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Data from the government-funded Kenya National Commission on Human Rights points to 82 cases of enforced disappearances so far, seven this month alone. Of these, 29 persons are unaccounted for.

The latest victims include prominent cartoonist Gideon Kibet, AKA Kibet Bull, known for his hard-hitting social media posts criticising the Kenya Kwanza leadership.

A careful look at the profiles of most of the abductees reveals one common aspect – their criticism of the government of the day.

This is not to say the abductions started yesterday. Far from it. They were first reported at the height of the Gen Z anti-tax protests earlier this year. At least 39 cases of people held incommunicado by the police were reported following the June 25 invasion of Parliament by protesters that sent MPs scampering for their safety.

The government’s response to what it viewed as an attempted coup was a crackdown targeting individuals, mostly young people in their twenties whom it perceived as the organisers of the protests. While a few were arrested and charged with various offences in several parts of the country, many were quietly kidnapped on the streets by people who drove the now infamous Subarus associated with agents of the Directorate of Criminal Investigations.

The government was, as expected, quick to distance itself, always falling back on the refrain: report such cases to the police. It is the same line newly appointed Interior Cabinet Secretary Kipchumba Murkomen resorted to while responding to the latest cases.

Speaking in Bungoma, Murkomen urged those with missing relatives to report the cases to the police and describe the circumstances of their abduction. This was a reckless comment given the sleepless nights families of the victims are enduring with no news about the whereabouts and safety of their loved ones.

As opposition leader Raila Odinga stated in a TV interview on Friday night, the country risks sliding back to the dark days when perceived critics of the government, including university students, were picked up in the dead of night by the then dreaded Special Branch and frogmarched to the Nyayo House basement cells, held incommunicado and tortured for months on end, before eventually surfacing in courts charged with ridiculous offences such as treason.

We demand that the government, whose duty it is to protect the lives and property of citizens, produce these missing persons not tomorrow, but today. We should never again entertain the culture of enforced disappearances.