Historic settlement of Mau Mau claims agreed

Legalbrief reports that the Mau Mau, which took up arms against the colonisers in 1952, was the first resistance movement of its kind in the British empire. It was crushed with thousands of Kenyans tortured, maimed or executed. The announcement came after a four-year legal battle in which the British Government tried and failed to argue that it was not responsible for the actions of the colonial administration. Negotiations began after a London court ruled in October that three elderly Kenyans, who suffered castration, rape and beatings while in detention during a crackdown by British forces and their Kenyan allies in the 1950s, could sue Britain, says a report in The Times. The torture took place during the so-called Kenyan 'Emergency' of 1952-60, when fighters from the Mau Mau movement attacked British targets, causing panic among white settlers and alarming the government in London. 'We have agreed on an out-of-court settlement,' Kenyan lawyer Paul Muite, an adviser to the Mau Mau veterans seeking compensation, is quoted as saying. '(The negotiations) have included everybody with sufficient evidence of torture. And that number is about 5 200,' he said, declining to comment on the size of the payout. The Independent reports that the settlement follows test cases brought by three Kenyans in the London courts. The government had argued that too much time had elapsed for a fair trial and maintained that all liabilities for the torture by colonial authorities had been transferred to the Kenyan Republic when it became independent in 1963. But, says report, judges ruled it was wrong, especially after the discovery of an archive of 8 000 documents from 37 former colonies. Among the papers was a memo from Eric Griffith-Jones, then the Attorney-General of Kenya, who agreed to sanction beatings as long as it was done secretly. 'If we are going to sin, we must sin quietly,' he wrote, according to the report. Full report in The Times Full report in The Independent

The announcement marked the first time Britain has admitted guilt over colonial era abuses, not just in Kenya but anywhere, according to Harvard historian Caroline Elkins. 'It's the first time the British Government has acknowledged that it was not the empire it claimed to have been,' Elkins, author of the Pulitzer Prize winning book 'Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of Britain's Gulag in Kenya,' is quoted as saying in the Los Angeles Times. 'Never before has the British Government issued an apology like this.' British Foreign Secretary William Hague announced the compensation payments - averaging about $5 700 for each of the 5 228 claimants - in Parliament, acknowledging that the victims were tortured and abused by the colonial administration. In his statement to MPs, Hague said: 'We recognise that British personnel were called upon to serve in difficult and dangerous circumstances. Many members of the colonial service contributed to establishing the institutions that underpin Kenya today and we acknowledge their contribution.' According to a report on the walesonline.co.uk site, he said his government recognises Kenyans were subject to torture and other forms of ill-treatment at the hands of the colonial administration. However, the report states he went on to add: 'We continue to deny liability on behalf of the Government and British tax-payers today for the actions of the colonial administration in respect of the claims and indeed the courts have made no findings of liability against the Government in this case.' According to the report, he said it was now time to look to the future, adding that while the settlement acknowledged the 'errors' of the past, it would strengthen relations and reconciliation between Kenya and the UK. Full Los Angeles Times report Full report on the walesonline.co.uk site

Fifty-nine years after he was tortured in a concentration camp run by British colonial authorities in Kenya, Wamutwe Ngau received a statement of 'regret' and the promise of a cheque for £2 658 on Thursday. The 82-year-old is one of the veterans of the uprising. The Independent reports that Ngau remembered how he had been beaten with rifle butts and had his testicles crushed with a pair of pliers during his three-year internment. His left leg is largely numb and he lifted a worn-out shirt to reveal the scar from a bullet hole on his hip. His greatest pain, he said, was that he was unable to have children. 'A man without children is worthless, but in my culture if someone says sorry you have to accept it,' he is quoted in the report as saying. 'It's what we have been waiting for.' Like many of the veterans who travelled to Nairobi from the old battlegrounds in the forests of central Kenya, he said the apology was worth more than the 'little money' which they said would not alleviate the poverty in which most of them live, the report states. Full report in The Independent

The nature and extent of atrocities committed by the British colonial government forces during its war of attrition against Mau Mau insurgents were first comprehensively documented by Prof Caroline Elkins of Harvard University in her book Britain's Gulag: The Brutal End of Empire in Kenya (2005). In an excerpt from her Pulitzer-Prize winning book, she writes: 'When the mass deportations of Kikuyu to the reserves was started in early 1953, the colonial government began setting up screening centres throughout the Rift valley and Central provinces. In British colonial Kenya, screening was the preferred term for interrogation. When interrogations of Mau Mau suspects by colonial officials turned bloody, screening took on a more sinister connotation. Self-described screening experts like Christopher Todd claimed to know merely by the look of a suspect whether or not he or she was Mau Mau. When a suspect refused to talk, the screeners used this extraordinary intuition to justify use of third degree. Margaret Nyaruai a young woman at the time of Mau Mau was taken to the screening hut on the estate of her settler employer near Kabaru not long after the start of the Emergency. There she was beaten by a white man whom the Kikuyu had nicknamed Karoki or He Who Comes at Dawn and by a young settler-turned-colonial officer nicknamed YY.' [url=http://www.standardmedia.co.ke/?articleID=2000085546&story_title=book-on-mau-mau-exposes-shocking-abuses style=original popup]Read other excerpts