Kenyan protest organisers called on Wednesday 26 June for fresh peaceful marches against deeply unpopular tax hikes. The death toll from nationwide demonstrations has climbed to 22 according to the state-funded organisation Kenya National Commission on Human Rights.
Tensions sharply escalated earlier this week, as police opened fire on demonstrators who entered. Largely youth-led rallies have demonstrated for over a week, with thousands marching across the country against the tax increases. The unprecedented scenes left parts of parliament ablaze and gutted and hundreds of people wounded, shocking Kenyans. President William Ruto’s government are threatening to deploy the military.
On Tuesday 25 June afternoon, parliament passed the contentious bill containing the tax hikes, which must be signed by Ruto to become law. But demonstrators vowed to hit the streets again as they called for the bill to be scrapped.
BBC News reported:
The bill initially proposed to introduce a 16% sales tax on bread and 25% duty on cooking oil.
After widespread public opposition, those particular measures were dropped. However:
The finance bill introduces a 16% tax on goods and services for the direct and exclusive use in the construction and equipping of specialised hospitals with a minimum bed capacity of 50.
Many Kenyans worry that this could mean higher healthcare costs.
Added to this, proposed higher import tax has been met with angry condemnation. Now, it appears as though the Kenyan government have dropped the proposal, after all.
Live bullets
Protest organiser Hanifa Adan said on X:
Tomorrow we march peacefully again as we wear white, for all our fallen people.
You cannot kill all of us.
Demonstrators shared “Tupatane Thursday” (“we meet Thursday” in Swahili), alongside the hashtag #Rejectfinancebill2024 on social media.
Steve, who was at the parliament on Tuesday, told Agence France-Presse (AFP):
The government does not care about us because they shot us with live bullets.
He shared his expectations for the coming marches:
I expect more violence and chaos.
Roseline Odede, chairperson of the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights, said:
This is the largest number of deaths (in) a single day protest.
We have over 300 injured in our records and over 50 arrests.
Earlier, Simon Kigondu, president of the Kenya Medical Association, said he had never before seen:
such level of violence against unarmed people.
An official at Kenyatta National Hospital in Nairobi said Wednesday that medics were treating “160 people… some of them with soft tissue injuries, some of them with bullet wounds”.
‘Violence and anarchy’
In posts online, protest organisers shared fundraising efforts to support those hurt in the demonstrations.
Ruto warned late Tuesday that his government would take a tough line against “violence and anarchy”, likening some of the demonstrators to “criminals”. He said:
It is not in order or even conceivable that criminals pretending to be peaceful protesters can reign terror against the people, their elected representatives and the institutions established under our constitution and expect to go scot-free.
An AFP reporter saw a heavy police presence at parliament.
Ruto’s administration has been taken by surprise by the intensity of opposition to its tax hikes.
And while the rallies – mostly led by young, Gen-Z Kenyans – have been largely peaceful, tensions rose sharply Tuesday afternoon when officers fired at crowds near parliament. AFP journalists saw three people bleeding heavily and lying motionless on the ground.
CNN journalist Larry Madowo saw police kill an unarmed man outside parliament:
I saw police shoot dead unarmed young men in front of Kenya's parliament. My final thoughts on a deadly day of protests pic.twitter.com/DUpglsMMcB
— Larry Madowo (@LarryMadowo) June 25, 2024
Abductions accusation
Daniel Mwangi, a worker at the protests, said:
We wake up every day to go and hustle, but you can’t even buy anything these days because life has become so expensive.
We don’t have work so we can be here [protesting] every day. If we can’t find something to live for, we will find something to die for.
The Police Reforms Working Group Kenya (PRWG-K) unequivocally condemns the recent wave of abductions of citizens suspected of involvement in the #RejectFinanceBill2024 protests.
These abductions of at least 12 people, which have occurred over the last five days and intensified last night, are a gross violation of human rights and amount to arbitrary arrests and enforced disappearance as prohibited under Article 29 of the Constitution of Kenya, 2010.
Breakthrough News host Eugene Puryear made a salient connection to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) sponsoring the proposed budget:
🇰🇪 🇰🇪Huge numbers have taken to the streets of Nairobi Kenya today (6/25) to protest an IMF sponsored budget bill that will impose further austerity during a cost of living crisis. The bill includes tax hikes on food, diapers, menstrual products & more.
— Eugene Puryear (@EugenePuryear) June 25, 2024
Harvard economist Robert Borro’s analysis of the IMF comes to mind. Barro wrote:
With help from the US, the fund encourages bad economic policy by rewarding failure with showers of money
As Barro presciently argued:
The IMF doesn’t put out fires, it starts them.
Western imperialism and colonialism has no small part to play here, and it is deeply troubling to see Kenya’s government crack down on protesters with violence. The protesters in Kenya are clearly unable to live with heavy levels of taxation, and they’re not the only ones. If governments think they can squash protest and continue keeping poor people poor, they can think again.
Additional reporting by Agence France-Presse
Featured image via YouTube screenshot/Channel 4 News
