NAIROBI, Kenya, Jul 19- With a worrying series of abductions and subsequent killings of children and young women, former Prime Minister Raila Odinga has called for swift action, to reverse the trend.
This comes days after two serial killers confessed to brutally murdering children, after defiling them in various parts of the country.
Both suspects are in custody and are helping detectives in retrieving the bodies of the victims. They have cumulatively brutally killed more than 15 children.
But Odinga in a statement to Newsrooms said the ongoing wanton killings are unacceptable and must be stopped, and the perpetrators of the heinous acts brought to book.
“Death has been hanging over Kenyans for some time now with a surge in the murders and rape of children, girls and women,” he pointed out.
“To many children, girls and women have in recent times suffered gruesome deaths in the hands of people who should be their protector. Children are being plucked from their playgrounds, picked on the way to or from school and places of worship and from the balconies and doorsteps of their parents’ houses and slaughtered by adults.”
According to police statistics, there have been at least two case of kidnapping affecting either a child, young girl or a woman reported in the recent weeks.
Most have ended in killings, even where ransom has been paid.
“This is not the country we wish for our children,” the Orange Democratic Movement leader said.
He has urged the National Police Service to assure Kenyans that they are up to the task, and stop the killings.
Odinga said, “police must assure Kenyans that an individual will not pluck and kill our children.”
He has urged police to identify those involved, arrest them and bring them to book.
“The Judiciary must also assure Kenyans that justice will come swiftly and fairly where lives have been senselessly lost,” he asserted.
“Justice is taking too long to come if it ever does for the victims.”
He said any delay to deliver justice will only embolden the killer beasts and prolong the pain for survivors and families of the victims.
“Kenyans must speak out against the slaughter our children and gender-based violence,” he said.
Cases of gender based violence has equally been on the rise across the country, affecting both civilians and members of the security agencies.
In April, a body guard attached to Interior Cabinet Secretary Dr Fred Matiangi shot his wife, a traffic police officer, before turning the gun on himself.
Still in April, a Kenya Defence Forces officer died after a fight with the wife in Kahawa Wendani, Kiambu County.
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