Citizen-Suspect: Navigating Surveillance and Policing in Urban Kenya
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This talk traces the lived realities of surveillance and policing in the context of the so-called ‘war on terror’ in East Africa. As U.S.-trained Kenyan police employ military tactics of tracking and targeting Kenyan Muslims in the cities of Nairobi and Mombasa, deaths and disappearances become entangled in rumors and conspiracy theories about the geopolitical actors and interests at play. Rights activists are compelled to weigh long-term calculations (documentation and accountability) against short-term ones (safety), drawing on their own everyday geopolitical knowledge to navigate uncertain urban landscapes.
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