Examining the lived experience of the survivors of Nyayo House torture chambers in Kenya

This study will be an examination of the lived experience of the people who were detained, tortured, and subjected to all forms of violence in the Infamous Nyayo house torture chambers for their real or perceived opposition to the then Kenyan president Daniel Toroitich Arap Moi between 1986 and 1992. The lived experience will encompass the feelings, opinions, perceptions, emotions, and experience of the survivors before, during and after torture. The study will focus more on their journey of rehabilitation and reintegration back into the community.
On snap preview of the historical background, The Nyayo torture chambers comprises cells, rooms and hallways (which were meant for interrogation and torture) located in the Nyayo house which is a building in the centre of the Kenyan capital city in Nairobi. While the building contained public offices for different ministries as was intended for; different floors and the basement were re-engineered and converted into detention and torture cells where violence and even death was unleashed on the people who opposed or were perceived to oppose the government.
The infamy of the building therefore sprouts from the gruesome testimony of the survivors who describes how were blind folded, stripped necked, starved, drowned, beaten, pricked, maimed, and even rendered infertile. The building also recorded high levels of suicide where people would jump from high floors either trying to escape of killed and pushed out to cover the violence and torture they had gone through. The violence was executed by the "Special branch police" who were loyal to the president and trained on interrogation through torture.
These dark days were between 1986 and 1992 when there were different political struggles for multi-party democracy, electoral reforms, and good governance. The chambers were closed in 1993 and the "special branch" changed to "intelligence Service" however the chambers were closed for any public viewing of activities.
In 2003 when the country experienced a regime change and the then president retired, most survivors came out to share their experiences, public inquest commissions were formed to investigate the issues and the chambers were open to public viewing. The court ordered the compensation of some survivors which was implemented although some still have their cases in court. Kenya finally enacted the Act on torture prevention in 2017.
This research will therefore be qualitative research which will explore the lived experience of the survivors of the Nyayo torture chambers. Participants from the study will be identified though different public testimonies includes online life biographies and contacts. A non random purposive and snowball sampling will be used to sample 10 participants.
An open-ended, in-depth semi structured interview will be used to collect data. Voice recording will also be used. A combination of Inductive and deductive latent thematic analysis will be used, and data will be presented and shared with participants.
The study will be done in full compliance to the ethical guidelines of the University of Edinburgh and the Kenyan ethical research guidelines.