According to police, six teachers have been arrested in Kenya after the distribution of a video clip in which elementary school students were forced to fake sex scenes as punishment, drawing widespread condemnation. four boys in school uniforms appear, simulating sexual acts under a tree on the school playground, in full view of the teachers. In the background, six teachers can be heard chatting and laughing as a child wipes tears from his face.
Police said the video, showing “children being coerced into obscene acts,” was recorded in rural Nyamachi, about 300 kilometers west of the capital, Nairobi.
And the police said in a report seen by Agence France-Presse that six teachers, five women and a man, were arrested and “contributed to the investigation,” noting that they would be prosecuted on relevant charges for their actions. The incident sparked a wave of condemnation on social media in this deeply conservative country.
Education Minister Ezekiel Machugo said teachers involved in the incident would be subject to disciplinary action and be fired from their jobs if found guilty. Under Kenyan law, anyone found guilty of an indecent act faces a minimum of five years in prison. In addition to this incident, the conditions under which students in Kenya are educated are causing wide-ranging controversy, whether in terms of the correctness of corporal punishment, which was officially banned by law in the country in 2001, or, finally, over the length of school days.
