Forty-nine years after the death of his wife, General Kibira Gatu is still a bitter man, thanks to the atrocities committed during the British colonial era. Now aged 68, Gatu, a former guerrilla in Kenya's Mau Mau movement, was fighting to free his country from the yoke of colonialism when British soldiers abducted his wife in 1954. "They took my wife away and killed her, separating her from our one-year-old son," he told IPS this week. Rights activists have accused previous governments of neglecting the war veterans, most of who have been living in desperate conditions. Many have died in absolute poverty.