Ben McIntyre.
12 April 2011
Political Articles
One horrific day in September 1957, Ndiku Mutwiwa Mutua claims, he was castrated by the British Government.
Last week the elderly Kenyan appeared in the High Court in London, along with three others to accuse Britain of being liable for what was done to him 54 years ago, and to demand compensation.
The case of Mutua and others versus the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) relates to events that took place at the height of the Mau Mau emergency — the uprising against colonial rule in Kenya between 1952 and 1960.
The Mau Mau rebellion was one of the nastiest chapters in British colonial history. Appalling atrocities were perpetrated by both sides, but few stories of cruelty are worse than that of Mr Ndiku Mutwiwa Mutua.
In 1956 Mr Mutua was a 24-year-old herdsman working for Mr Louvaine Dunman, a white settler in Kenya’s Eastern Province. Mr Dunman, a police officer in the district force, was known as “Luvai” among the Kamba people who couldn’t pronounce the name Louvaine properly.
While working on Mr Dunman’s farm, Mr Mutua began supplying food to the Mau Mau rebels hiding out in the nearby forest. On or before September 17, 1957, he was arrested by Mr Dunman and five other African police officers.
According to a court document, he was repeatedly beaten by European and African officers alike and then taken, blindfolded, to a tent.
Inside, he was allegedly handcuffed and pinned to the ground, with his legs pulled apart and tied or strapped down.
“Having been rendered completely powerless and vulnerable,” according to the document, Mr Mutua claims that he was “castrated by one or more of the officers present.”
For two days he was allegedly left without medical attention and then liberated from the camp by Mau Mau rebels. He remained in the forest for three-and-a-half years before the rebellion ended and he returned home.
Mr Mutua claims that he suffered depression, anguish, mental stress, and “intense flashbacks to the episodes of assault, including castration (and) mourned the fact that he will never have children of his own and never be with a woman.”
Like his fellow claimants, Mr Mutua holds the British Government responsible for his suffering. Another of the plaintiffs also claims to have been castrated, while a third was allegedly beaten and left for dead during the infamous Hola Camp massacre of 1959 in which 11 detainees were clubbed to death.
The only woman claimant said that she was subjected to sexual torture in which she was violated using bottles filled with hot water.
The alleged mistreatment of another claimant, Mr Wambugu wa Nyingi, carries echoes of waterboarding. Mr Nyingi claims that he was “suspended by his feet from the hut roof. He was then subjected to a severe beating over a period of about 30 minutes, while cold water was poured on to his face and into his mouth so he could not breathe.”
The claimants’ case rests on the argument that these acts of brutality were not isolated or random, the spontaneous cruelty of a few sadists, but a systematic policy organised and condoned by the British authorities, “part of a system of torture, inhuman and degrading treatment applied by police, home guards, and other members of the security services with the knowledge of the colonial administration.
“Many detainees were subjected to gross abuse and torture,” say the claimants.
“Such abuse included whippings, beating, castration, and sexual abuse of men and women… in many cases the abuse and torture were so brutal and dangerous that the detainee died.”
Lawyers representing the British Government argue that the case should be dismissed because the alleged abuse was carried out by the colonial government, which passed all rights and responsibilities to the independent Kenyan Government in 1963.
When Kenya assumed national sovereignty, government lawyers will argue, this included an implicit acceptance of liability for any outstanding claims against the national administration.
The Kenya Government flatly denies any liability. A letter was sent to British Foreign Secretary William Hague on March 31 stating:
“The Republic of Kenya fully supports the claimants’ case and has publicly denied any notion that responsibility for any acts and atrocities committed by the British colonial administration during the Kenya ‘Emergency’ was inherited by the Republic of Kenya.”
Among those rounded up in the run-up to Mau Mau was Hussein Onyango Obama, Barak Obama’s paternal grandfather, who became involved in the Kenyan independence movement while working as a cook for a British Army officer after the war.
He was arrested and jailed for two years in a high security prison where, according to his family, he was subjected to horrific violence to extract information about the growing insurgency.
Further light will be shed by the newly discovered Foreign Office files relating to Mau Mau, which were deliberately removed from Kenya.
On December 3, 1963, nine days before Kenya formally declared independence, three wooden crates containing 1,500 highly sensitive government files were loaded on to a British United Airways flight bound for Gatwick.
A memo written by one Foreign Office official noted that the removal of the documents had been carried out in “meticulous fashion,” with files selected on the specific grounds that their contents “might embarrass Her Majesty’s Government, members of the police, military forces, public servants, or others.”
In a memo marked “Most Secret,” the Foreign Office noted that “the vast majority of the files concern the Emergency: eg, intelligence reports and summaries, African associations, activities of Africans, unrest in the districts etc . . . collective punishments, detainees and detention camps.”
In 1967, the Kenyan Foreign Ministry asked the British Government to return the missing files. The FCO refused.
A confidential FCO memo written on November 2, 1967, warned that if the documents were sent back to Kenya, it could “set a precedent and encourage other governments to follow suit” and demand “the documents of other former Dependent Territories which are now held here.”
A letter on the same subject from the Commonwealth Office clearly shows that the decision to remove the Kenyan documents was not an isolated incident:
“The fact that it has always been British policy to withdraw or destroy certain sensitive records prior to independence has never been advertised or generally admitted,” the letter states.
“The reply we give to Kenya could affect the treatment of records and files withdrawn from other former Colonial Territories.”
After 1967, the files removed from Kenya apparently vanished into the Foreign Office archives. There has long been speculation among historians about what happened to them, including the rumour that they had been loaded into a Lancaster bomber and dropped into the Indian Ocean.
When the four Kenyans filed suit last year, the High Court was informed that some of the most critical evidence relating to the case was still missing. The FO duly launched a search for the documents and in January the missing files were finally located.
The reparations claim is regarded in Kenya as nationally divisive since the Mau Mau was in large part an ethnic rebellion by the Kikuyu rather than a national uprising. Most of the alleged torture and abuse was carried out by Africans of other tribes, albeit under British supervision, adding a potentially toxic tribal element to the mixture.
The claimants are demanding a welfare fund and a statement of regret.
Mr David Miliband, the Labour Foreign Secretary, is believed to have favoured this approach, but a resolution was blocked by FCO officials.
The implications go far beyond the individual accusations levelled by four Kenyans. Hundreds more former Mau Mau detainees could file suit and countless other former colonial subjects may be able to claim mistreatment at the hands of the British Government.
Leigh Day, the lawyers representing the Kenyans, say they do not believe that the case will establish a precedent.
“The systematic torture which went on in pre-independence Kenya was exceptional in its scale and barbarity,” a spokesman for Leigh Day said. “This case is about victims who are alive and are seeking redress. People who suffered similar ill treatment in other colonies who are still alive are very few in number.”
In a speech at SOAS, the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies, last month, David Anderson, professor of African history at the University of Oxford, who is advising the claimants, said that the files discovered in the FCO archives may be the tip of a huge legal iceberg.
“In other instances — Malaya, Cyprus, Nigeria, to name just three possible examples — there might also be missing documents ‘retrieved’ to London, with much to tell us about the actions of colonial administrations.
“The Mau Mau claim is not the only claim the British Government may have to worry about,” he added. “Claims may arise from, for example, Palestine, and there is a fear that a successful claim could set a precedent.”
The files were spirited out of Kenya in 1963 because they “might embarrass Her Majesty’s Government.” Some 48 years later, they have at last come to light, with their capacity to embarrass the government intact.
Kenyan nationals Wambugu wa Nyingi, (R) Ndiku Mutua, (2nd R) Paulo Nzili (2nd L) and Jane Muthoni Mara, (L) outside the High Court in central London, on April 7, 2011. They are hoping their cases, which include castration, torture, sexual abuse, forced labour and beatings, will secure a statement of regret over Britain's role in the Kenya Emergency, and a victims' welfare fund.
Kenyan nationals Wambugu wa Nyingi, (R) Ndiku Mutua, (2nd R) Paulo Nzili (2nd L) and Jane Muthoni Mara, (L) outside the High Court in central London, on April 7, 2011. They are hoping their cases, which include castration, torture, sexual abuse, forced labour and beatings, will secure a statement of regret over Britain’s role in the Kenya Emergency, and a victims’ welfare fund.
About The Author: Ben Macintyre (born 1963) is a British author, historian, and columnist writing for The Times newspaper. His columns range from current affairs to historical controversies. Macintyre is the author of a book on the gentleman criminal Adam Worth, “The Napoleon of Crime: The Life and Times of Adam Worth, Master Thief.” He also wrote — “The Man Who Would Be King: The First American in Afghanistan,” and a book on the real-life double agent of Germany and England during the Second World War, Eddie Chapman, titled “Agent Zigzag: The true wartime story of eddie chapman, lover, betrayer, hero, spy.”
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The Ghosts of Empire Are Returning To Haunt Britain - and the US
In a few weeks, a group of quiet, dignified elderly men and women will arrive in London to explain how the forces of the British state crushed their testicles or breasts with plyers. It was part of a deliberate policy of breaking a civillian population who we regarded as “baboons”, “barbarians” and “terrorists.” They will come bearing the story of how Britain invaded a country, stole its land, and imprisoned an entire civillian population in detention camps – and they ask only for justice, after all this time.
As a small symbol of how we as a country have not come to terms with our history, compare the bemused reaction to the arrival of these Kenyan survivors of Britain’s gulags to the recent campaign supporting the Gurkhas. We have all waxed lyrical over the Nepalese mercenaries who were, for two centuries, hired by the British Empire to fight its least savoury battles. Sometimes they were used in great causes, like the defeat of Nazism. Sometimes they were used to viciously crush democratic movements in India or Malaya or Pakistan. But they obediently did the bidding of the Empire – so they are a rare bunch of foreigners who the right will turn moist over and welcome to our island.
I too strongly supported their rights to reside in Britain, out of simple humanity – if they’re good enough to die for us, they’re good enough to live with us. But isn’t it revealing that even in 2009, we can cheer the servants of Empire but blank the people mutilated and murdered by it? There will be no press campaigns or celebrity endorsements for the surivors of the Kenyan supression when they issue a reperations claim in London next month. They will be met with a bemused shrug. Yet their story tells us far more.
The British arrived in Kenya in the 1880s, at a time when our economic dominance was waning and new colonies were needed. The Colonial Office sent in waves of white settlers to seize the land from the local “apes” and mark it with the Union Jack. Francis Hall was the officer of the East India Company tasked with mounting armed raids against the Kikuyu – the most populous local tribe – to break their resistance. He said: “There is only one way of improving the [Kikuyu] and that is to wipe them out; I would only be too delighted to do so but we have to depend on them for food supplies.”
The British troops stole over sixty thousand acres from the Kikuyu, and renamed the area “the White Highlands.” But the white settlers were artistocratic dillettantes with little experience of farming, and they were soon outraged to discover that the “primitives” were growing food far more efficiently on the reserves they had been driven into. So they forced the local black population to work “their” land, and passed a law banning the local Africans from independently growing the most profitable cash crops – tea, coffee, and sisal.
The people of Kenya objected, and tried to repel the invaders. They called for “ithaka na wiyathi” – land and freedom. After peaceful protests were met with violence, they formed a group, dubbed the Mau Mau, to stop the supression any way they could. They started killing the leaders appointed by the British, and some of the settlers too. As a result, the London press described them as “evil savages” and “terrorists” motivated by hatred of Christianity and civilisation. They had been “brainwashed” by “Mau Mau cult leaders”, the reports shrieked.
The 1.5 million Kikuya overwhelmingly supported the Mau Mau and independence – so the British declared war on them all. A State of Emergency was announced, and it began with forced removals of all Kikuyu. Anybody living outside the reserves – in any of the cities, for example – was rounded up at gunpoint, packed into lorries, and sent to “transit camps”. There, they were “screened” to see if they were Mau Mau supporters. One of the people locked up this way for months was Barack Obama’s grandfather.
Professor Caroline Elkins, who studied the detention camps for five years for her remarkable book ‘Britain’s Gulag: The Brutal End of Empire in Kenya’, explains the tactics adopted by the British to snuffle out Mau Mau. “Electric shock was widely used, as well as cigarettes and fire,” she writes. “Bottles (often broken), gun barrels, knives, snakes, vermin and hot eggs were thrust up men’s rectums and women’s vaginas. The screening teams whipped, shot, burned, and mutilated Mau Mau suspects.”
The people judged to be guilty of Mau Mau sympathies were transferred to torture camps. There, each detainee was given a number which they had to wear on a band on their wrist. They were then stripped naked and sent through a cattle dip, before the torture would begin again. “Detainees were frog-marched around the compound and beaten until blood ran from their ears,” Elkins writes.
The Kikuyu survivor Pascasio Macharia describes some of the tortures he witnessed: “The askaris [guards[ brought in fire buckets full of water, and the detainees were called on by one, [my friend] Peterson first. The asakaris then put his head in the bucket of water and lifted his legs high in the air so he was upside down. That’s when [one of the camp commandants] started cramming sand in Peterson’s anus and stuffed it in with a stick. The other askari would put water in, and then more sand. They kept doing this back and forth… Eventually they finished with Peterson and carried him off, only to start on the next detainee in the compound.”
Another favoured torment was to roll a man in barbed wire and kick him around until he bled to death. Typhoid, dissentry and lice sycthed through the population. Castration was common. At least 80,000 people were locked away and tortured like this. When I reported from Kenya earlier this year, I met elderly people who still shake with fear as they talk about the gulags. William Baldwin, a British member of the Kenya Police Reserve, wrote a memoir in which he cheerfuly admits to murdering Kikuya “baboons” in cold blood. He bragged about how he gutted them with knives while other suspects watched. Another British officer, Tony Cross, proudly called their tactics “Gestapo stuff.”
For the civilians outside, life was only slightly better. Women and children were trapped in eight hundred “sealed villages” throughout the countryside. They were surrounded by barbed wire and armed guards, and forced at gunpoint to dig trenches that sealed them off from the world.
There was always another, honourable Britain who fought against these crimes. The Labour left – especially Barbra Castle and Nye Bevan – fought for the camps to be exposed and shut. They didn’t succeed until the British imperialists were finally forced to scuttle away from the country entirely. We will never know how many people they murdered, because the colonial administration built a bonfire of all the paperwork on their way out the door. Elkins calculates it is far more than the 11,000 claimed by the British government, and could be as many as 300,000.
Yet in Britain today, there is a blood-encrusted blank spot about Empire. On the reality show The Apprentice, the contestants recently had to pick a name for their team, and they said they weanted “something that represented the best of British” – so they settled on “Empire.” Nobody objected. Imagine young Germans blithely naming a team “Reich”: it’s unthinkable, because they have had to study what their fathers and grandfathers did, and expunge these barbarous instincts from their national DNA.
This failure to absorb the lessons of Empire is not only unjust to the victims; it leads us to repeat horrifying mistakes. Today, we are – with the Americans – using unmanned drones to bomb the Pakistan-Afghan borderland, as we did a few years ago in Iraq. Nobody here seems to remember that the British invented aerial counter-insurgency in this very spot – with disastrous consequences. In 1924, Arthur ‘Bomber’ Harris bragged that all rebellion could be stopped with this tactic. We have shown them “what real bombing means, in casualties and damage: they know that within 45 minutes a full-sized village can be practically wiped out and a third of its inhabitants killed,” he said. Yet instead of “pacifying” them, it radically alienated the population and lead to an uprising. If we knew our history, we would not be running the same script and expecting a different ending.
Gordon Brown said last year (in India, of all places) that “the days of Britain having to apologise for its colonial history are over.” The survivors of England’s blanked-out torture camps are entitled to ask: when did we start?
To read J Hari's series of articles criticizing the imperialist historians Niall Ferguson and Andrew Roberts, click here, here and here.
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