Kenya's Saba Saba Toll Rises to 38 as Ruto Warns Police Will Shoot 'Looters'

The full cost of Kenya's Saba Saba day has come into focus, and it is grim. The death toll from Tuesday's protests has risen to 38, with 131 injured, making it the deadliest day of demonstrations since President William Ruto took office.

The state's response has hardened rather than softened. Addressing the nation, Ruto dismissed the protests as an attempt to destabilise Kenya and warned that security forces would shoot what he called 'looters and troublemakers', accusing unnamed groups of exploiting youth frustration to provoke unrest. He went further still, suggesting some were plotting to overthrow the government.

On the day itself, the crackdown was near-total. Police sealed off Nairobi with checkpoints, deployed plainclothes officers and unmarked vehicles, and moved swiftly on the fewer than ten protesters who managed to gather in the city centre. The Economic Justice Movement had announced a peaceful march to commemorate July 7, 1990 — the day Kenyans defied a one-party state — but police said no formal notification had been received and declared any procession illegal. The government spokesman insisted it was 'a normal working day'.

Kenya's constitution requires notification, not permission, for public assembly. That legal distinction sits at the centre of a year-long confrontation between a young, urban, connected generation and a state that increasingly answers protest with force. The protesters' demands have not changed: an end to extrajudicial killings and enforced disappearances, and accountability for police violence.

Rights groups warn that the democratic space Kenyans fought for in 1990 is narrowing again, with authorities taking an uncompromising stance toward both demonstrators and critical media. Thirty-six years after Saba Saba was born in defiance of a government that would not listen, its anniversary has produced the same argument — and 38 fresh graves.