Early this year, a virtual session at the Court of Appeal was halted after an intrusion forced the judges to stop the hearing. The session was part of an appeal filed by survivors of the 2007 post-election sexual violence. They have been asking the state to answer for what happened during the conflict period. They were finally in a space where their case could move forward, but the intrusion broke the flow of the day and forced the court to restrict access.
Justice Daniel Musinga noted that the intrusion disrupted a process already heavy for the survivors. He said the act disrupted a session meant to address harm that had occurred years earlier. Only lawyers were allowed back into the virtual room once the system was secured.
For the survivors, the appeal was part of a long path where they had to explain what happened to them and why the state should carry responsibility. They asked the court to look at the failures to prevent the violence and to look at the gaps in protection and response.
But the intrusion during the hearing exposed a new layer of pressure as survivors who faced harm during the conflict faced a second form of harm inside the same process that is meant to bring justice. Their first fight took place in the streets, homes, and shelters where the violence was physical and visible.
The fight moved into digital spaces as the court session was disrupted through a screen and the entire process was pushed off balance by someone who stepped in through a virtual door and tried to break a hearing that survivors had waited years to reach, showing that the tools of harm have shifted from the streets and homes where the first violence took place to online spaces where silence is enforced through interference rather than force.
The same survivors who struggled to be heard in the physical world stretched themselves once more to hold ground in a space they did not choose and could not control, carrying a double burden that grows heavier each time the system fails to protect even the small steps they have taken toward recognition and justice.
At Utu Wetu, we see how harm travels from one space to another and how survivors are forced to fight in two arenas at once while institutions move slowly and offer little protection in either space, leaving them to carry the strain of both the original violence and the new disruptions that meet them when they seek answers.
We cannot allow digital interference to become another gate that survivors must push through on their own, and we cannot stand back while silence shifts from physical intimidation to technological disruption without naming it and confronting it. Utu Wetu will hold this line because the fight for justice must stand in every space where survivors speak, and because the struggle cannot pause each time the tools of harm change shape.