JAMILAS MEMO: Have we lost our humanity?

On my Memo tonight, human dignity is on the table. Dignity is the right of a person to be valued and respected for their own sake and to be treated ethically. Tonight, I question whether we have forgotten our human dignity or if we have lost our humanity. Let me explain the context of my thoughts today.

A couple of days ago many were shocked with a video that was circulated across social media platforms. It was of a gang rape incident involving seven men and one woman. Police investigations determined that the video was taken in December 2023 in Chebanyi village, Bomet County, and published on social media four months later, the question is why?

The act itself was beastly and should be severely punished by law. But the act of recording and then posting the video for all to see is just a lack of morality and just plain insensitive. I would like to commend the police on this one. In less than 24 hours all the 7 suspects in the video have been arrested and detained. This was following information from elders in the village. Two of the suspects have been positively identified and named. Police say it’s just a matter of time before the other 5 are also identified.

Tonight, my heart goes out to the victim. Amepata pigo mara mbili; her dignity was stripped from her, not forgetting the injuries she sustained. And now 4 months later, the disgusting video has surfaced, further injuring the lady and her family.

The images shocked and outraged many Kenyans, but that did not stop them from forwarding or sharing it to others. Such incidents should enrage us, anger us…but instead for most of us, we sometimes struggle to remember or we are no longer shocked or alarmed when we hear of such incidents. So long as it has not struck close to home, we can ignore them.

However, we need to realise that as a society once we stop caring we are losing our humanity, tunapoteza utu wetu. Once it becomes normal when a woman is assaulted, raped or even killed, we have lost our humanity, utu umetuacha… do we care? How about if you put yourself in the victims’ shoes or their family? To experience the pain, the feeling of helplessness, the void left, these feelings cannot be ignored.

We need to care, we need to worry, we need to demand action..tuwajali wenzetu, tudai haki itendeke. Otherwise we will have failed as human beings, we will have failed to uphold human dignity.

And that is my Memo!