By Gitile Naituli
There is a moral shortcut that societies under strain are always tempted to take: the belief that injustice is tolerable so long as it is visited upon the “right” people. The opponents. The annoying. The inconvenient. The ones whose politics we dislike, whose language irritates us, whose power we resent. It is a shortcut because it saves us the hard work of defending principles when doing so is costly. But it is also a trap because once injustice becomes acceptable, it never remains selective. It metastasizes. It spreads. It eventually comes for everyone.
History teaches us this with ruthless consistency. Authoritarianism rarely announces itself with a trumpet blast. It arrives quietly, disguised as order. As discipline. As “necessary firmness.” It begins with small transgressions, the silencing of an unpopular voice, the rough handling of an inconvenient protest, the justification of excessive force because “those people deserved it.” Then, before long, the exception becomes the rule. And the rule becomes terror.
That is why teargas in churches and schools should alarm us, not divide us. There is no version of democracy, none, in which worship spaces become battlefields and classrooms become conflict zones. These are sacred spaces in both the civic and moral sense. They are places of refuge, reflection, formation and hope. When the state treats them as theatres of confrontation, it is not asserting authority. It is announcing its loss of legitimacy.
Some will argue, predictably, that “the law must be enforced,” that “order must be maintained,” that “provocation must be punished.” These arguments sound reasonable, until one asks a more fundamental question: who decides when force is justified, and against whom? Because power is never static. Governments fall. Coalitions fracture. Heroes become villains. Today’s beneficiaries of repression are tomorrow’s victims of it. That is not cynicism. It is political reality.
Kenya’s own history offers painful confirmation. From the colonial state to the post-independence authoritarian regimes, from the one-party era to more recent cycles of repression, one pattern repeats itself: when the coercive power of the state is normalized, it is eventually turned against everyone, reformers, moderates, loyalists, and innocents alike. There is no such thing as a permanently “safe” group once law enforcement becomes weaponized.
This is why it is morally incoherent, and politically suicidal, to cheer police excess simply because it embarrasses our opponents. Justice is not justice when it is selective. Rights are not rights when they are conditional. The rule of law is not the rule of law when it bends to political convenience. A society that defends abuse today because it feels satisfying will find itself defenseless tomorrow when the abuse shifts direction.
But beyond prudence, there is a deeper question at stake: what kind of country do we want to be? A nation is not defined by its elections alone, nor by its slogans, nor even by its constitutional text. It is defined by how power is exercised, especially in moments of tension. It is defined by whether the state treats citizens as partners or as threats, as rights-holders or as obstacles, as dignified persons or as manageable problems.
Teargas in churches and schools is not merely a policing failure. It is a philosophical failure. It reflects a view of authority that sees force as the first tool rather than the last, coercion as legitimacy rather than its collapse. It signals a governing mindset that mistakes obedience for consent and silence for stability. Yet history shows us that silence born of fear is not stability; it is deferred crisis.
True leadership does not require batons and gas to command respect. It earns respect through restraint, through accountability, through listening, through dialogue, and through the confidence that comes from legitimacy. States that trust their citizens do not need to terrorize them. Governments that fear their people, on the other hand, inevitably resort to force and then wonder why resentment deepens and trust evaporates.
There is also something profoundly corrosive about the public normalization of brutality. When citizens grow accustomed to seeing violence deployed casually against fellow citizens, they become desensitized. Empathy erodes. The moral imagination shrinks. We stop asking, “Is this right?” and start asking, “Is this useful?” That shift, from principle to expediency is the beginning of democratic decay.
And yet, the most dangerous illusion of all is the belief that repression can be contained, that it can be aimed only at “troublemakers,” only at “activists,” only at “certain communities,” only at “certain political camps.” It cannot. Power does not obey those boundaries. Once the state acquires habits of abuse, it deploys them wherever resistance emerges, economic, political, social or moral. There is no firewall between today’s target and tomorrow’s victim.
This is why the most rational, self-interested position, quite apart from the moral one, is to defend the rights of even those we disagree with. Especially those we disagree with. Because the true test of commitment to justice is not how we treat our friends, but how we treat our adversaries. It is not how we behave when power flatters us, but how we restrain power when it tempts us.
The core question, therefore, is not whether we like those affected by state violence today. The question is whether we want to live in a country where violence is normalized as governance. Whether we want a republic where disagreement is policed rather than debated, where dissent is crushed rather than engaged, where fear replaces consent as the glue of order.
Democracy does not mean the absence of law enforcement. It means law enforcement that is bound by law. It means policing that protects citizens rather than intimidates them. It means institutions that resolve conflict rather than escalate it. It means leaders who understand that legitimacy is not enforced. It is earned.
Today it is them. Tomorrow it is you. Power changes hands fast. That is not a slogan. It is a structural fact of politics. And the only durable protection against abuse is not loyalty to any regime, party, faction or personality. It is loyalty to principles. To rules. To institutions. To the idea that no citizen should fear the state, and no leader should be above accountability.
So let us stop defending injustice simply because it feels convenient. Let us stop normalizing violence simply because it is politically useful. Let us instead demand a system in which police are not weaponized against citizens, no matter who holds power, no matter who is protesting, no matter who is unpopular. That is the only protection that lasts. And that is the only democracy worth defending.
The writer is a former Commissioner with NCIC
Mt Kenya Times 
Jerameel Kevins Owuor Odhiambo