Survivors says King Charles’ regret for colonial abuses in Kenya not enough
U.N. investigators says British colonialists committed gross human rights violations against hundreds of thousands of people in western Kenya over decades.
Survivors says King Charles’ regret for colonial abuses in Kenya not enough [Chris Jackson/Getty Images]
At a state dinner on Tuesday Charles expressed his “deepest regret” for what he called abhorrent and unjustifiable acts of violence committed against Kenyans during the country’s independence struggle.
President William Ruto commended the monarch’s first step toward going beyond the “tentative and equivocal half-measures of past years’’, but said much remained to be done.
Kenya Human Rights Commission (KHRC) has estimated that during the 1952-1960 Mau Mau revolt in central Kenya, about 90,000 Kenyans were killed or maimed and 160,000 detained.
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U.N. investigators also said British colonialists also committed gross human rights violations, including land expropriation, killings, torture and sexual violence, against hundreds of thousands of people in western Kenya over decades.
Charles’ visit came at a time when former colonies are demanding that Britain do more to recognise the abuses of its colonial past. Some – notably Barbados and Jamaica have been re-evaluating their ties to the monarchy.
Britain agreed to a 20 million pound ($24 million) out-of-court settlement in 2013 to more than 5,200 survivors of abuses during the Mau Mau conflict, but it has refused to issue an apology and has rebuffed claims by other communities.
Britain’s High Commissioner to Kenya, Neil Wigan, told a local radio station earlier said that an apology would take his country into “difficult legal territory”.
“Acknowledgement alone is not enough,’’ said David Ngasura, a historian from the Talai clan in western Kenya, whose members were forced from their land in the 1930s and sent to detention camps.
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Today, much of that land belongs to multinational tea companies.
“I am yet to hear him about compensation and reparations by the British government to the victims of historical injustices meted by the British colonial government.”
Kipchoge araap Chomu, the great-grandson of King Koitalel Arap Samoei, who led a decade-long rebellion by the Nandi people before he was killed by a British colonel in 1905, said Charles’ speech fell short of his hopes for an apology, reparations and the return of his ancestor’s remains.
“(Charles) just beat around the bush, went round, round saying ‘we recognise the pain, we can’t change the past’,” Chomu said.
Chomu suggested Britain follow the example of Germany, which has apologised for its slaughter of tribes people in Namibia more than a century ago and agreed to fund projects worth over a billion euros.
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Charles and Camilla visited a cemetery for veterans of World War Two. They awarded four veterans, who fought alongside the British, medals to replace ones they had disposed of during the Mau Mau uprising.
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