Rex Masai was the first protester to be killed by police during the 2024 Anti-Finance Bill protests. Many hoped he would be the last. They were wrong. 

As protesters marched towards Parliament on June 25, 2024, the death toll kept rising. Police opened fire in Kitengela, Githurai, and other parts of the country. 

By the time the demonstrations waned nearly three months later, at least 63 people had been extrajudicially executed. More than 80 were forcibly disappeared. 

Crucially, not all victims were gunned down in the streets. Some were abducted from their homes and workplaces, tortured, and killed. Their bodies were later dumped in forests, quarries, or morgues. 

This raised troubling questions. How were these people tracked down and captured so precisely by security agents? 

In October, a media investigative piece alleged that the Kenyan security agencies have long had unfettered access to mobile phone users’ call data records (CDRs) and location information. This access allows authorities to track and apprehend individuals, sometimes fatally. 

The report alleged that telcos companies routinely handed over customers’ CDRs to police, often without a court order. Yet when victims of state violence sought those very records to pursue justice, these companies denied them access, effectively shielding the state and obstructing accountability. 

Instead of addressing the serious claims raised, the communication companies responded by filing a complaint against the media and issuing Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation (SLAPP) threats against the Kenya Human Rights Commission (KHRC) and Muslims for Human Rights (MUHURI) for speaking out. 

Even though the investigations didn’t link any telcos company with the 2024 killings and disappearances, some of their reactions have only deepened public suspicion about their role in enabling repression. 

If these companies have nothing to hide, why sue people for seeking the truth? Why resort to legal intimidation rather than open disclosure? 

This disturbing pattern shows companies that are more interested in shielding power than serving the public. These telcos companies are using vexatious litigation to silence critics, suppress reporting, and block scrutiny of their unholy alliance with the state. 

This time, however, they will face it rough. The citizens’ consciousness is awakened, and they know which institutions are complicit as the state abducts and executes citizens with impunity.

Technology must never be used to suppress people’s civil liberties. The era of silence and retreat is over.

Communication companies must be held to account for the data they hand over, the lives that data may cost, and the justice it so readily obstructs. 

Ernest Cornel is a Senior Communications Officer at the Kenya Human Rights Commission