Kenya: Six teachers arrested for forcing students to simulate sex

A group of six teachers were arrested and suspended in Kenya on Thursday after a video of primary school pupils being forced to simulate sex as punishment caused an outcry.

In a 29-second video that has gone viral, four boys in school uniforms simulate sex acts under a tree in the schoolyard as teachers watch. In the background, the six teachers can be heard chatting and laughing as a shirtless child wipes tears from his face.

Police said the video "exposing pupils to indecent acts" was recorded in Nyamache, a rural town some 300km west of the capital Nairobi.

Six teachers, five women and one man have been arrested and are "assisting in the investigation", police said in a report seen by AFP. They will be prosecuted on appropriate charges, it added.

The Teachers' Service Commission (TSC) suspended the six, saying the video had caused the six students "shame, trauma, mental and psychological torture".

"You ordered and/or coerced students (...) to engage in indecent/inappropriate acts representing homosexuality within the school," said TSC official Evaleen Mitei in a letter to the teachers.

The teachers have three weeks to submit their written defence against their suspension, Ms Mitei said.

At the same time, they are expected to remain in detention for another seven days while the investigation is completed.

The incident caused an uproar on social networks in the largely conservative country.

Education Minister Ezekiel Machogu said disciplinary proceedings would be initiated against the teachers and that they would be dismissed if found guilty.

Under Kenya's Sexual Offences Act, a person convicted of forcing another to engage in an indecent act is liable to imprisonment for at least five years.

Beyond this incident, the living conditions of schoolchildren in Kenya are regularly the subject of heated debate, whether on the appropriateness of corporal punishment, officially banned by law in 2001, or more recently on the length of the school day.