Britain admits to torture and pays for it.

Well, it's always good to see a national Government stand up and do the right thing. 50+ years late? Yet still, at least there are some people left to pay, for the acts committed against them. If nothing else, it may help close a chapter of history ....or some part of it, for the Kenyan people.

Britain has agreed to compensate Kenyans tortured during the Mau Mau uprising against colonial rule in the 1950s, Foreign Secretary William Hague has said.

Hague expressed "sincere regret" on Thursday that the abuses had taken place and told parliament the government would pay a total of $30.8m to 5,228 clients represented by a British law firm.

There were some really nasty aspects to this, by the sound of things.

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.

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.

Well, again, it's better late than never for owning up to the evils of the past, even if it has to be done kicking and screaming, as this last part seems to suggest.

London tried for three years to block the Mau Mau veterans' legal action in the courts, drawing condemnation from the elderly torture victims who accused Kenya's former colonial master of using legal technicalities to fight the case.

Source

The world is an ugly and complicated place for who has a white hat vs. a black one. Perhaps those extremes just don't exist in the modern world. It could be, they never really did. In this case, at least the truth of the past is a matter of open public record for what sounds like the first time on these incidents.

reply to post by Wrabbit2000



Well maybe they could use the money to compensate all the victims of the Mau Mau;

Mau Mau militants were guilty of numerous atrocities. The most notorious was their attack on the settlement of Lari, on the night of 25–26 March 1953, in which they herded Kikuyu men, women and children into huts and set fire to them, hacking down with pangas anyone who attempted escape, before throwing them back into the burning huts.[199] The attack at Lari was so extreme that "African policemen who saw the bodies of the victims . . . were physically sick and said 'These people are animals. If I see one now I shall shoot with the greatest eagerness'",[112] and it "even shocked many Mau Mau supporters, some of whom would subsequently try to excuse the attack as 'a mistake'".

A retaliatory massacre was immediately perpetrated by African security forces who were partially overseen by British commanders. Official estimates place the death toll from the first Lari massacre at 74, and the second at 150, though neither of these figures account for those who 'disappeared'. Whatever the actual number of victims, "[t]he grim truth was that, for every person who died in Lari's first massacre, at least two more were killed in retaliation in the second."

Aside from the Lari massacres, Kikuyu were also tortured, mutilated and murdered by Mau Mau on many other occasions Mau Mau racked up 1,819 murders of their fellow Africans, though again this number excludes the many additional hundreds who 'disappeared', whose bodies were never found

For their part, as already discussed, the British colonial government eventually instituted a system of detention and torture that was sanctioned at the highest levels of government in London, as well as carrying out or overseeing any number of extra-judicial executions and various massacres. One such killing spree was the Chuka massacre of June 1953, in which twenty African civilians, including a child, were shot in cold blood by soldiers of the 5th KAR B Company

en.wikipedia.org...



Course that won't happen, as it's not part of the agenda to consider both sides of the case.

reply to post by Wrabbit2000

About 6000 dollar/pound/euros per person. For castration, rape and torture? What a #ing insult!

reply to post by LightSpeedDriver

Well, I didn't claim it was 'just' compensation. When the alternative has been over 50 years of playing like it didn't actually happen as horribly as it did? Progress, however small or low in dollar value, is still progress. Otherwise, I'm sure London would have been VERY happy to leave it as it's been and give 0 along with no official need to acknowledge it happened.

I'll bet, without this case now in the open, some right here on ATS would have challenged the idea this ever happened at all. Just my thinking...

The bestiality of BOTH sides was unimaginable.....
What difference does it make who did the deeds?
The whole thing reeks ...............

reply to post by stirling

What difference does it make who did the deeds?

I'm guessing that the record being made right on this makes A LOT of difference to the elderly survivors of the period who this mentions. The money? Who knows how important that is to them. The public acknowledgement of what was done to them probably ranks equal or more for importance, would be my guess. Such a small thing for a nation to do. Admit guilt after so many decades. So much trouble to get them to do it.

Originally posted by Wrabbit2000
reply to post by LightSpeedDriver

 

Well, I didn't claim it was 'just' compensation.

That's good, because this is nowhere near compensation. We can bandy words around but I'll keep it short for a change.

reply to post by Wrabbit2000


Something's better than nothing. Does that amount include deducted legal fees?

reply to post by EA006


I'd hope the Crown could comp the legal fees, eh?

Indeed.. Something is better than nothing. It's just a shame it took half a century. So many victims died never hearing those simple admissions of action. That's the sad part, I'd think.

reply to post by Wrabbit2000


There's no excuse for what they have done, but it's pretty much the same story anywhere the British colours have been flown.