Kenyan police fire teargas at memorial march in Nairobi

Kenyan police fired teargas on Thursday to disperse protesters near Nairobi’s main police station after a memorial march for people killed in the 2024 anti-government demonstrations. The crowd had gathered on the second anniversary of the unrest, which erupted over proposed tax hikes and the rising cost of living and turned one of the country’s biggest youth-led protest waves into a national reckoning.

The June 25 gathering was meant to honor those killed when demonstrators breached Parliament grounds in 2024. The Kenya National Commission on Human Rights said at least 60 people died in the crackdown, while Human Rights Watch said its 2026 reporting found dozens of people linked to the 2024 and 2025 protest waves remained missing. Families of the dead and rights advocates used the anniversary to demand justice, compensation and answers about the killings and disappearances.

Police maintained a heavy presence across the capital, with barricades around Parliament and nearby streets. Reuters and other reports said officers detained six people outside Parliament after they laid flowers in memory of the dead, and multiple reports said hundreds were detained during the anniversary events. The response turned a commemorative march into another confrontation over the limits of protest in Kenya’s capital.

President William Ruto had warned before the anniversary that Kenyans had the right to demonstrate, but that chaos and property destruction would not be tolerated. His message reflected the government’s effort to cast the anniversary not only as a political grievance, but also as a test of public order. For many families and activists, the issue was different: whether the state had done anything meaningful to account for the deaths, abductions and alleged police abuses that followed the 2024 protests.

The clash near the main police station showed how little trust remains between protesters and the security forces a year after the deadliest crackdown. The memorial march was organized to remember the dead, but the teargas, arrests and barricades suggested that the anger driving the 2024 demonstrations still has no clear political release.