Police in Maseno, a town in western Kenya, have reported that a protester has been killed after being shot by officers while attempting to disperse a demonstration as part of protests called by opposition leader Raila Odinga and which Kenyan authorities had declared illegal this weekend.
The deceased has been identified as William Mayange, a third-year student at Maseno University, reports the ‘Nation’ newspaper. Mayange was shot in the neck at around 17.00 local time and was pronounced dead on arrival at the hospital.
According to the police report, the protesters invaded a supermarket and other establishments in the city center, set fire to a road and blocked it with stones: »They overran the officers manning the station, and had run out of tear gas».
To disperse the students without being able to continue using tear gas, the report continues, the officers used live ammunition weapons, one of these shots being the one that ended Mayange’s life.
The Kenya National Commission on Human Rights (KNCHR) has called on the Inspector General of Police to restrict the use of live ammunition against protesters as an excessive use of force and a possible criminal offense.
»Those who have been arrested must be treated humanely and their rights and dignity must be respected as the law dictates,» they have recalled in a statement. They should not be subjected to torture, cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.
The protests continue after the Security Forces launched tear gas against the convoy of opposition leader Raila Odinga, who had promised »the mother of all protests» to continue with the pulse he is waging against the Government after the elections of 2022, which he considers fraudulent. In those elections his great political rival, the current president of the country, William Ruto, won.
The police had declared illegal the march on Monday because its organizers had not communicated the exact route along which it should run – a version that the opposition denies – and has activated a strong deployment that was visible on Monday in some of the main institutions of the African country.
Source: (EUROPA PRESS)
