DOI: 10.36347/sjahss.2022.v10i02.001

Pages: 32-38

The question of political repression and use of torture in contemporary punishment , in the most general sense of the terms, have increasingly become complex as criminologists, sociologists, psychologists, psychoanalysts, doctors, lawyers, and historians who have studied this subject extensively have often expressed very different and even contradictory opinions. However, torture was mostly used to either extract or force victims into confessing a crime - regardless of whether they were actually guilty or innocent. The Kenyan political past has been characterized with series of crackdowns and repression characterized by use of violence on political oppositionists. This however saw various political changes in the country leading to multi-party politics. The starting point for this paper involves a theoretical approach that links torture to institutional violence. This facilitates an understanding of its historicity and modernity which helps us grasp the historical construction of torture before it was defined and categorized as a crime. Before it became a tool for agitation and denunciation, a discourse capable of influencing the institutional agenda and off course what that gave it cultural and political significance.