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[Big_Bird]

Mau Mau veterans to sue Britain over torture and illegal killings in Kenya



� Action alleges human rights abuses in 1950s
� Case runs risk of reviving internal divisions

Chris McGreal in Nairobi
Friday October 6, 2006
The Guardian


An ageing group of former Mau Mau insurgents will launch a legal action in Britain next week accusing the army and colonial authorities of torturing or illegally killing thousands of Kenyans during the rebellion for independence 50 years ago.

Lawyers acting for Mau Mau veterans say they will serve notice on the Foreign Office of an intent to seek compensation for human rights abuses for a group of about 10 Kenyans, seen as a test case.

The claimants have given accounts of rape, systematic and prolonged beatings and other physical tortures that caused permanent injury and starvation as part of a British policy to break the rebellion. Some also witnessed killings.
If the case comes to court it is likely to divide Kenya by highlighting the part played in suppressing the Mau Mau by Kenyans who went on to hold senior government posts, and because insurgents killed many more black Kenyans than white settlers.

The claimants say they were held for years in detention camps during the seven years after Britain declared the "Kenya emergency" in 1952.

Jane Muthoni Mara was 15 when she was arrested for supplying the Mau Mau with food. She says a white officer ordered her torture, carried out by a black soldier who shoved a bottle into her vagina to force her to reveal the whereabouts of her brother, a member of the Mau Mau.

"There was a [Kenyan soldier] called Edward. He filled the bottle with hot water and then pushed it into my private parts with his foot. I screamed and screamed," she said. "Other women held at the camp were raped the same way. I've never forgotten it."

Another former detainee, M'Mucheke Mucheke Kioru, says he was beaten senseless on several occasions by an officer. "He ordered me to lie down with my face down and severely beat me all over my back from the lower spinal cord. I was beaten until sperms were coming out of my *beep* like a stream. I believe this is when I lost the ability to have children."

The Kenyan Human Rights Commission, which is backing the legal claim, says about 160,000 people were held in dire conditions and tens of thousands were tortured to get them to renounce their oath to the Mau Mau.

For full article see here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/kenya/story/0,,1888754,00.html

[Big_Bird]

Backstory

The Mau Mau rebellion against British rule during the 1950s was led in part by Kenyans who served under the British flag in the second world war and returned trained to fight and with a burning sense of grievance at colonial rule. The organisation was dominated by the Kikuyu who had suffered more than most Kenyans from the land grabbing by white settlers. The Mau Mau's killing of settlers, including women and children, at the end of 1952 and early 1953 led to its vilification in Britain as a group of savages and terrorists. But Britain's response proved no less barbaric. Its forces killed thousands of Africans, and imprisoned tens of thousands, before the end of the rebellion in 1959. Britain also hanged about 1,000 people as rebels although many of them never bore arms. The government put the final death toll at 11,000 Kenyans compared with 32 white settlers and about 200 soldiers and police. Recent research suggests up to 100,000 Kenyans died, many through torture, starvation and neglect in the British prison camps. The Mau Mau killed more than 2,000 Africans they accused of collaboration.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/kenya/story/0,,1888754,00.html