Action alerts
Sign the petition for Mau Mau reparations
Kenya Human Rights Commission
2009-05-21, Issue 433
http://pambazuka.org/en/category/action/56422
Printer friendly version
London-based solicitors, Leigh, Day & Co, have been instructed by the Kenya Human Rights Commission to issue a claim for compensation against the British government on behalf of the Mau Mau veterans. These now elderly Kenyans were assaulted, tortured and unlawfully imprisoned for a number of years during the brutal repression of the Mau Mau movement by the British government which took place in the 1950s and early 1960s.
The Kenya Human Rights Commission has now documented 40 cases of castration, severe sexual abuses and unlawful detention, which were carried out by officers of the British government. The actual number of Kenyans who suffered this barbaric treatment at the hands of British officers in fact runs into their thousands.
In recent years, following exhaustive research by historians, it has become clear that far from being the acts of a few rogue soldiers, the torture and inhuman and degrading treatment of Kenyans during the Emergency Period (1950s to early 1960s) resulted from policies which were sanctioned at the highest levels of government in London. It was only after the tireless work of campaigners over a number of years and the revelation of the massacre of 11 Kenyans at the Hola Detention Camp that Britain was forced to close its detention camps and cease the barbaric practices it had been employing with impunity for so many years.
It is ironic that at the time Britain was instrumental in the creation of the post war human rights treaties, conventions and institutions, it was violating basic human rights in Kenya on a breathtaking scale[1]. As President Barack Obama recently recalled, during the Second World War, Winston Churchill was adamant in his view that ‘Britain does not torture’ even when it seems expedient to do so. Indeed, Barack Obama’s own grandfather, Onyango Obama, was unlawfully and wrongfully detained for months as part of the British Government’s vicious crackdown on the Mau Mau movement.
Leigh, Day & Co will be issuing a claim on behalf of the Mau Mau veterans in London on 23 June 2009. They are men and women from different Kenyan communities who are representative of the wider community of Mau Mau veterans.
It is hoped that this will be an opportunity for the British government to come to terms with this stain on British history and to apologise to the Kenyan people for this historic wrong. Unless this happens, the sense of injustice arising out of Britain’s excessive response to the Mau Mau movement will continue to be deeply felt among all Kenyans for generations to come.
* Sign the petition in support of reparations for Mau Mau veterans.
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at http://www.pambazuka.org/.
NOTES
[1] For example, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights [1948] and the European Convention on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms [1950]
Readers' Comments
Let your voice be heard. Comment on this article.