Insecure State radicalising citizens with illegal arrests

Rose is not your typical firebrand activist. She’s a woman who saw a gap and decided to fill it, not for fame or applause, but because it was the right thing to do.

While many of our leaders sat in silence and Parliament made no effort to consult the public on the Finance Bill 2025, she built a digital tool to help ordinary Kenyans understand the proposed law and submit their feedback to the National Assembly. What Parliament should have done, she took it upon herself to do. It began as a small, personal initiative sparked by conversations on Twitter where people asked where they could send their submissions. Instead of waiting for someone else to act, she created the solution.

For this act of service, she was hunted down.

Fifteen officers stormed the seminar where she was attending, and without producing a warrant, forcefully dragged her out. Then, in an even more chilling move, they compelled her to take them to her private residence, a location she had never publicly disclosed which made it clear they had been watching her for some time.

Once they arrived, they carried out an illegal search and confiscated all of her digital devices. She was then hit with a trumped-up charge: “unauthorised interference with a computer system.” It was the kind of accusation you expect in authoritarian regimes. 

Hold the government accountable

This bogus charge was filed under the Computer Misuse and Cybercrimes Act, a law that has increasingly been weaponised by the State against citizens who are simply trying to hold the government accountable. What was meant to protect against cyber threats has instead been repurposed into a tool of repression.

Rose was for four days cut off from the world — no formal charges, no access to a lawyer and her family left in the dark. She slept in unsanitary cells meant to degrade. But when I saw her walk out of that courtroom, she wasn’t broken. She was brighter, bolder and more committed than ever before.

“This was a blessing in disguise,” she told me. Because now, her civic tool, once a humble, hidden project has the attention of the nation. What was once a quiet act of participation has become a national talking point. She told me that seeing people she didn’t even know come to court just to support her felt warm, powerful and deeply moving. And that is where the State miscalculated. In trying to bury her, they gave her roots. In trying to isolate her, they revealed her community.

I made it a point to speak directly to her mother, to remind her that her daughter is nothing short of a hero and that she must not be shaken, intimidated, or threatened. Because this attack on Rose was not just about her. It was a broader message aimed at families: control your children, teach them to stay in line. Make sure they mind their “manners”.

This isn’t the first time we’ve seen this.

After Billy Mwangi was abducted by unidentified men widely believed to be agents of the State, his heartbroken parents were dragged onto national television, where they wept and begged the government to return their son. They apologised publicly. They promised to discipline him. That wasn’t just cruel, it was deliberate. It was a public lesson to every other parent: if your child speaks out, this will be your fate, too. This government no longer leads through example. It rules through fear.

Rose’s case is part of a disturbing, pattern. David Mokaya and Titus Sifuna were arrested months ago for expressing their views online, and to this day, their cases remain unresolved. There have been no formal charges, just endless postponements, and endless silence from the institutions that should be delivering justice. Their families are being stretched emotionally, financially, and psychologically by a legal system that is being used to exhaust them.

Violent crime runs rampant

This tactic is designed not just to silence dissenters but to exhaust their networks, friends, families and colleagues by forcing them into a cycle of uncertainty and humiliation. The goal is to make activism look dangerous, to make civic engagement appear reckless. It’s psychological warfare masked as due process.

And all of this is happening while real, violent crime runs rampant. In neighbourhoods like Kisauni and Likoni in Mombasa, criminal gangs are terrorising residents in broad daylight. Stabbings, muggings and extortions happens mere metres from police stations. The same State that deploys surveillance units to track hashtags and arrest software developers for building digital tools is completely absent when it comes to protecting its citizens from actual violence.

We are forced to ask: is this government truly interested in law and order? Or is it simply obsessed with controlling perception? The Directorate of Criminal Investigations has become more focused on silencing youth than on solving crime. The Judiciary has become a conveyor belt for harassment. And Parliament has remained silent or sided with the State as our civic freedoms are eroded.

But every young person they arrest radicalises 10 more. Every bogus charge sheet becomes a national symbol of protest. Every court appearance becomes a rallying cry.

This isn’t the end of Rose’s story. It is part of a broader awakening. Young Kenyans are not just angry, they are organised, informed and unafraid. They are building networks, documenting everything, sharing resources and learning from each other. The more the State cracks down, the more unified they become. And the more obvious it becomes that the real threat to this nation is not its youth; it is a leadership that does not trust its own people.

No government can arrest its way out of accountability. No regime can force loyalty through intimidation. And no country can build a future by turning its brightest minds into enemies of the State.

We must demand better. We must protect our young. And we must stop a government that rules by fear before it breaks what little trust remains between generations. Because if this continues, it will not be the youth who destroy Kenya. It will be the leadership that refuses to listen to them.

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