Police deny abuse of Somali refugees

THURSDAY, MAY 30, 2013 - 00:00 -- BY DOMINIC WABALA

Police have dismissed a report by the Human Rights Watch alleging that they raped, stole, tortured and abused more than 1,000 Somalia and Ethiopian refugees and asylum seekers in Eastleigh estate.

AP spokesman Masood Mwinyi yesterday said some of the allegations by the interviewed refugees were "outrageously unbelievable lies" against the very people from whom they seek protection.

"We have not seen the report but it is not the Kenyan police policy to rape, torture, arbitrary detain or steal from refugees as reported. Kenya has been the biggest host to refugees from neighbouring countries and if they face such atrocities from security services, there would not be as many refugees as we currently have. We will, however, respond appropriately once we study the report," Mwinyi said. 

The Human Rights Watch report based on interviews of 101 refugees and asylum seekers has accused the police of raping, torturing and abusing the refugees over a 10-week period days after seven people were killed in a minibus bomb attack last year.

HRW said Kenya is under international law obligations to protect refugees. “International law requires Kenya to ensure that officers who tortured refugees – who raped women and beat children and men into unconsciousness while branding them terrorists – are investigated and held to account,” HRW senior refugee researcher and author of the report Gerry Simpson said.

HRW has urged donor countries to withhold support to the four police units implicated in the abuses until the government acts on the accusations.

The organisation wants Kenya to shelves any plans to relocate urban refugees to remote refugee camps which might force them to return to their unsafe countries.

HRW has demanded that the government immediately begin independent public investigations into the allegations and urged the United Nations High Commission for Refugees to document and publicly report future abuses against refugees.

The report accuses UNHCR of failing to adequately document and speak out and urged it to improve its monitoring of abuses against refugees, record and publicly condemn them.