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Interesting given the American activities all around the world. Also a counterpoint to the propaganda of 'enlightened' British rule over the Commonwealth. Kenya was but one area - the Malaysian insurrection, India/Pakistan/Bangladesh/Afghanistan, and others come to mind.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011...pensation-case
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011...pensation-case
Mau Mau victims seek compensation from UK for alleged torture
Four Kenyans say they suffered abuse under British colonial rule during the 1950s Mau Mau rebellion
Mau Mau victims seek compensation from UK
50 years ago has begun to emerge through government reports documenting "systematic" torture, starvation and even the burning alive of detainees.
Four elderly Kenyans who claim they were variously whipped, beaten, sexually abused and castrated while detained under colonial rule in the 1950s have brought their claims for compensation to the high court.
The survivors of the emergency regime of detention camps were "screened" – or violently interrogated – in order to extract confessions. One claimant, the court was told, witnessed the clubbing to death of 11 prison inmates. The British governor, Sir Evelyn Baring, was said to have been present at beatings.
The landmark hearing, expected to last several weeks, will highlight atrocities and attitudes that may rewrite the history of British colonial rule in Africa. Boxes of previously undisclosed documents, stored by the Foreign Office, have been unearthed during research into the claims. They record the methods employed to defeat the rebellion and government awareness of abuses.
While not denying that torture took place, the Foreign Office insists that the UK government retains no residual liability, deploying a range of constitutional precedents – including reference to the declaration of martial law in Jamaica in 1860 – to block the survivors' quest for compensation.
Robert Jay QC, for the Foreign Office, opened the hearing with an application that the claims should be struck out. Jay told a packed courtroom in London that he did not seek to diminish the appalling acts committed in detention camps between 1952 and 1961, but said the claim that the UK was liable for compensation was "built on inference" and ended in a "cul-de-sac".
The FCO argues that legal responsibility was transferred to the Kenyan republic upon independence in 1963, or else simply ceased to exist.
The test case claimants, Ndiku Mutua, Paulo Nzili, Wambugu Wa Nyingi and Jane Muthoni Mara, who are in their 70s and 80s, have flown 4,000 miles from their rural homes for the trial. It will also consider whether the claim was brought outside the legal time limit.
The judge, Mr Justice McCombe, heard Mutua and Nzili had been castrated, Nyingi was beaten unconscious at Hola prison in 1959, which 11 men were clubbed to death and Mara had been subjected to appalling sexual abuse.
The statement of claim drawn up by the law firm Leigh Day and Co, which represents the four Kenyans, says that detainees were subjected to "sodomy, the insertion of sand into men's anuses and the insertion of glass bottles filled with hot liquid into women's vaginas". In many cases detainees died.
The claimants' solicitor, Martyn Day, said earlier that the case was "not about reopening old wounds". He added: "It is about individuals who are alive and who have endured terrible suffering because of the policies of a previous British government. They are now seeking recognition and redress in the form of a carefully conceived welfare fund. It is incumbent on the government to treat such people with the respect and dignity they deserve."
But the extraordinary quantity of Kenyan colonial service documents, removed from Nairobi by British civil servants at independence in 1963 because of their extreme sensitivity, will lead to a re-examination of the period.
Professor David Anderson, of the African Studies Centre at Oxford University, discovered the files that had been lost or concealed. He has examined only a small proportion of the 17,000 pages relating to Kenya. A further 300 boxes of colonial administration files have emerged from the Foreign Office, covering former UK territories around the world.
In a witness statement, Anderson described the contents of the Kenyan files. Forced labour was used in the camps, he said, even though it was known to be illegal under international convention. Breaches of the convention were a daily occurrence and the attorney general, in one extract, noted that "if we are going to sin, we must sin quietly".
The government in London knew what was going on, Anderson states. "These documents contain discussion of torture and abuse and the legal implications for the British administration in Kenya of the use of coercive force in prisons and detention camps, by so-called 'screening' teams, and in other interrogations carried out by all members of the security forces."
The legal limits of coercive force were debated. "They reveal that changes to legislation, and additions to the emergency powers regulations, were made retrospectively in order to cover practices that were already normal within the camps and detention centres."
Torture was commonplace. One file, Anderson says, "contains a telegram, from Governor Baring to the secretary of state for the colonies, dated 17 January 1955, detailing 'brutal allegations' against eight British district officers regarding the murder of detainees under 'screening' (ie interrogation). This includes the burning alive of detainees."
In another file, a provincial commissioner, CM "Monkey" Johnson, wrote to the attorney-general asking him to extend an amnesty because "each and everyone one of us, from the governor downwards, may be in danger of removal from public service".
At certain camps, Anderson notes, "specific methods of interrogation were devised, involving the systematic beating and torture of detainees". In Mwea camp there was starvation of detainees for up to three days, sleep deprivation and regular beatings carried out by British officers.
Altogether 1,090 men were sent to the gallows for Mau Mau crimes. Many protested that their confessions had been extracted under torture.
Grandfather was tortured
Among those who were tortured in Kenya was Barack Obama's grandfather, Hussein Onyango Obama. Having served in the British army in Burma during the second world war, he returned home and was accused of being a Mau Mau fighter.
In his memoir, Dreams From My Father, Obama refers briefly to his grandfather's imprisonment: "Eventually he received a hearing, and he was found innocent. But he had been in the camp for over six months, and when he returned … he was very thin and dirty. He had difficulty walking, and his head was full of lice."
In 2008, Sarah Onyango, Hussein Onyango's third wife, told journalists that "white soldiers" had visited the prison every few days to inflict what was described as "disciplinary action" upon inmates suspected of subversion. "He said they would sometimes squeeze his testicles with parallel metallic rods," she said. "They also pierced his nails and buttocks with a sharp pin, with his hands and legs tied together with his head facing down." Onyango is said to have been left permanently scarred. He was also bitterly anti-British.
The current court case was already underway by the time Obama was elected president. Inside the Oval Office, his predecessor had given pride of place to a loan from the British government, a bronze bust of Winston Churchill, who had been prime minister when the state of emergency was declared in Kenya and when Obama's grandfather had been detained and tortured. Although the White House would deny there was any connection, one of the newly-elected President's first acts was to order that the bust be packed up and sent back.
Ian Cobain
Four Kenyans say they suffered abuse under British colonial rule during the 1950s Mau Mau rebellion
Mau Mau victims seek compensation from UK
50 years ago has begun to emerge through government reports documenting "systematic" torture, starvation and even the burning alive of detainees.
Four elderly Kenyans who claim they were variously whipped, beaten, sexually abused and castrated while detained under colonial rule in the 1950s have brought their claims for compensation to the high court.
The survivors of the emergency regime of detention camps were "screened" – or violently interrogated – in order to extract confessions. One claimant, the court was told, witnessed the clubbing to death of 11 prison inmates. The British governor, Sir Evelyn Baring, was said to have been present at beatings.
The landmark hearing, expected to last several weeks, will highlight atrocities and attitudes that may rewrite the history of British colonial rule in Africa. Boxes of previously undisclosed documents, stored by the Foreign Office, have been unearthed during research into the claims. They record the methods employed to defeat the rebellion and government awareness of abuses.
While not denying that torture took place, the Foreign Office insists that the UK government retains no residual liability, deploying a range of constitutional precedents – including reference to the declaration of martial law in Jamaica in 1860 – to block the survivors' quest for compensation.
Robert Jay QC, for the Foreign Office, opened the hearing with an application that the claims should be struck out. Jay told a packed courtroom in London that he did not seek to diminish the appalling acts committed in detention camps between 1952 and 1961, but said the claim that the UK was liable for compensation was "built on inference" and ended in a "cul-de-sac".
The FCO argues that legal responsibility was transferred to the Kenyan republic upon independence in 1963, or else simply ceased to exist.
The test case claimants, Ndiku Mutua, Paulo Nzili, Wambugu Wa Nyingi and Jane Muthoni Mara, who are in their 70s and 80s, have flown 4,000 miles from their rural homes for the trial. It will also consider whether the claim was brought outside the legal time limit.
The judge, Mr Justice McCombe, heard Mutua and Nzili had been castrated, Nyingi was beaten unconscious at Hola prison in 1959, which 11 men were clubbed to death and Mara had been subjected to appalling sexual abuse.
The statement of claim drawn up by the law firm Leigh Day and Co, which represents the four Kenyans, says that detainees were subjected to "sodomy, the insertion of sand into men's anuses and the insertion of glass bottles filled with hot liquid into women's vaginas". In many cases detainees died.
The claimants' solicitor, Martyn Day, said earlier that the case was "not about reopening old wounds". He added: "It is about individuals who are alive and who have endured terrible suffering because of the policies of a previous British government. They are now seeking recognition and redress in the form of a carefully conceived welfare fund. It is incumbent on the government to treat such people with the respect and dignity they deserve."
But the extraordinary quantity of Kenyan colonial service documents, removed from Nairobi by British civil servants at independence in 1963 because of their extreme sensitivity, will lead to a re-examination of the period.
Professor David Anderson, of the African Studies Centre at Oxford University, discovered the files that had been lost or concealed. He has examined only a small proportion of the 17,000 pages relating to Kenya. A further 300 boxes of colonial administration files have emerged from the Foreign Office, covering former UK territories around the world.
In a witness statement, Anderson described the contents of the Kenyan files. Forced labour was used in the camps, he said, even though it was known to be illegal under international convention. Breaches of the convention were a daily occurrence and the attorney general, in one extract, noted that "if we are going to sin, we must sin quietly".
The government in London knew what was going on, Anderson states. "These documents contain discussion of torture and abuse and the legal implications for the British administration in Kenya of the use of coercive force in prisons and detention camps, by so-called 'screening' teams, and in other interrogations carried out by all members of the security forces."
The legal limits of coercive force were debated. "They reveal that changes to legislation, and additions to the emergency powers regulations, were made retrospectively in order to cover practices that were already normal within the camps and detention centres."
Torture was commonplace. One file, Anderson says, "contains a telegram, from Governor Baring to the secretary of state for the colonies, dated 17 January 1955, detailing 'brutal allegations' against eight British district officers regarding the murder of detainees under 'screening' (ie interrogation). This includes the burning alive of detainees."
In another file, a provincial commissioner, CM "Monkey" Johnson, wrote to the attorney-general asking him to extend an amnesty because "each and everyone one of us, from the governor downwards, may be in danger of removal from public service".
At certain camps, Anderson notes, "specific methods of interrogation were devised, involving the systematic beating and torture of detainees". In Mwea camp there was starvation of detainees for up to three days, sleep deprivation and regular beatings carried out by British officers.
Altogether 1,090 men were sent to the gallows for Mau Mau crimes. Many protested that their confessions had been extracted under torture.
Grandfather was tortured
Among those who were tortured in Kenya was Barack Obama's grandfather, Hussein Onyango Obama. Having served in the British army in Burma during the second world war, he returned home and was accused of being a Mau Mau fighter.
In his memoir, Dreams From My Father, Obama refers briefly to his grandfather's imprisonment: "Eventually he received a hearing, and he was found innocent. But he had been in the camp for over six months, and when he returned … he was very thin and dirty. He had difficulty walking, and his head was full of lice."
In 2008, Sarah Onyango, Hussein Onyango's third wife, told journalists that "white soldiers" had visited the prison every few days to inflict what was described as "disciplinary action" upon inmates suspected of subversion. "He said they would sometimes squeeze his testicles with parallel metallic rods," she said. "They also pierced his nails and buttocks with a sharp pin, with his hands and legs tied together with his head facing down." Onyango is said to have been left permanently scarred. He was also bitterly anti-British.
The current court case was already underway by the time Obama was elected president. Inside the Oval Office, his predecessor had given pride of place to a loan from the British government, a bronze bust of Winston Churchill, who had been prime minister when the state of emergency was declared in Kenya and when Obama's grandfather had been detained and tortured. Although the White House would deny there was any connection, one of the newly-elected President's first acts was to order that the bust be packed up and sent back.
Ian Cobain
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