Three years ago, many of us fervently
and angrily swamped personal and public spaces and unanimously condemned a then
emerging trend of stripping of women in public for ‘indecent dressing’. We came
out in our numbers, young and old, women and men, and shouted ourselves hoarse
in Nairobi City streets to express solidarity with the victims of the retrogressive
acts and ‘My Dress My Choice’ rallying call. Yours truly hauled a 7-months
pregnancy in a mini and took part in the procession all the way. It felt great
that at least all the women rights activism and advocacy of yesteryears was not
in vain, had bore sweet fruits!
Fast forward to events over the
past week and what an appalling contradiction!
It all started with the ‘shock’
sentencing of ‘Githurai three’ to death on account of guilty verdict on robbery
with violence and sexual assault charges. The media was soon after awash with the
skewed ‘harshest judgement ever’ pitch and innuendo which the public was only
too eager to pick and peddle. Screaming headlines and breaking news set the stage,
‘Stripping woman earns three men death sentence’, ‘Three Sentenced To Death For
Assaulting A Woman Inside A Githurai Bound Matatu’, ‘Three to hang for
stripping, sexually assaulting Githurai woman’, ‘Three Githurai matatu operators
to hang for undressing woman’, ‘Three Githurai Men Sentenced to Death over
STRIPPING A Woman wearing mini Skirt Naked’, ‘Three men who undressed woman in Githurai
to hang’. The sequel hit the message home ‘....It is the harshest judgement yet
to be meted out on sex offenders’, ‘What began as a pat on a woman’s buttocks
as she alighted from the vehicle has ended up as a capital offence’, ‘Mixed
reaction to death penalty for three Githurai touts’, ‘Was the court too harsh
on the Githurai three?’ ‘Your take on the death sentence passed on the Three
Githurai matatu operators for undressing a woman?’ Then it was all ditto, with many
‘legal experts’ proclaiming how harsh, unfair, discriminatory, unjustified the
sentence was.
My primary quarrel with the aforementioned
media coverage slant was the seeming deliberate focus on telling half of the
story and the question of minimizing violence against women and women rights
violations rearing its ugly head in matters sexual offences.
The three accused were charged
with robbery with violence and sexual assault and the prosecution successfully
proved accordingly. Apparently, the accused beat the concerned woman, stripped
her naked, sexually molested her by inserting their fingers in her private parts
while pulling her breast, threatened to gang rape her and robbed her of a
mobile phone, a handbag and Sh10,000. All because the woman protested against one
of the accused touching her buttocks as she alighted from the vehicle. The presiding
Chief Magistrate described the incident as ‘a cruel act of bestiality from
uncultured men’.
The law prescribes a mandatory
death sentence for robbery with violence and minimum of 10years for sexual
assault. The three accused were subsequently sentenced to death for robbery
with violence and 25 years suspended sentence for sexual assault. Question of
whether the judgement was legally justified therefore should not arise. Rather
the question should have been whether the robbery with violence charges was
proved beyond reasonable doubt.
That the ensuing raging debate
has chosen to conveniently revolve around the death sentence vis a viz the act
of stripping beats logic and begs some questions – Why the double standards? Does
robbery with violence become a lesser crime on the basis of sexual assault? Why
single out sexual assault as a basis for different treatment? What is for certain is that victims of sexual
assault are largely female and the perpetrators are largely male. It is therefore
not lost on some of us that the media coverage and subsequent debate is just
but a manifestation of minimisation of violence against women and violation of
women rights.
We must choose not to split hairs about
violence against women!
We must choose to take a firm stand for
women rights as human rights!
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