Kenyan police are investigating the murders of 10 women working as prostitutes, a record number of attacks in one month that has led to fears of a serial killer targeting sex workers.
Concerned about the safety of women working on the streets, campaigners have called on the government to legalise prostitution and offer proper protection to vulnerable women.
The police commander in the town of Nakuru, where four bodies were found, said an intense manhunt was under way for a “short adult male” in central Kenya.
Hassan Barua said security had been improved in the area, but would not comment on whether one suspect was wanted for multiple murders.
“We don’t know what his motive is, we hope we can come to conclusions when he is apprehended,” he said.
Because the murders were committed far apart in a short time frame, police don’t believe the same person is responsible for all the deaths. But sources say the investigation is focusing on one suspect for at least three of the deaths.
Kenya police spokesman Charles Owino said cases had been opened across the country, but did not elaborate on their progress.
Felista Abdalla of the Kenya Sex Workers Association said other victims were from the towns of Nanyuki, Kisii, Nyahururu and the capital, Nairobi.
“Some of them were tortured,” she said. Abdalla described the police response as “not very active”.
Peninah Mwangi, director of the Bar Hostess Empowerment Programme, an advocacy group established in 1998, said the response to recent murders highlighted the insignificance attributed to sex workers.
“Our complaints are not taken seriously,” she said. “The police are not interested. Even the media is not covering the issue appropriately, making us out to be bad people or criminals.”
The sister of 33-year-old Eunice Njeri, one of the women killed in Nakuru, called for justice for her death. Miriam Njeri said an eight year-old boy had been left without a mother, adding that she would look after the boy along with her own three children.
“I am very angry, sad and want justice for Eunice being killed in cold blood,” said Njeri, 36, who is also a sex worker.
Prostitution is illegal in Kenya, but widespread poverty and unemployment help fuel a thriving sex economy that caters for locals as well as western tourists.
Muthoni Wanyeki, Amnesty International’s regional director for east Africa, called for the decriminalisation of consensual sex work.
“These murders and mutilations should be a wake-up call to all of us to end this criminalisation so as to keep sex workers safe and to ensure the families of those now lost find justice,” Wanyeki said.
The violence is not limited to women –male and trans sex workers and members of Kenya’s wider LGBT community are also regularly singled out for harassment and attacks.
Neela Ghoshal, a senior researcher for Human Rights Watch, said those working in the sex trade were doubly vulnerable to abuse by the authorities as well as criminals.
Ghoshal said she had heard many accounts of police regularly extorting money or sex from prostitutes as a condition for not arresting them. “This type of coerced sex, under the Kenyan penal code, is rape,” she said, “but police are never brought to book.”
Ghoshal said that most sex workers feared the police. “They see the police as predatory rather than protective,” she added.
Mwenda Njoka, a spokesperson for Kenya’s interior ministry, which oversees policing, declined to comment.
Source: The Guardian
No comments:
Post a Comment