Torture and killing in Kenya - Britain's double standards

[Hetty ter Haar]

Torture and killing in Kenya - Britain's double standards

The UK sees no contradiction in forcing Libyans to apologise for
Lockerbie while denying Kenya's Mau Mau victims recompense

Chris McGreal
Saturday April 9 2011
guardian.co.uk


http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/apr/08/torture-killing-kenya-britain-mau-mau


This week, a British human rights lawyer backed by the Foreign Office
managed to strong-arm an apology [http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/
apr/06/libya-rebels-lockerbie-apology" title="Guardian: Libya rebels
'pressured into Lockerbie apology'] out of Libya's revolutionary
leadership for the actions of the man it is struggling to overthrow.

The apology and promise of compensation over Muammar Gaddafi's supply
of explosives used in IRA bombs and his role in blowing up the Pan Am
flight over Lockerbie was made by the rebels in the name of the Libyan
people as a whole ? a move that astonished and offended many Libyans,
who see no reason to take responsibility for the crimes of their
oppressor.

But the Foreign Office shared the view of the British lawyer, Jason
McCue, that saying sorry for something they had no hand in would
somehow be good for the Libyan people as a whole by establishing a
newfound commitment to human rights. The promise of money helps, of
course.

The truth is that the revolutionary leadership, which has rather more
pressing issues to hand such as keeping Gaddafi's troops from
overrunning Benghazi, felt it had to play along to bolster crucial
support from the UK and the west. McCue even praised David Cameron for
making the case a priority at the Foreign Office.

This demonstration of power politics is made all the more distasteful
by the contrasting attitude of the British government at the high
court [http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/apr/07/kenyans-mau-mau-
compensation-case" title="Guardian: Mau Mau victims seek compensation
from UK for alleged torture] toward victims of the most depraved
torture, gruesome killings and mass hangings by Britain during Kenya's
struggle for independence.

Hiding behind legal contortions, the government is refusing to
apologise or pay compensation for appalling abuses done in the name of
and with the knowledge of the British state, with the intent of
preserving a system of racist privilege for white settlers in the east
African colony.

The Kenya Human Rights Commission [http://humanrightshouse.org/
Articles/5332.html" title="Human Rights House: Kenya Human Rights
Commission] says about 160,000 black people were held in dire
conditions in camps run by the British colonial authorities and tens
of thousands were tortured to get them to renounce their oath to the
Mau Mau rebellion against British rule in the 1950s.

The Foreign Office doesn't deny there was torture and killings in the
camps. How could it? Many of the abuses are documented in files
discovered in its own archives. They including a telegram from the
British governor of Kenya, Sir Evelyn Baring, documenting torture
allegations against colonial district officers including "the burning
alive of detainees".

Instead the Foreign Office is deploying an array of legal barriers to
argue that it is not required to pay compensation. Among the arguments
is that Britain's responsibility for its colonial crimes ceased to
exist when Kenya became independent in 1963 ? a legal convenience that
apparently does not apply in Libya where Britain has willed it that
responsibility for Gaddafi's crimes has been transferred to the people
as a whole and their representatives in the struggle for freedom.

The Foreign Office also argues that these crimes are historic. But
they are not history to those who live with the consequences,
including the four claimants at the high court such as Ndiku Mutua
[http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jun/23/ndiku-mutua-castrated-
pliers" title="Guardian: Ndiku Mutua] and Paulo Nzili, who say they
were castrated in a British camp. Or to Jane Muthoni Mara [http://
www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2006/oct/13/kenya.foreignpolicy"
title="Guardian: Shameful legacy] who I spoke to in Nairobi several
years ago and who described to me how as a 15-year-old she was
arrested as a Mau Mau spy and, among other things, tortured under the
supervision of a British army officer by being raped with a bottle
filled with hot water.

Other prisoners told of being beaten, starved, anally raped and
flogged. The official documents found at the Foreign Office
acknowledge that prisoners were used as forced labour. Some detainees
were tortured so badly they died.

More than 1,000 Kenyan men met their death at the end of a hangman's
noose, many after confessions they said were tortured from them.

All of this led a Kenyan colonial judge, Arthur Cram, who was
appointed to examine the role of British officials in torture and
killings, to draw comparisons with infamous Nazi camps.

"They [British colonial officials] not only knew of the shocking
floggings that went on in this Kenya Nordhausen, or Mathausen, but
must be taken to be the men who were said to have carried them out.
From the brutalising of flogging it is only a step to taking life
without qualm," he said in his judgment.

Germany is still apologising and paying compensation for the crimes of
the Nazi state in Nordhausen and Mathausen. It has not tried to say
that responsibility dissolved with the collapse of the Third Reich.

The survivors of the British camps in Kenya are asking for what the
victims of the IRA and Lockerbie have now been promised from the new
Libya ? an apology and compensation to live out the rest of their
lives with respect and dignity.

But the Foreign Office believes apologies are for Libyans.


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