BRITAIN'S FASCIST BEHAVIOUR IN KENYA

Five Kenyans reportedly tortured during the independence uprising are to issue a reparations claim against the British government.

The three men and two women say they were variously beaten, raped and castrated during the Kenyan "emergency" from 1952 to 1960.

(Mau Mau veterans sue for colonial abuses Guardian / Mau Mau veteran: 'I still suffer from pain'. )

Ndiku Mutua was aged about 20 when he was castrated.

Mutua was a cattle hand working for a white farmer.

He and some of his pals stole three cows and gave them to Mau Mau independence fighters living in the forest.

The district commissioner sent "home guards" to punish them.

He said:

"They broke my jaw and both my wrists, and were beating me on the shins and scalp.

"I was beaten until I was unconscious then they held me down and castrated me with pliers.

"When I came round I was in a lot of pain and that pain continues to this day. Four of us escaped but the other three bled to death.

"I had not taken the Mau Mau oath, but I took it after that. They were fighting for our land and against oppression and I had felt like a slave.

"I still suffer from dizzy spells and pain."

It has been suggested that 150,000 Kenyans were held in British detention camps.

Caroline Elkins suggests that 130,000 to 300,000 people are unaccounted for.

Photo from www.troopsoutmovement.com/oliversarmychap6.htm


In KENYA, the British used beatings, sexual humiliation, hooding, sleep deprivation, and bombarding with white noise.

(The British Army and child abuse and murder / British army's history of torture and repression.)

32 Whites were killed by the Mau Mau during the five-year state of emergency.

More whites died in traffic accidents in the capital city, Nairobi.

Kenyans were forced into concentration camps and routinely tortured.

Some 150,000 Africans died as a direct result of the British policy.

There was a "constant stream of reports of brutalities by police, military and home guards", wrote Canon Bewes, a British missionary.

"Some of the people had been using castration instruments and two men had died under castration."

Other brutalities included slicing off ears, boring holes in eardrums, flogging people to death, pouring paraffin over suspects and setting them alight and burning eardrums with cigarettes.

A British district officer admitted, "There was outright abuse of power and some of the crimes committed were horrific. One day six Mau Mau suspects were brought into a police station in the neighbouring district to mine. The British police inspector in charge lined them up against a wall and shot them."

A mobile gallows travelled the country. Over 1,000 were hanged, their bodies displayed at crossroads and market places.

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