As the one-year anniversary of the dramatic June 25, 2024, protests approaches, a palpable tension is building. With online chatter suggesting that Kenya’s vibrant Gen Z movement is gearing up for peaceful countrywide demonstrations on June 25, 2025, to commemorate the tumultuous events of a year prior, calls for transparency and accountability are growing louder.
Central to this demand is the persistent mystery surrounding the CCTV footage from Parliament on that fateful day.
During a recent discussion on Citizen TV’s Day Break with Sam Gituku, Ernest Oduor, the Communication Lead at KHRC articulated the urgent need for the public release of Parliament's security footage from June 25, 2024.
According to Oduor who quoted the KHRC report, just an hour before Parliament was breached, police allegedly shot six people dead near the Parliament control area and two more outside the Senate building entrance.
He also alleges that GSU officers shot another ten people before being overwhelmed, bringing the total number of individuals shot in and around Parliament to approximately 25 within that short span.
“Today some will ask yourself where is the CCTV footage of parliament of that day? There have been attempts to get it but parliament claims that at that moment the CCTV was malfunctioning. Is it possible that the CCTV was malfunctioning?" Oduor posed.
It is against this claim that the host then questioned the validity of the "malfunctioning" claim, noting that the leader of the majority in the national assembly, Kimani Ichung’wah had reportedly stated that "those of us that managed to watch the footage could discern where protesters were coming from and where the criminals were coming from" whereas parliament is alleging that the CCTV were malfunctioning.
"So according to the human rights watch report, the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights where the commissioner I represent attempted to get the footage but it was unsuccessful. But because of public interests and the nature of this violence, it behooves the National Assembly to proactively release this footage so that the public can know the truth,” Oduor urged.
The upcoming anniversary and the anticipated protests only amplify these demands, pressing for answers and concrete action from authorities. The collective memory of June 25, 2024, remains raw, and for many, the path to healing and moving forward begins with the unvarnished truth captured by those elusive cameras.
Comments 0
Sign in to join the conversation
Sign In Create AccountNo comments yet. Be the first to share your thoughts!