It was August 9, 2017. Two youths, aged 24 and 22, were returning from work to their home in Mathare, one of Nairobi’s largest slums. Victor worked in construction and Bernard as a tailor. A massive protest had erupted at the time, against alleged fraud in Kenya’s general elections and had made its way to Mathare. Victor and Bernard struggled to make it home amid the tensions. The brothers stopped to speak with other youths in Mathare, when suddenly police opened fire with live bullets, sending them frantically running. Victor and Bernard joined the dozens of victims of police killings in the capital city during election violence that season. “My life was torn apart,” says 50-year-old Buluma, known locally as “Mama Victor.” “My sons’ lives were taken as if they meant nothing,” she says, eyes glassy, as her leg shakes.
Her courage sparked what would grow into a new social movement of grieving mothers, wives, and sisters who had lost loved ones to police violence. In 2020, the movement officially launched as the Mothers of Victims and Survivors Network, which now has more than 70 members. Along with several young men who have survived police brutality, these women are standing up to the police, determined to end extrajudicial killings. Irungu Houghton, executive director of Amnesty International Kenya, tells Al Jazeera that the mothers’ network represents a “significant development” in the country’s longstanding struggle against police abuses.
Missing Voices Kenya, a coalition of organizations that monitor such deaths, has recorded 1,226 police killings and 275 enforced disappearances since 2007 when it began documenting cases. That was around the time the city’s slums were flooded with “killer cops” who shot numerous young men, accusing them of actual or alleged crimes. Last year, the group counted at least 187 extrajudicial killings and 32 cases of enforced disappearances in Kenya. The vast majority of these victims are young men from Nairobi’s slums, where 70 percent of the city’s population is squeezed onto just 5 percent of its residential land. Severely neglected by the government, these areas often lack access to sewage, electricity, and indoor plumbing, while youth unemployment is sky-high.
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