IV. Police Violence against Refugees in the Dadaab Refugee Camps

“We came to Kenya to flee police brutality, and now [in Kenya] we are still facing police brutality…. But I am a refugee and I was not born in Kenya so nobody will accept my words.”

— Refugee woman living in Ifo camp, March 6, 2010.

Police officers stationed in the border areas are not the only officers committing abuses against Somalis seeking refuge in Kenya’s North Eastern Province. Police stationed inside the camps also commit serious violence against refugees living there.[135] Seven refugees told Human Rights Watch about ten separate incidents during which police had violently assaulted them or during which they had witnessed police assaulting other refugees. One woman said a police officer had raped her and in another case police forced four women to strip naked in public. These incidents happened in 2008, 2009, and 2010, indicating a long-standing and ongoing trend of police violence in the camps.

Only one of the victims, a man, filed an official complaint against the police. In all other cases the victims said that police in the camps had refused to give them an official form required to bring a case to court or expressed no confidence in the Kenyan police’s willingness to investigate abuses by other police officers.

Human Rights Watch documented one case of police rape in the camps that took place in 2009 and it is not clear how widespread this type of abuse might be. A 25-year old woman who was raped by a police officer in Ifo camp in November 2009 said:

I used to sell mira [a leaf that serves as a mild stimulant] near the Administrative Police station in Ifo camp. One of the officers there used to buy mira from me all the time. During Eid [November] 2009, he came to me one night, pushed me against a thorny fence and threatened to hit me with a beer bottle. Then he grabbed the hair at the back of my head and threw me to the ground.  He injured my lip [shows scar].Then he raped me. That night I went to sleep outside the Ifo UNHCR compound. The next morning UN officials and staff from CARE took me to the Ifo hospital because I had severe injuries all over my body. I never saw the police officer again because two weeks later he was transferred out of the camps.[136]

Police Violence and Degrading Treatment in Public and in Refugees’ Homes

Refugees spoke to Human Rights Watch about how police officers in the camps had assaulted them or treated them in a degrading manner in public places and in their homes.

A young refugee from Ifo camp said he saw four police officers seriously assaulting two refugees during a strike in February 2010 by 300 refugees working in the Ifo hospital:

During the third week of the strike ten policemen tried to disperse the strikers. Everyone started running. I saw one of the strikers fall and two police officers ran up to him and kicked him in his sides and stamped on his back. Then another one of the strikers intervened and the officers threw him to the ground and kicked him in the side, back, legs, and arms and slapped and punched him in the head. Two other officers joined in and kicked and punched both of them. The officers were calling the two men “kumbamako” which means “your mother’s asshole” and shouted, “This is not Mogadishu. You will know what Kenyan law says. We will detain you forever.” Then they dragged the men away to the Administrative Police post in Ifo camp.[137]

Another refugee said he witnessed police whipping many refugees and beating a woman during food distribution in Ifo camp in early 2008:

There were scuffles during the food distribution and the police used thin rubber tubes to whip many refugees. A woman, around 40 years old, fell and as she tried to get up police whipped her on her back and she fell down again. Then the police whipped her for about three minutes. I later heard she was taken to Ifo hospital and that she had very bad injuries on her back.[138]

UNHCR says that at some point in 2009, it received reports that police abducted four refugees and took them to an unknown location where they beat them to obtain information relating to an alleged theft that had taken place in one of the camps. The reports suggested the police were acting on behalf of a local businessman. UNHCR reported the incident to the police. The police conducted an investigation, but at this writing the police have not shared the results with UNHCR.[139]

In January 2008, eight police officers in one of the Dadaab camps seriously assaulted one of the refugee leaders (called “bloc leaders”) in his home as a result of a disagreement relating to how he had handled a dispute in the bloc he represented:

They came into my house and just started attacking me. They kicked me in the head above my left eye—I still have a scar—and broke my right index finger. One of them stepped on my stomach and I vomited. When some of my relatives tried to help me, they beat them as well. They punched my heavily pregnant sister in the stomach and she had a miscarriage very soon after. My family wanted to complain to the police, but we couldn’t make one because the police in Dadaab would not give us a P3 Form.[140] Because we cannot travel without a movement pass, we could not go to Garissa to get a form. There was no point in telling UNHCR because UNHCR need police escorts for their own security, so why would they create problems for the police?[141]

In early March 2008, five police officers in Ifo camp used sticks to beat a 27-year-old man selling goods in the street and then stole a number of mobile phones he was charging for other refugees. He told Human Rights Watch that in order to obtain a copy of a P3 Form, he had to secretly travel to Garissa because none of the police stations in the camps would give him a form. Human Rights Watch saw a copy of his completed form, which confirmed that in early March 2008 he had received injuries to his stomach, neck, and back, and a copy of a letter from the interviewee’s lawyer addressed to the Garissa Magistrate’s Court.[142]

Human Rights Watch spoke with a refugee living in Ifo camp since 1992 who had been shot by police on October 7, 2009 at around 11 pm, about ten meters from the edge of an NGO compound in Ifo camp. He was walking home after agreeing to buy wood from a wood seller (who often trade at night to avoid arrest for illegally chopping wood). He said:

Suddenly I heard a man telling me to stop. While I turned around, the man, a few meters away, shot me. The bullet hit my lower left side. I fell on the ground and the man dragged me into the NGO compound. I saw he was an Administrative police officer. The police later said that they shot me while I was trying to climb over the fence of the NGO compound but that is not true. I was just walking past it. I was unarmed and the police never claimed I had a gun, not even when the case went to court. The next day they took me to the Dadaab hospital where I had an operation. The same day they took me to the Ifo hospital where I spent two months hand-cuffed to a bed. They only took the handcuffs off when I went to the toilet, even though I was too injured to even walk. The police opened a case against me [for trying to break into an NGO compound] in the Dadaab mobile court. I had to pay KES 20,000 bail money. Then they discontinued the case for no reason. I have heard nothing about the case since late 2009 and I have not got my bail money back.[143]

Human Rights Watch spoke with two women who were among four women forced by police in November 2008 in the Dagahaley camp transit site to strip naked:

A neighbor had told the police that someone in our family had smeared menstrual blood on the wall of a latrine near our shelter. On November 25, we were next to our shelter in the Dagahaley transit center. At about 13:20, two police officers, a man and a woman, from the police station right next to the transit center walked up to us. They spoke Swahili and another refugee interpreted for us. The woman asked how many women there were in our family. We said there were four: the two of us, one of whom was pregnant, a grandmother over 80 and my father’s sister. She told all of us to take off our clothes, put our fingers in our vaginas and put our hands on the wall to see whether we were menstruating. We showed them a clinic card to show that one of us was pregnant so that they would know that it couldn’t possibly be her, but they ignored us. We took off our clothes, in front of about 90 other people who were watching and laughing. One of the men and the children in our family were all crying. Then the police left. We told UNHCR and the camp management NGO. They opened a file on our case and UNHCR told us it was serious and would be taken up with UNHCR in Geneva.  A year later UNHCR moved us to another camp and we have not heard anything on our case.[144]

Police Violence in Ifo Camp Police Station

Human Rights Watch spoke with two refugees who described how police seriously assaulted them in the Ifo camp police station.

A refugee said that in early 2010 police at the Administrative police post in Ifo camp whipped and kicked him so violently that he lost consciousness:

When I got to the police station, the police pushed me towards the open cell and kicked me in the back to force me to go inside. In the cell two policemen ripped my shirt and trousers off, so I was only wearing a t-shirt and underpants. Then three other policemen came into the cell and told me to stand facing the wall with my hands above my head, palms against the wall. Then they whipped me on my buttocks and the full length of my legs with a with rubber whip. They also kicked me in the lower and upper back and on my buttocks. Every time I fell down they told me to get up and then continued to whip me. I don’t know how long they did this, but eventually I lost consciousness. Even now I still have back and abdominal pain.[145]

A second refugee, living in the camps since 1996 with his wife and two children, told Human Rights Watch how police officers beat him at the Ifo Criminal Investigation Department (CID) police post in March 2008:

It happened in March 2008. I was at my mother’s house after a long argument with my wife. Suddenly two police officers arrived and took me to the Ifo police post next to bloc 3. A third officer tied my hands with rope in front of me and then tied the rope to my ankles. Then he pushed me into a cell and left. A short while later, the same officer came into the cell and beat me on my back, buttocks, and thighs with a wooden stick. He kicked me in my sides and on my back, stood on my neck, and slapped me. The police held me there for six days and four of those days the officer assaulted me in this way. Sometimes he did it inside the cell. At other times he did it outside the police station in an open area during the day where other refugees could see it happening. After one of my relatives paid the police KES 1,500 ($20), they released me. A few days later, I went back to complain to the police commander about my treatment but he threatened to arrest me again.[146]