Grass-cutting rape penalty irks Kenya chief justice
Print Edition
Kenya’s chief justice said yesterday he had ordered “immediate action” in a case where men accused of brutally gang raping a schoolgirl were ordered to cut grass as punishment.
The ferocious attack on the teenage girl and the lack of action against those who carried it out sparked outrage in the country, while over 1.3 million people worldwide have signed a petition demanding justice.
The 16-year-old, known by the pseudonym Liz, was reportedly attacked, beaten and raped by six men as she returned from her grandfather’s funeral in western Kenya in June, before being dumped, bleeding and unconscious, in a sewage ditch.
“I’ve sent the matter to the National Council for the Administration of Justice for immediate action,” Chief Justice Willy Mutunga said yesterday.
The NCAJ is Kenya’s top-level judicial oversight body bringing together the judiciary, police, attorney-general and director of public prosecutions.
On Thursday, hundreds of protesters marched through Nairobi wearing T-shirts with the slogan “Justice for Liz” and draping dozens of pairs of women’s knickers along the fence of the police station.
Nebila Abdulmelik of the women’s rights campaign group Femnet launched the petition demanding justice.
“Our immediate task is for the arrest and prosecution of the perpetrators, and then disciplinary action at the police who failed to take action, because we feel that they embolden others to rape,” Abdulmelik said during the demonstration.
Liz has to use a wheelchair after suffering a broken back, caused either by the beating or by being hurled down the pit. She also suffered serious internal injuries from the rape.
Her mother told the Daily Nation, which first reported the story, that three men identified by Liz were only ordered to cut grass around the police station. “My wish is to see justice done,” Liz told the newspaper.
Numbers signing the justice petition continue to climb, publicized by the online campaign group Avaaz, which calls the grass cutting the “world’s worst punishment for rape.”
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