If police have a problem with you, you are likely to disappear — report

He left the house with a promise to return for supper—but that evening, his chair sat empty. Six months later, it still does, and no one knows where EK went, or why.

It was just days before Christmas, a season that warms hearts of families but for his, a cloud of darkness and sadness covered it and the darkness hasn’t lifted since.

The 25-year-old got into a heated exchange with a traffic police officer over some cash, which his friends suspect, was bribe money.

The near blow altercation saw the officer wag his finger at him, warning that he would pay dearly for the “disrespect and betrayal.”

He went missing the following day, and for six months now, the family suspect his body was either sunk in a river or is booked in a morgue somewhere with a different name.

EK was based in Murang’a where he mostly worked as a tout.

What is perplexing the family is that no one wants to volunteer information and even the loved ones who spoke to the Star, refuse to be put on record.

His mother, WK, claimed that when she attempted to report the matter at the nearby police station, the officers refused to record it and give her OB, only telling her to go look for her son in the local dens of alcohol.

The case of EK paints a pattern, as a recent report shows that incidents of enforced disappearances have increased 450 per cent over the last year.

According to the Missing Voices report covering 2024, if the police have a problem with you, it is increasingly likely that they will disappear you without a trace.

The report to be launched May 7, shows that security agencies are now gradually embracing enforced disappearance, replacing extrajudicial killing as a way of beating scrutiny and oversight by Independent Policing Oversight Authority and the public.

The report shows that while it recorded 104 incidents of police-related killings representing a 12 per cent drop from 118 in 2023, enforced disappearance numbers shot up dramatically in the year by 450 per cent from 10 cases in 2023 to 55 in 2024.

But the National Police Service has rejected the report, saying the findings have not been shared with it formally for its interrogation and substantive response.

NPS spokesman Muchiri Nyaga, who at the time of being contacted by the Star was outside the country, said the police service was not aware of the complaints and the pattern allegedly taking root in its ranks.

“[The] NPS is not aware of any reports or allegations of such nature,” he told the Star.

“And have such allegations been shared or brought to the attention of NPS?  It is not possible to respond a non-existent report(s),” he said.

Established in 2018, Missing Voices is a coalition of human rights organisations whose mission is to end enforced disappearances and extrajudicial killings in the country.

Anchored by Amnesty International and International Justice Mission, the coalition’s members and partners include Defenders Coalition, HAKI Africa, Human Rights Watch, Heinrich Böll Foundation, Justice Truth Dignity and Kenya Human Rights Commission.

Others are Kituo Cha Sheria, Muslims for Human Rights, Peace Brigade International, Protection International Kenya, Social Justice Centres Working Group, Independent Medical Legal Unit and Katiba Institute.

The report obtained exclusively by the Star, shows that 55 incidents of enforced disappearance were recorded between January-December 2024 compared to only 10 documented in the previous year, a 450 per cent increase.

The largest number of 15 was reported in June at the height of the Finance Bill 2024.

This was followed by 11 incidents in October, seven incidents in each case were reported in July and August while five incidents were reported in December, it said.

“April had four incidents while January, May and September each reported two incidents,” it says.

Missing Voices did not document any incident of enforced disappearance in February, March and November 2024.

Amnesty International reported 89 incidents of enforced disappearances and 65 extrajudicial killings between in 2024.

Independent Medico-Legal Unit documented 2,000 cases of police injuries, 89 incidents of enforced disappearances and 63 cases of extrajudicial killings during the year.

The Kenya National Commission on Human Rights was the main authoritative source of data during the 2024 protests.

It documented 60 incidents of Finance Bill 2024 related extrajudicial killings and 74 enforced disappearances between June-November 2024.

Of the 74 enforced disappearance cases recorded by the KNCHR, Missing Voices coalition says it documented and verified 55 of them, meaning that the number could be way higher.

2024 marked the year that the coalition recorded the highest number of cases of enforced disappearances.

Before, 2019 had the highest cases of enforced disappearances at 38.

In 2023, the lobby recorded 10 incidents of enforced disappearances. These included one each for February, July, October, November and December.

August that year had two incidents while the month with the highest incidents that year was September with three incidents.

“This comparison indicates that the government’s appetite for using enforced disappearance as a tool for suppressing dissent increased by almost five times in 2024,” it reads.

Further, the data show that men remain at enhanced risk of being disappeared by the police.

Forty five of the 55 incidents recorded and verified by the lobby in 2024 were male, nine were female while gender of one was not indicated.

During 2023, all incidents of enforced disappearances were men, it said.

“This implies that even though men continue to be more vulnerable to be victims of enforced disappearance, women too face a resurging danger of being victimised,” it says.

“This could have resulted from the fact that the Gen Zs and Millennials protests which were the main victims of enforced disappearance during the year, saw unusually very high number of young women exercise their constitutional rights to picket and protest.”

Twenty three of the documented victims of enforced disappearances during the year were adults, 21 were youth while two were minors.

Details of nine victims were not available to classify them by age.

“These figures indicate that youths and adults were the most affected by incidents of enforced disappearance during the year though minors were not completely free from danger.”

Instant Analysis

Enforced disappearances are becoming the state's new weapon of silence. With oversight mechanisms struggling and families too scared to speak, impunity thrives—and the disappeared remain invisible, both in law and in memory.