Dragged from a taxi and driven to the border: Kenya’s ‘safe’ reputation tainted by forced deportations

Dozens of activists, critics and asylum seekers are thought to have been abducted and sent home in the past year

The woman wearing a cap seemed suspicious to Maria Sarungi. She had walked into the spa in an affluent neighbourhood of Nairobi in January where Sarungi often spends her Sunday afternoons, stared at her and then immediately walked out.

Sarungi, a Tanzanian journalist and activist living in exile, shrugged it off and texted her husband that she would be home soon. But a few minutes later, after leaving the spa, her taxi was forced to a stop and she was dragged out, kicking and screaming, by a group of armed men. She was thrown into a black van and, as it sped through Nairobi’s streets and beyond, she felt sure she had become the latest victim of Kenya’s enforced deportations.

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