Entry Instance

HTTP 200 OK
Allow: GET, PUT, PATCH, DELETE, HEAD, OPTIONS
Content-Type: application/json
Vary: Accept

{
    "id": 720971,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/720971/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 566,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Hon. Okoth",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 12482,
        "legal_name": "Kenneth Odhiambo Okoth",
        "slug": "kenneth-odhiambo-okoth"
    },
    "content": "Hon. Temporary Deputy Speaker, maybe, he is being tortured mentally or psychologically. The acts that constitute physical torture include systematic beatings, banging one’s head against some hard surface, punching, kicking, striking someone with truncheons and rifle butts and stepping onto one’s stomach. These are the easiest examples we can cite. The police sometimes use excessive force while arresting people. They even fire gunshots. Sometimes they forcefully feed suspects on spoilt food or suspects are subjected to electric shocks. We have heard about burning of suspects with cigarette and drowning, waterboarding and those kinds of things. This list is very comprehensive. Acts of psychological torture include simulation of killing, denial of sleep and mistreating of members of a victim’s family. When the police arrest you and find that they do not have evidence against you, they sometimes resort to torturing your family members to force you to give a confession on the crime you are suspected of committing. Those are the types of things that we are trying to change through this law. These provisions are in the Schedule. I suggest that we improve the Bill by moving them to the definition. Therefore, there is no ambiguity since Clause 26 of the Bill says that the CS, through a Kenya Gazette Notice, can simply adjust the Schedule. We might have a leadership that may not believe in observance of human rights. Such leadership might adjust the definition of “torture” and say that subjecting suspects to electric shocks and waterboarding is not torture, but just enhanced interrogation, or that harassment of a victim’s family is not psychological torture. We want to make sure that the definition of “torture” is not left to the whims of the CS, but it is placed in the full definition in the body of the law. We should not leave it in the Schedule that can easily be adjusted. Hon. Temporary Deputy Speaker, how much more time do I have?"
}