Sexual violence added to brutal crackdown on Nairobi dissent

Protesters thought they’d won change a year ago. Little has happened, so they took to the streets again. To be met with bullets, barbed wire and rape.

Christine Mungai in Nairobi

A protester jumps for safety as she emerges from a narrow alley while Kenya police officers strike her with whips and clubs during clashes in downtown Nairobi on 25 June 2025 during a planned day of protest marking the first anniversary of the storming of the parliament. (Photo by Luis Tato/AFP)

Wednesday marked a year since young Kenyans led protests that shook the ruling establishment. Sixty people died. Concessions were promised. But little changed. Instead, people kept vanishing. Two weeks ago it was Albert Ojwang, a teacher and critic of the state, who was killed in police custody. So thousands once again took to the streets.

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The state responded with violence, again. A ring of barbed razor wire around Parliament and water cannons worked in concert with armed police. At least 16 people were killed, with 400 injured and 83 protesters requiring specialised care for serious wounds.

Those numbers come from a coalition of human rights organisations monitoring the demonstrations. The state tried to shut down any evidence of the day. The Communications Authority ordered media houses to stop live broadcasts of the protests and, when some defied the order, officials drove to broadcast masts to shut them down.

On Tuesday, The Standard newspaper revealed a covert, co-ordinated operation to not only suppress the protests violently but also to rob demonstrators of their phones, deliberately targeting the ability to document state abuse.

And, for the first time, what seems to be organised sexual violence was applied. Ten cases of sexual assault – all of them gang rapes – have been documented by Usikimye, a Nairobi-based organisation that responds to sexual and genderbased violence. “This is something we’ve not seen during the protests before,” Njeri Migwi, co-founder and executive director of Usikimye, told The Continent. “Some of these women report being suddenly surrounded by goons in the CBD; others were pulled off bodabodas on their way home. It’s terrifying.”

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“I’m heartbroken. We can’t be fighting for freedom during the day and against rapists at night,” she added. “The assaults were organised violence. The intention is clearly to make women afraid to come out and protest – and a protest without women isn’t an organic one.”