Two years ago, Kenya’s courageous "Gen Z" generation rose up in a historic wave of protests, demanding economic justice, resisting crushing taxation, and challenging a ruling class that prioritizes global financial interests over the survival of its people. Today, the state’s machinery of impunity is operating exactly as designed. The investigations into the brutal killing and disappearance of young protesters have ground to a halt, leaving working-class families to carry the heavy burden of grief while the perpetrators of state violence remain free.

This stalling of justice is not an administrative accident; it is a structural necessity for a capitalist state that relies on violence to maintain social order. Historically, the Kenyan state has used its security forces to suppress popular uprisings, from the post-colonial struggles to the electoral protests of 2017. Time and again, official inquiries have served as a pressure-valve to pacify the public, while systemic reforms are quietly gutted and security personnel are shielded from criminal liability.

The Independent Policing Oversight Authority (IPOA), created under the guise of reform to provide civilian oversight, has proven structurally ill-equipped to challenge the institutional power of the National Police Service. Starved of resources and politically marginalized, oversight bodies face a wall of silence when investigating police misconduct. Officers operating in plain clothes, wearing no identification, and acting with the tacit approval of high-ranking officials make a mockery of the legal process, ensuring that evidence is lost and cases are derailed before they ever reach a courtroom.

The Kenya National Commission on Human Rights (KNCHR) has documented a harrowing catalog of state violence from the protests, but these reports continue to gather dust. In a system where the legal apparatus is controlled by the ruling elite, the lives of marginalized youth are treated as collateral damage. The state’s refusal to hold its security forces accountable is a calculated strategy to send a message to the working class: dissent will be met with lethal force, and the law will protect those who pull the trigger.

This crisis of accountability directly violates Article 37 of the Kenyan Constitution, which guarantees the right to assemble and protest. However, under neoliberal governance, constitutional rights are treated as optional privileges. When young people organize to demand dignified lives, the state reframes peaceful protest as a national security threat, justifying militarized policing and subsequent cover-ups to protect the economic status quo.