forward on matters relating to the content of the Bill as well as auxiliary issues raised in recent days on the need for austerity measures and strengthening our fight against corruption”.

Ruto ordered the deployment of the military, with parliamentary approval, to protect government installations.

According to the bishops, who earlier in June warned that the bill would “impoverish” Kenyans, young protesters were “alive to the negative impact punitive taxes have in their own lives”.

“Young people have reached a point of taking it upon themselves to express discontent with the insensitivity of the government to these unwarranted taxes that only raise the cost of living,” said Archbishop Makumba.

“The government must listen to the pain of its citizens caused by the high cost of living. Ignoring them will only escalate tensions in the country and draw young people and citizenry into despair.” 

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