In the last two weeks, there have been further incidents of police brutality against the Samburu people of northern Kenya. Following Cultural Survival’s investigation and publication of our report, police have not inflicted more military-style assaults on entire Samburu villages like those of 2009 and January of this year. But we are receiving reports of apparently random beatings meted out on Samburu men. In the Lerata region, for example, police beat several men so severely that they remain hospitalized at the Archer’s Post health clinic. One of the victims is Mwalemu Lilekoo, the pioneering founder of Lerata’s first primary school. In Loruko, police reportedly set Samburu homes on fire. Police also stormed the weekly livestock market in Archer’s Post and arrested at least seven Samburu warriors (moran) on charges of cattle theft. These young men are being held in jail, pending trial, and visitors say they have been badly beaten.
Cultural Survival condemns these unprovoked police assaults and brutal treatment of Samburu people. Please join us in sending letters to Kenyan government officials and the United States embassy in Nairobi.
