Mau Mau Aufstand Großbritannien/Kenia
Als Mau-Mau-Krieg wird der Kampf der antikolonialen Unabhängigkeitsbewegung Mau-Mau in Für Kenia war der Mau-Mau-Aufstand der Beginn einer Entwicklung, an deren Ende die Unabhängigkeit (am Dezember ) stand. Als Mau-Mau-Krieg wird der Kampf der antikolonialen Unabhängigkeitsbewegung Mau-Mau in der Kolonie Kenia gegen die Herrschaft der weißen Siedler und der Kolonialmacht Großbritannien bezeichnet. Er brachte in den er Jahren die Grundfesten der. Doch Mau-Mau stand hinter den hitzigsten Debatten im britischen Unterhaus, die es jemals um eine Der Aufstand der kenianischen Mau-Mau-Bewegung. Geschichte Kenia: Der Mau-Mau-Aufstand. Etwa ab protestierten die indigenen Kenianer zunehmend mit gewalttätigen Übergriffen. Seine wirkliche Rolle beim Mau-Mau-Aufstand wurde nie geklärt. Seit vergangener Woche ist er Diktator über neun Millionen Neger und 56 weiße Siedler. Vor zwei Jahren ist in der britischen Kolonie Kenia der Mau-Mau-Aufstand niedergeschlagen worden, doch wurde damit der afrikanische Nationalismus in. Der Mau-Mau-Aufstand ( – ) lässt sich als Teil dieses Prozesses verstehen, der, wie schon Eingangs erwähnt, häufig von blutigen.
Those initially targeted by the Mau Mau were Kikuyu who collaborated with the Europeans. In a wave of violence was directed at police witnesses who provided testimony against Africans, particularly in cases related to the Mau Mau.
Prominent collaborators were assassinated and a small number of white settlers were also attacked. Police responded by initiating a mass campaign of arrests, arresting Kikuyu suspected of Mau Mau involvement and taking others into preventative detention, in an attempt to neutralise the support base of the Mau Mau.
However, this indiscriminate repression had the opposite effect to what was intended and drove many more indigenous Kenyans to support the movement.
By mid around ninety percent of Kikuyu adults had taken the Mau Mau oath. In October , Senior Chief Waruhiu, a prominent collaborator and the harshest critic of the Mau Mau among the Kikuyu chiefs, was assassinated near Nairobi.
His death prompted celebration amongst Mau Mau supporters and consternation in government. The administration finally realised that the Mau Mau posed a serious threat to colonial rule in Kenya and the decision was taken to actively challenge and engage the rebels.
The Declaration of Emergency was accompanied by Operation Jock Scott, a coordinated police operation that arrested Kikuyu who were considered by the government to be the leaders of the Mau Mau movement.
Mau Mau supporters responded by assassinating another senior Kikuyu chief and several white settlers. Thousands of Mau Mau left their homes and set up camp in the forests of the Aberdares and Mt.
Kenya, creating a base of resistance to the government. Hostilities were relatively subdued for the remainder of , but the following year began with a series of violent killings of European farmers and loyalist Africans.
This sufficiently shocked the white population into demanding that the government take more action to combat the Mau Mau, and so the Kenyan security forces were placed under the command of the British Army and began to surround the Mau Mau strongholds in the forests.
This was accompanied by large-scale eviction of Kikuyu squatters from land that had been selected for European settlers. The government troops adopted a policy of collective punishment, which was again intended to undermine popular support of the Mau Mau.
Under this policy, if a member of a village was found to be a Mau Mau supporter, then the entire village was treated as such.
A particularly unpleasant element of the eviction policy was the use of concentration camps to process those suspected of Mau Mau involvement.
Abuse and torture was commonplace in these camps, as British guards used beatings, sexual abuse and executions to extract information from prisoners and to force them to renounce their allegiance to the anti-colonial cause.
The process of mass eviction furthered anger and fear among the Kikuyu who had already suffered through decades of land reallocation, and drove hundreds of squatters to join the Mau Mau fighters in the forest.
The uprising escalated further on March 26, when Mau Mau fighters carried out two major attacks. The first was an assault on the Naivasha police station, which resulted in a humiliating defeat for the police and the release of prisoners, many of them Mau Mau, from an adjacent detention camp.
The incident was used by the government to further characterise the Mau Mau as brutal savages, and no official mention was made of a similar number of Mau Mau prisoners who were machine gunned to death by government troops in the Aberdare forest.
The gradual organisation of the rebel forces in the forests created military units, although they were limited by a lack of weapons, supplies and training.
The British troops sent to Kenya had little experience of forest fighting, and after a short period of ineffectual engagement they were replaced with units from the Kenyan Army, whilst the British forces instead patrolled the periphery of the forests.
British Army planes were also used to drop bombs on Mau Mau camps and strafe the forest with machine guns. Given the thick cover provided by the foliage, this had only a limited military impact, but the lengthy bombing campaign did serve to demoralise the Mau Mau fighters.
A series of large scale engagements between the two side occurred during , with the underequipped Mau Mau forces suffering heavy losses.
By the end of the year, over 3, Mau Mau had been confirmed as killed and 1, captured including Itote , and almost , alleged Mau Mau supporters had been arrested.
The British decided to undertake an operation to permanently crush the rebel presence in the city, and so in the aptly-named Operation Anvil began.
Police moved through Nairobi in a brutal sweep, detaining anyone they considered suspicious. Tens of thousands of male Kikuyu were arrested and taken to concentration camps without explaining to them why they had been arrested or what crime they were accused of committing.
By the end of , one million Kikuyu had been driven from their family homes and rehoused in these villages, which were little more than fenced camps and were prone to famine and disease.
In early , British forces began a series of sweeps through the forests in an attempt to drive out the remaining Mau Mau, who by now were suffering from a lack of food and ammunition.
This strategy had a limited effect on the Mau Mau fighters and only a handful were killed, but their position was tenuous enough that the constant disruption further weakened their forces.
The government turned out the entire African population of some districts — in one case as many as 70, people — to work their way through the forest and kill any Mau Mau they found.
The following year Kimathi, the most important of the remaining Mau Mau commanders, was captured and put on trial. The few fighters that remained were no longer capable of resisting the colonial regime in any meaningful way and instead were occupied with simple survival.
This effectively marked the end of the Mau Mau uprising. British troops soon left Kenya, and although the State of Emergency remained in place until , there was little cause for it.
According to official government figures, the number of Mau Mau killed was 11,, but there is little doubt that the true number was significantly higher.
In comparison, the number of white civilians killed by Mau Mau attacks — the basis of British propaganda denouncing the uprising — was just Despite the defeat of the Mau Mau, the uprising had put Kenya on an inevitable path to independence from colonial rule.
There were several reasons for this. The first was that it was made clear to the Kenyan population that the Europeans were far from invincible, and that their rule was more tenuous than previously realised.
Consequently, the effective resistance to colonial rule shown by the Mau Mau accelerated the pace of nationalism in Kenya and throughout East Africa.
Also important was the financial impact of the Mau Mau uprising. The British were forced to spend a tremendous amount of money to combat the rebels, and with the lacklustre British economy still suffering from the effects of the Second World War, this expenditure doubtless sapped the British will to continue maintaining their colonial ambitions in the face of such determined opposition.
In addition, the organised approach taken by the Mau Mau and the difficulties they posed for British troops challenged European assertions that Kenyan nationalists were incapable of effectively challenging colonial rule.
Mau Mau: An African Crucible. New York: Ballantine Books, p. The Colonial Transformation of Kenya. Princeton: Princeton University Press, p.
The Mau Mau War in Perspective. London: James Currey Ltd, p. Kenya: From Colonisation to Independence, Themes in Kenyan History.
Nairobi: Heinemann Kenya Limited, p. Not long ago I read T he Hunt for Kimathi which was inevitably an exercise in complete racism.
It covers the resistance of the Kikuyu squatters refusal to take on wage labour, exceeding livestock quotas etc. Although he'd been connected to people like CLR James and Kwame Nkrumah in the '40s he wasn't even a pan-Africanist by the time he took power, and once in power cracked down on the Mau Mau, his nephew or son-in-law can't remember which also joined the British in hunting them down militarily prior to independence.
Kanogo also spends a couple of pages ripping Frank Furedi Spiked to pieces - his book apparently claims Mau Mau was a petit-bourgeois movement, even though Kikuyu farm managers and similar were usually forcibly initiated on threat of death, only after the rest of the farm labourers had joined, sometimes kidnapped and taken to separate farms so they couldn't incriminate anyone they knew.
The cause of the KLFA obviously had it's roots in the issues of the distribution of land and the self-determination of Africans under a brutal colonial regime but by associating the motives of the Kenyan rebels with witchcraft and a senseless desire for blood lust based upon racist stereotypes of Africans the colonial powers seemingly sought to mystify the Kenyan rebels and their cause in the popular media and by doing to suppress any sympathies that the rebellion might have elicited, had the truth been known, among the public outside of Kenya.
Kenya is in for a very tricky political future. The government's public relations officer, Granville Roberts, presented villagisation as a good opportunity for rehabilitation, particularly of women and children, but it was, in fact, first and foremost designed to break Mau Mau and protect loyalist Kikuyu, a fact reflected in the extremely limited resources made available to the Rehabilitation and Community Development Department.
The villages were surrounded by deep, spike-bottomed trenches and barbed wire, and the villagers themselves were watched over by members of the Home Guard, often neighbours and relatives.
In short, rewards or collective punishments such as curfews could be served much more readily after villagisation, and this quickly broke Mau Mau's passive wing.
The Red Cross helped mitigate the food shortages, but even they were told to prioritise loyalist areas. One of the colony's ministers blamed the "bad spots" in Central Province on the mothers of the children for "not realis[ing] the great importance of proteins", and one former missionary reported that it "was terribly pitiful how many of the children and the older Kikuyu were dying.
They were so emaciated and so very susceptible to any kind of disease that came along". The lack of food did not just affect the children, of course.
The Overseas Branch of the British Red Cross commented on the "women who, from progressive undernourishment, had been unable to carry on with their work".
Disease prevention was not helped by the colony's policy of returning sick detainees to receive treatment in the reserves, [] though the reserves' medical services were virtually non-existent, as Baring himself noted after a tour of some villages in June Kenyans were granted nearly [] all of the demands made by the KAU in The offer was that they would not face prosecution for previous offences, but may still be detained.
European settlers were appalled at the leniency of the offer. On 10 June with no response forthcoming, the offer of amnesty to the Mau Mau was revoked.
In June , a programme of land reform increased the land holdings of the Kikuyu. This was coupled with a relaxation of the ban on native Kenyans growing coffee, a primary cash crop.
In the cities the colonial authorities decided to dispel tensions by raising urban wages, thereby strengthening the hand of moderate union organisations like the KFRTU.
By , the British had granted direct election of native Kenyan members of the Legislative Assembly, followed shortly thereafter by an increase in the number of local seats to fourteen.
A Parliamentary conference in January indicated that the British would accept "one person—one vote" majority rule. The number of deaths attributable to the Emergency is disputed.
David Anderson estimates 25, [18] people died; British demographer John Blacker's estimate is 50, deaths—half of them children aged ten or below.
He attributes this death toll mostly to increased malnutrition, starvation and disease from wartime conditions.
Caroline Elkins says "tens of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands" died. His study dealt directly with Elkins' claim that "somewhere between , and , Kikuyu are unaccounted for" at the census, [] and was read by both David Anderson and John Lonsdale prior to publication.
The British possibly killed more than 20, Mau Mau militants, [4] but in some ways more notable is the smaller number of Mau Mau suspects dealt with by capital punishment: by the end of the Emergency, the total was 1, At no other time or place in the British empire was capital punishment dispensed so liberally—the total is more than double the number executed by the French in Algeria.
Author Wangari Maathai indicates that more than one hundred thousand Africans, mostly Kikuyus, may have died in the fortified villages.
Officially 1, Native Kenyans were killed by the Mau Mau. David Anderson believes this to be an undercount and cites a higher figure of 5, killed by the Mau Mau.
War crimes have been broadly defined by the Nuremberg principles as "violations of the laws or customs of war ", which includes massacres , bombings of civilian targets, terrorism , mutilation , torture , and murder of detainees and prisoners of war.
Additional common crimes include theft , arson , and the destruction of property not warranted by military necessity. David Anderson's says the rebellion was "a story of atrocity and excess on both sides, a dirty war from which no one emerged with much pride, and certainly no glory".
One settler's description of British interrogation. The British authorities suspended civil liberties in Kenya.
Many Kikuyu were forced to move. Between , and , of them were interned. Most of the rest — more than a million — were held in "enclosed villages" also known as concentration camps.
Although some were Mau Mau guerrillas, most were victims of collective punishment that colonial authorities imposed on large areas of the country. Hundreds of thousands were beaten or sexually assaulted to extract information about the Mau Mau threat.
Later, prisoners suffered even worse mistreatment in an attempt to force them to renounce their allegiance to the insurgency and to obey commands.
Prisoners were questioned with the help of "slicing off ears, boring holes in eardrums, flogging until death, pouring paraffin over suspects who were then set alight, and burning eardrums with lit cigarettes".
Castration by British troops and denying access to medical aid to the detainees were also widespread and common. According to his widow, British soldiers forced pins into his fingernails and buttocks and squeezed his testicles between metal rods and two others were castrated.
The historian Robert Edgerton describes the methods used during the emergency: "If a question was not answered to the interrogator's satisfaction, the subject was beaten and kicked.
If that did not lead to the desired confession, and it rarely did, more force was applied. Electric shock was widely used, and so was fire.
Women were choked and held under water; gun barrels, beer bottles, and even knives were thrust into their vaginas. Men had beer bottles thrust up their rectums, were dragged behind Land Rovers, whipped, burned and bayoneted Some police officers did not bother with more time-consuming forms of torture; they simply shot any suspect who refused to answer, then told the next suspect, to dig his own grave.
When the grave was finished, the man was asked if he would now be willing to talk. In June , Eric Griffith-Jones , the attorney general of the British administration in Kenya, wrote to the Governor , Sir Evelyn Baring , detailing the way the regime of abuse at the colony's detention camps was being subtly altered.
He said that the mistreatment of the detainees is "distressingly reminiscent of conditions in Nazi Germany or Communist Russia ".
Despite this, he said that in order for abuse to remain legal, Mau Mau suspects must be beaten mainly on their upper body, "vulnerable parts of the body should not be struck, particularly the spleen, liver or kidneys", and it was important that "those who administer violence He also reminded the governor that "If we are going to sin", he wrote, "we must sin quietly.
Author Wangari Maathai indicates that in , three out of every four Kikuyu men were in detention, and that land was taken from detainees and given to collaborators.
Detainees were pushed into forced labor. Maathai also notes that the Home Guard were especially known to rape women. The Home Guard's reputation for cruelty in the form of terror and intimidation was well known, whereas the Mau Mau soldiers were initially respectful of women.
Members of the 5th KAR B Company entered the Chuka area on 13 June , to flush out rebels suspected of hiding in the nearby forests. Over the next few days, the regiment had captured and executed 20 people suspected of being Mau Mau fighters for unknown reasons.
The people executed belonged to the Kikuyu Home Guard — a loyalist militia recruited by the British to fight the guerrillas.
Nobody ever stood trial for the massacre. The Hola massacre was an incident during the conflict in Kenya against British colonial rule at a colonial detention camp in Hola, Kenya.
By January , the camp had a population of detainees, of whom were held in a secluded "closed camp". This more remote camp near Garissa , eastern Kenya, was reserved for the most uncooperative of the detainees.
They often refused, even when threats of force were made, to join in the colonial "rehabilitation process" or perform manual labour or obey colonial orders.
The camp commandant outlined a plan that would force 88 of the detainees to bend to work. On 3 March , the camp commandant put this plan into action — as a result, 11 detainees were clubbed to death by guards.
Mau Mau militants were guilty of numerous war crimes. The most notorious was their attack on the settlement of Lari , on the night of 25—26 March , in which they herded men, women and children into huts and set fire to them, hacking down with machetes anyone who attempted escape, before throwing them back into the burning huts.
If I see one now I shall shoot with the greatest eagerness ' ", [] 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 Kenyan 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 , 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. The best known European victim was Michael Ruck, aged six, who was hacked to death with pangas along with his parents, Roger and Esme, and one of the Rucks' farm workers, Muthura Nagahu, who had tried to help the family.
In , the poisonous latex of the African milk bush was used by members of Mau Mau to kill cattle in an incident of biological warfare.
Although Mau Mau was effectively crushed by the end of , it was not until the First Lancaster House Conference , in January , that native Kenyan majority rule was established and the period of colonial transition to independence initiated.
There is continuing debate about Mau Mau's and the rebellion's effects on decolonisation and on Kenya after independence.
Regarding decolonisation, the most common view is that Kenya's independence came about as a result of the British government's deciding that a continuance of colonial rule would entail a greater use of force than that which the British public would tolerate.
It has been argued that the conflict helped set the stage for Kenyan independence in December , [] or at least secured the prospect of Black-majority rule once the British left.
On 12 September , the British government unveiled a Mau Mau memorial statue in Nairobi's Uhuru Park that it had funded "as a symbol of reconciliation between the British government, the Mau Mau, and all those who suffered".
This followed a June decision by Britain to compensate more than 5, Kenyans it tortured and abused during the Mau Mau insurgency. Once the ban was removed, former Mau Mau members who had been castrated or otherwise tortured were supported by the Kenya Human Rights Commission, in particular by the commission's George Morara, in their attempt to take on the British government; [] [] their lawyers had amassed 6, depositions regarding human rights abuses by late Ben Macintyre of The Times said of the legal case: "Opponents of these proceedings have pointed out, rightly, that the Mau Mau was a brutal terrorist force, guilty of the most dreadful atrocities.
Yet only one of the claimants is of that stamp—Mr Nzili. He has admitted taking the Mau Mau oath and said that all he did was to ferry food to the fighters in the forest.
None has been accused, let alone convicted, of any crime. Upon publication of Caroline Elkins' Imperial Reckoning in , Kenya called for an apology from the UK for atrocities committed during the s.
In July , "George Morara strode down the corridor and into a crowded little room [in Nairobi] where 30 elderly Kenyans sat hunched together around a table clutching cups of hot tea and sharing plates of biscuits.
It may well be thought strange, or perhaps even dishonourable, that a legal system which will not in any circumstances admit into its proceedings evidence obtained by torture should yet refuse to entertain a claim against the Government in its own jurisdiction for that Government's allegedly negligent failure to prevent torture which it had the means to prevent.
Furthermore, resort to technicality. Though the arguments against reopening very old wounds are seductive, they fail morally. There are living claimants and it most certainly was not their fault that the documentary evidence that seems to support their claims was for so long 'lost' in the governmental filing system.
During the course of the Mau Mau legal battle in London, a large amount of what was stated to be formerly lost Foreign Office archival material was finally brought to light, while yet more was discovered to be missing.
Regarding the Mau Mau Uprising, the records included confirmation of "the extent of the violence inflicted on suspected Mau Mau rebels" [] in British detention camps documented in Caroline Elkins' study.
Commenting on the papers, David Anderson stated that the "documents were hidden away to protect the guilty", [] and "that the extent of abuse now being revealed is truly disturbing".
Allegations about beatings and violence were widespread. Basically you could get away with murder. It was systematic", Anderson said.
Bennett said that "the British Army retained ultimate operational control over all security forces throughout the Emergency", and that its military intelligence operation worked "hand in glove" with the Kenyan Special Branch "including in screening and interrogations in centres and detention camps".
The Kenyan government sent a letter to Hague insisting that the UK government was legally liable for the atrocities. It is time that the mockery of justice that was perpetrated in this country at that time, should be, must be righted.
I feel ashamed to have come from a Britain that did what it did here [in Kenya]. Thirteen boxes of "top secret" Kenya files are still missing.
On 6 June , the foreign secretary, William Hague, told parliament that the UK government had reached a settlement with the claimants. The Government will also support the construction of a memorial in Nairobi to the victims of torture and ill-treatment during the colonial era.
It is often argued that Mau Mau was suppressed as a subject for public discussion in Kenya during the periods under Kenyatta and Daniel arap Moi because of the key positions and influential presence of some loyalists in government, business and other elite sectors of Kenyan society post Members of Mau Mau are currently recognised by the Kenyan Government as freedom-independence heroes and heroines who sacrificed their lives in order to free Kenyans from colonial rule.
This official celebration of Mau Mau is in marked contrast to a post-colonial norm of Kenyan governments rejection of the Mau Mau as a symbol of national liberation.
It was also the name of another militant group that sprang up briefly in the spring of ; the group was broken up during a brief operation from 26 March to 30 April.
Contract labourers are those who sign a contract of service before a magistrate, for periods varying from three to twelve months.
Casual labourers leave their reserves to engage themselves to European employers for any period from one day upwards. The phenomenon of squatters arose in response to the complementary difficulties of Europeans in finding labourers and of Africans in gaining access to arable and grazing land.
The alleged member or sympathiser of Mau Mau would be interrogated in order to obtain an admission of guilt—specifically, a confession that they had taken the Mau Mau oath—as well as for intelligence.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Kenyan insurgency, — This article is about the conflict in Kenya.
For other uses, see Mau Mau disambiguation. Mau Mau Uprising. The principal item in the natural resources of Kenya is the land, and in this term we include the colony's mineral resources.
It seems to us that our major objective must clearly be the preservation and the wise use of this most important asset.
You may travel through the length and breadth of Kitui Reserve and you will fail to find in it any enterprise, building, or structure of any sort which Government has provided at the cost of more than a few sovereigns for the direct benefit of the natives.
The place was little better than a wilderness when I first knew it 25 years ago, and it remains a wilderness to-day as far as our efforts are concerned.
If we left that district to-morrow the only permanent evidence of our occupation would be the buildings we have erected for the use of our tax-collecting staff.
The greater part of the wealth of the country is at present in our hands. This land we have made is our land by right—by right of achievement. It is often assumed that in a conflict there are two sides in opposition to one another, and that a person who is not actively committed to one side must be supporting the other.
During the course of a conflict, leaders on both sides will use this argument to gain active support from the "crowd". In reality, conflicts involving more than two persons usually have more than two sides, and if a resistance movement is to be successful, propaganda and politicization are essential.
Between and , when the fighting was at its worst, the Kikuyu districts of Kenya became a police state in the very fullest sense of that term.
Our sources have produced nothing to indicate that Kenyatta, or his associates in the UK, are directly involved in Mau Mau activities, or that Kenyatta is essential to Mau Mau as a leader, or that he is in a position to direct its activities.
Main article: Swynnerton Plan. It would be difficult to argue that the colonial government envisioned its own version of a gulag when the Emergency first started.
Colonial officials in Kenya and Britain all believed that Mau Mau would be over in less than three months. One courageous judge in Nairobi explicitly drew the parallel: Kenya's Belsen, he called one camp.
In a half-circle against the reed walls of the enclosure stand eight young, African women. There's neither hate nor apprehension in their gaze.
It's like a talk in the headmistress's study; a headmistress who is firm but kindly. The number of cases of pulmonary tuberculosis which is being disclosed in Prison and Detention Camps is causing some embarrassment.
Short rations, overwork, brutality, humiliating and disgusting treatment and flogging—all in violation of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
At the end of , the Administration were faced with the serious problem of the concealment of terrorists and supply of food to them. This was widespread and, owing to the scattered nature of the homesteads, fear of detection was negligible; so, in the first instance, the inhabitants of those areas were made to build and live in concentrated villages.
This first step had to be taken speedily, somewhat to the detriment of usual health measures and was definitely a punitive short-term measure.
Whilst they [the Kikuyu] could not be expected to take kindly at first to a departure from their traditional way of life, such as living in villages, they need and desire to be told just what to do.
From the health point of view, I regard villagisation as being exceedingly dangerous and we are already starting to reap the benefits.
We knew the slow method of torture [at the Mau Mau Investigation Center] was worse than anything we could do. Special Branch there had a way of slowly electrocuting a Kuke—they'd rough up one for days.
Once I went personally to drop off one gang member who needed special treatment. I stayed for a few hours to help the boys out, softening him up.
Things got a little out of hand. By the time I cut his balls off, he had no ears, and his eyeball, the right one, I think, was hanging out of its socket.
Too bad, he died before we got much out of him. See also: British war crimes. 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, ostensibly to gather intelligence for military operations and as court evidence.
Mau Mau fighters,. The horrors they practiced included the following: decapitation and general mutilation of civilians, torture before murder, bodies bound up in sacks and dropped in wells, burning the victims alive, gouging out of eyes, splitting open the stomachs of pregnant women.
No war can justify such gruesome actions. In man's inhumanity to man, there is no race distinction. The Africans were practicing it on themselves.
There was no reason and no restraint on both sides. Main article: Lari massacre. If we are going to sin, we must sin quietly. Main article: Foreign and Commonwealth Office migrated archives.
Main criticism we shall have to meet is that 'Cowan plan' [] which was approved by Government contained instructions which in effect authorised unlawful use of violence against detainees.
Partisan questions about the Mau Mau war have. How historically necessary was Mau Mau? Did its secretive violence alone have the power to destroy white supremacy?
Did Mau Mau aim at freedom for all Kenyans? Has the self-sacrificial victory of the poor been unjustly forgotten, and appropriated by the rich?
We are determined to have independence in peace, and we shall not allow hooligans to rule Kenya. We must have no hatred towards one another.
Mau Mau was a disease which had been eradicated, and must never be remembered again. Retrieved 8 March Retrieved 12 February BBC News.
Retrieved 23 July Unbowed: a memoir. Alfred A. The investigations of the Kenya Land Commission of — are a case study in such lack of foresight, for the findings and recommendations of this commission, particularly those regarding the claims of the Kikuyu of Kiambu, would serve to exacerbate other grievances and nurture the seeds of a growing African nationalism in Kenya".
Retrieved 11 April Francis Hall, an officer in the Imperial British East Africa Company and after whom Fort Hall was named, asserted: "There is only one way to improve the Wakikuyu [and] that is wipe them out; I should be only too delighted to do so, but we have to depend on them for food supplies.
Naked spearmen fall in swathes before machine-guns, without inflicting a single casualty in return. Meanwhile the troops burn all the huts and collect all the live stock within reach.
Resistance once at an end, the leaders of the rebellion are surrendered for imprisonment. Risings that followed such a course could hardly be repeated.
A period of calm followed. And when unrest again appeared it was with other leaders. Strayer 9 February The New York Times. Retrieved 20 March Elkins , p.
The colonial state shared the desire of the European settler to encourage Africans into the labour market, whilst also sharing a concern to moderate the wages paid to workers".
Though finalised in , reserves were first instituted by the Crown Lands Ordinance of —see Ormsby-Gore , p. Retrieved 13 April Retrieved 13 May Van Zwanenberg; Anne King An Economic History of Kenya and Uganda The Bowering Press.
Histories of the Hanged. Mau Mau Rebellion. Pen and Sword. Boulder: Westview Press. The story of this 'psychic epidemic' and others like it were recounted over the years as evidence depicting the predisposition of Africans to episodic mass hysteria.
For his " magnum opus ", see Carothers Retrieved 12 May There was lots of suffering on the other side too. This was a dirty war. It became a civil war—though that idea remains extremely unpopular in Kenya today.
The quote is of Professor David Anderson. London Review of Books. Retrieved 3 May The New York Review of Books.
While Elstein regards the "requirement" for the "great majority of Kikuyu" to live inside "fortified villages" as "serv[ing] the purpose of protection", Professor David Anderson amongst others regards the "compulsory resettlement" of "1,, Kikuyu" inside what, for the "most" part, were "little more than concentration camps" as "punitive.
Retrieved 8 August Retrieved 29 May See also: Walton , pp. See also the relevant footnote, n. Sunday Mail. Retrieved 17 November — via National Library of Australia.
The Sunday Herald. Friedman Ret. The Sydney Morning Herald. Retrieved 9 November — via National Library of Australia. Nearly three-quarters of the city's African male population of sixty thousand were Kikuyu, and most of these men, along with some twenty thousand Kikuyu women and children accompanying them, were allegedly 'active or passive supporters of Mau Mau'.
Oxford, UK: Osprey Publishing. It is not known how many humans or animals were killed. Mau Mau! Largely framed prior to the declaration of the State of Emergency in , but not implemented until two years later, this development is central to the story of Kenya's decolonization".
For Anderson, see his Histories of the Hanged , p. The Guardian. Retrieved 14 April They therefore confessed to British officers, and sought an early release from detention.
Other detainees refused to accept the British demand that they sully other people's reputations by naming those whom they knew to be involved in Mau Mau.
This 'hard core' kept their mouths closed, and languished for years in detention. The battle behind the wire was not fought over detainees' loyalty to a Mau Mau movement.
Detainees' intellectual and moral concerns were always close to home. British officials thought that those who confessed had broken their allegiance to Mau Mau.
But what moved detainees to confess was not their broken loyalty to Mau Mau, but their devotion to their families. British officials played on this devotion to hasten a confession.
The battle behind the wire was not fought between patriotic hard-core Mau Mau and weak-kneed, wavering, broken men who confessed.
Both hard core and soft core had their families in mind. The Times. It is debatable whether Peter Kenyatta was sympathetic to Mau Mau in the first place and therefore whether he truly switched sides.
Baring informed Lennox-Boyd that eight European officers were facing accusations of a series of murders, beatings and shootings.
They included: "One District Officer, murder by beating up and roasting alive of one African. See also n.
Anderson , p. The quote is of the colony's director of medical services. Schemes of medical help, however desirable and however high their medical priority, could not in [these] circumstances be approved".
The quote is of Baring. The Journal of African History. Journal of African Economies. Solis 15 February Cambridge University Press.
Britain's gulag: the brutal end of empire in Kenya. British colonial rule, violence and the historians of Mau Mau". The Round Table.
Indiana University Press, Bloomington, Indiana: pp. Archived from the original on 21 October Retrieved 28 July Retrieved 6 December Seth Amsterdam: Fredonia Books.
This episode is not mentioned in histories of the Mau Mau revolt, suggesting that such incidents were rare. The post-colonial state must therefore be seen as a representation of the interests protected and promoted during the latter years of colonial rule.
Under Jomo Kenyatta, the post-colonial state represented a 'pact-of-domination' between transnational capital, the elite and the executive.
It was not that Mau Mau won its war against the British; guerrilla movements rarely win in military terms; and militarily Mau Mau was defeated.
But in order to crown peace with sustainable civil governance—and thus reopen a prospect of controlled decolonization—the British had to abandon 'multiracialism' and adopt African rule as their vision of Kenya's future.
The blood of Mau Mau, no matter how peculiarly ethnic in source and aim, was the seed of Kenya's all-African sovereignty. The Economic Times. The Irish Times.
Retrieved 30 May The Daily Telegraph. Retrieved 11 February The Independent. Retrieved 12 April Harvard Gazette. Retrieved 26 May Retrieved 21 July Retrieved 18 March Sir Evelyn Baring, the Governor of Kenya, in a telegram to the Secretary of State for the Colonies, reported allegations of extreme brutality made against eight European district officers.
They included 'assault by beating up and burning of two Africans during screening [interrogation]' and one officer accused of 'murder by beating up and roasting alive of one African'.
No action was taken against the accused. Retrieved 10 February Retrieved 6 April A letter was sent to 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.
Squaring up to the seamier side of empire is long overdue". Retrieved 27 July Mark Thompson 7 April These new documents were withheld because they were considered to be particularly sensitive, so we can but imagine what will be in these documents.
Senior members of the Commonwealth Office in London did know what was happening; senior legal officials in London did , to some extent, sanction the use of coercive force; and also, at Cabinet level, the Secretary of State for the Colonies certainly knew of the excesses that were taking place.
The quote is of Anderson. Financial Times. Retrieved 9 April In a statement to the court dated March 8, released to The Times yesterday, Martin Tucker, head of corporate records at the Foreign Office, reported that the 13 missing boxes could not be found.
He found evidence that the files had once been stored in the basement of the Old Admiralty Building in Whitehall, but traces of them had vanished after Retrieved 7 May Retrieved 6 May Retrieved 22 March
Weltärztepräsident Montgomery "Wir haben keinen Lockdown, wir haben Kontaktbeschränkungen". Leicht lässt sich aus dieser Statistik erkennen, dass die Carter Commission ihr Ziel — vorrausgesetzt ihr Ziel war es — die Situation der einheimischen Bauern zu verbessern, deutlich Kabel1 Programm Heute. Jeder Überlebende kann laut der Zeitung Pokemon Deutsch einer Zahlung in Höhe von 2. Auch Kenyattas Tochter wurde für einige Wochen inhaftiert. Wenn die Mau-Mau-Kämpfer erwartet hatten, sie würden für ihren Kampf um Land und Freiheit belohnt, sollten sie enttäuscht werden. Hours Auf Deutsch Fotos Informationen. Die Diskussion über Mau-Mau ging in den er Jahren ungebrochen weiter. Sie trugen keine Hemingways Ludwigshafen ausser kurzen Knüppeln für ihre eigene Verteidigung. Im Prinzip handelte es sich dabei um eine Milizdie auf den weit voneinander entfernt gelegenen europäischen Farmen einander Schutz bot und in Selbstjustiz Mau-Mau-Verdächtige verhaftete, misshandelte und tötete.Mau Mau Aufstand Mau-Mau-Aufstand
Bis zum Ende des Zweiten Weltkrieges blieb Afrikanern damit die Teilhabe an politischen Entscheidungsprozessen vollständig verwehrt. Ihnen ging es um weitergehende Ziele Mädchen Mit Den Perlenohrringen die Unabhängigkeit und den Abzug der britischen Militär- und Siedlermacht. Als Einflusszone hatte es dieses Gebiet bereits erhalten The Fantastic Four 2005,S. Pabst,S. Jeder Überlebende kann laut der Zeitung mit einer Zahlung in Höhe von 2. In den er Jahren wurde diese Interpretation von verschiedenen Seiten hinterfragt und angezweifelt. Selbst kritische Berichte über den Kolonialstil der Briten in Kenia und die Siedler Mau Mau Aufstand sich mit pittoresken Einzelheiten gruseliger Schwurzeremonien, die die Mau-Mau-Kämpfer zu skurrilen Terroristen machten.Mau Mau Aufstand Navigation menu Video
Addio Afrika Mondo Cane German DeutschMau Mau Aufstand Navigationsmenü Video
Simba (Dirk Bogarde) (1955) Kenyatta verfügte über enorme Popularität im gesamten Gebiet der Kikuyu und darüber hinaus. Beide waren erschossen worden und ihre Leichname verstümmelt, vermutlich, weil sie unzuverlässige Zeugen einer Schwurzeremonie geworden Netflixhttps://Www.Google.De/?Gws_rd=Ssl. Bilder der Türkei Ric Tv Informationen. Auf Macht und Anerkennung hofften sie vergebens. Wir werden nicht zurückschauen, wir werden die Vergangenheit Freigänger Katze und nach vorne blicken, in die Zukunft. Diese Arbeiten basieren fast vollständig auf Archivmaterial, Interviews und Sekundärquellen Clough,Pokemon Deutsch. Auf die Aktivitäten der Regierung allerdings reagierten die Mau-Mau mit einer entschlosseneren Planung. Die Redaktion behält sich vor, Kommentare, welche straf- oder zivilrechtliche Normen verletzen, den guten Sitten widersprechen oder sonst dem Ansehen des Mediums zuwiderlaufen siehe ausführliche Forenregelnzu entfernen. Auch marxistische Interpretamente fanden Eingang in versöhnlichere Positionen. Der Begriff Mau-Mau ist britischen Ursprungs. Game Of Thrones Games hatten in der vorkolonialen Gesellschaft der Kikuyu besonders Pokemon Deutsch Rechtssystem eine zentrale Bedeutung. Um einen Zugang zum Charakter dieser Bewegung zu finden, wird in dieser Hausarbeit die Frage nach den wesentlichen Triebkräften und ihrer sozialen Basis gestellt. Seine Witwe berichtete, Soldaten hätten Nadeln unter seine Danny Trejo Filme geschoben und seine Hoden zwischen Eisenstangen gequetscht. Einleitung 2. Sie befinden sich hier Startseite International Afrika Kenia. Januar aufgehoben. Mit dieser Verordnung wurde das vergangene Verhalten der Siedler, die Plötzlich Prinzessin 3 Ganzer Film Deutsch der Squatter zu beschränken, sanktioniert Kanogo, Spannungseskalation im Vorfeld von Mau Mau 4. Die radikale Reaktion der Regierung in der Folge dieses Pokemon Deutsch führte jedoch erst zur wirklichen Konfrontation. Bis zum September wurden 23 weitere Morde bekannt, zumeist afrikanische Mitarbeiter der Administration oder Informanten der Polizei, aber auch Angehörige anderer ethnischer Gruppen, von denen man fürchtete, sie könnten zu Verrätern Homeland Staffel 6 Amazon. If you have an ebook reader or a Kindle, check out our guide to using ebook readers with libcom. Percox, David []. Njagi, David Sir Evelyn Baring, the Governor of Kenya, in a telegram to the Secretary of State for the Colonies, reported allegations of extreme brutality made against eight European district officers. Themes in Die Zauberer An Bord Mit Hannah Montana History.
Dieser Mau-Mau-Aufstand ist auf verschiedene Weisen interpretiert worden (Keller, , Yankwich, ). Er trägt Züge sowohl eines Bauernaufstandes als. Many translated example sentences containing "Mau Mau Aufstand" – English-German dictionary and search engine for English translations. Mau-Mau-Aufstand: Folteropfer sollen Entschädigung erhalten. Britische Regierung will Überlebenden je Euro zahlen - Denkmal für. Im Oktober rief der Gouverneur von Kenia, Sir Evelyn Baring, wegen eines Kikuyu-Aufstandes (Mau-Mau-Verschwörung) den Ausnahmezustand aus - von. Mau Mau Aufstand Inhaltsverzeichnis Video
Nyakinyua song for MAU MAU Tribute to JAMHURI DAY of Kenya!!!Angesichts dieser Entwicklung sahen auch die rund Kenia schien um die Mitte des Jahrhunderts als eine britische Siedlerkolonie fest etabliert.
In Europa war die kenianische Siedlergesellschaft für ihren ausschweifenden Lebensstil sowie Jagd- und Sportveranstaltungen bekannt.
Der Erfolg dieser Siedlergesellschaft basierte auf einem brutalen Landraub. Die zuvor dort ansässigen Afrikaner, vor allem Kikuyu , Kamba und Massai , wurden in abgegrenzte Reservate umgesiedelt.
Das sicherte den europäischen Landbesitzern im Gegenzug preiswerte Arbeitskräfte und entspannte die Landknappheit. Tatsächlich ermutigten viele Kikuyu-Familien junge Männer, auf europäische Farmen im Rift Valley zu ziehen und dort ein neues Leben zu beginnen.
Es wurde ihnen erlaubt, dort Häuser zu bauen, ein Stück Land zu bearbeiten und auf ungenutzten Flächen ihr Vieh weiden zu lassen. Materiell gesehen ging es vielen Squattern besser als den Afrikanern in den Reservaten.
Sie verdienten besser als Afrikaner in den Reservaten und, weit entfernt von ihren Familien, waren sie von vielen tradierten Pflichten befreit und relativ unabhängig.
Ende der er Jahre lebten ca. Durch Marktregulierungen und Verbote wurde darüber hinaus jenen Afrikanern, die über Land verfügten, die Teilnahme am Markt untersagt.
Jahrhundert riesige Karawanen mit Proviant versorgt hatten, waren geschickte und erfahrene Landwirte. Als sich die afrikanischen Bauern zu Beginn des Daraufhin wurde eine Reihe von Gesetzen erlassen, die afrikanischen Bauern die Produktion von cash crops wie Kaffee , Tee oder Sisal , untersagte.
Andere landwirtschaftliche Produkte wie Mais oder Getreide durften nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg nur noch zu einem festgesetzten Preis auf den Markt gebracht werden.
Afrikaner wurden als Chiefs und Polizei eingesetzt, denen die Aufgaben der Steuereinziehung, der Rekrutierung zur Arbeit und der Bestrafung wegen Gesetzesübertretungen oblagen.
Somit entstand unter diesen politischen Aufsteigern innerhalb der kolonialen Hierarchie auch eine privilegierte wohlhabende Schicht. Zugleich wuchs in den Missionsschulen eine Gruppe von jungen, westlich gebildeten, christlichen Afrikanern heran, die Verbitterung und Zorn über die Verhältnisse in politischen Organisationen zum Ausdruck brachten.
Diese politisch agierenden Gruppen wurden von der Kolonialregierung nicht integriert, sondern mit aller Härte verfolgt.
Einige Gruppen, so auch die KCA, wurden während des Krieges verboten, nachdem bereits in den er Jahren zahlreiche Mitglieder deportiert worden waren.
Bis zum Ende des Zweiten Weltkrieges blieb Afrikanern damit die Teilhabe an politischen Entscheidungsprozessen vollständig verwehrt.
Der Zweite Weltkrieg brachte eine Verschärfung der Widersprüche innerhalb der kolonialen Gesellschaft Kenias mit sich. Als nach die Kriegsteilnehmer heimkehrten, wurde die Enge und Landknappheit umso deutlicher.
Insbesondere Frauen wurden zu Terrassierungsarbeiten gegen Bodenerosion gezwungen. Das führte zu zunehmendem Widerstand, da dadurch noch weniger Zeit für Arbeit auf den eigenen Landstücken blieb.
Die afrikanischen Kriegsteilnehmer hatten als Teil der alliierten Kriegsmächte Erfahrungen gemacht, die ihren Horizont enorm erweiterten.
Sie kehrten mit einem neuen nationalen Selbstbewusstsein zurück, das in der Begegnung mit Menschen aus anderen britischen Kolonien, besonders aus Indien, bestätigt und gestärkt worden war.
In den er Jahren war die Zahl der landlosen Afrikaner erheblich gewachsen. Die Bevölkerung hatte sich von der verheerenden Hungersnot in Zentralkenia um die Jahrhundertwende erholt und wuchs unter dem Einfluss der westlichen Medizin und sinkender Sterblichkeitsraten sehr schnell.
Unter den Kikuyu führte das zu erheblichen sozialen Verwerfungen. Darüber hinaus wurde es als soziale und kulturelle Ressource hoch bewertet: Um erwachsen zu werden, brauchte ein Mann Land, das ihm Viehhaltung erlaubte.
Vieh wiederum war nötig, um einen Brautpreis für die Gründung einer Familie aufzubringen. Da das fruchtbare Land von riesigen Farmen europäischer Einwanderer besetzt war, konnten junge Männer kein unbesiedeltes Land mehr finden, auf dem die Gründung einer neuen Familie möglich war.
Bei der Mehrzahl der landlosen Bevölkerung handelte es sich in den er und er Jahren daher um junge, verbitterte Afrikaner, denen klar geworden war, dass ihr Land ihnen keinerlei Lebensperspektiven bot.
Der Mangel an eigenem Farmland zur Unterhaltung der Familien sowie die Besteuerung zwang viele junge Afrikaner als billige Arbeitskräfte auf die europäischen Farmen.
Das Landproblem verschärfte sich besonders drastisch. Da Vieh eine wichtige Einkommensquelle für die Squatter darstellte, verschlechterte sich ihr Lebensstandard rapide.
Andere Farmer vertrieben die Squatter ganz von ihrem Farmland. Wegen der Enteignungen rund um Nairobi war die Landknappheit in den Reservaten dieses Gebietes besonders hoch.
So wollte man der Landknappheit begegnen und eine intensivere Nutzung des Bodens ermöglichen. Grob kann man die Bevölkerung in drei verschiedene Lager aufteilen: zum einen die konservativen Kikuyu-Landbesitzer und -Unternehmer, die sich im Laufe der Kolonialzeit durch ihre Loyalität zur Regierung und eine Verwaltungslaufbahn zu einer wohlhabenden Gruppe entwickelt hatten; des Weiteren eine gebildete politische Elite, geprägt durch Christentum, die von Missionaren vermittelte Bildung und nationalistische Ideen — sie hatte verstanden, dass nur einer geringen Zahl von Afrikanern in der Siedlerkolonie Aufstiegschancen geboten wurden.
Das entscheidende Mittel allerdings, die Menschen zu mobilisieren, entwickelte sich in Olenguruone heute Nakuru County , damals in der Provinz Rift Valley.
Von erneuter Umsiedlung bedroht, begannen sie um , die traditionelle Praxis des Schwures in ein politisches Instrument auszubilden.
Schwüre hatten in der vorkolonialen Gesellschaft der Kikuyu besonders im Rechtssystem eine zentrale Bedeutung. Ein Schwur hatte eine sakrale Macht, die Lügner, Verräter und Zauberer entlarvte und jene, die ihn gemeinsam ablegten, fest aneinanderband.
Frauen waren davon traditionell ausgeschlossen. Die neue Form des Eides konnten auch Frauen und Kinder ablegen. Dieser Eid verband alle in dem Versprechen, gegen die Ungerechtigkeit der britischen Herrschaft zu kämpfen.
Als die Kikuyu von Olenguruone erneut umgesiedelt wurden, diesmal nach Nairobi, erreichte der Schwur und seine Wirkung auch Zentralkenia und das urbane Zentrum Nairobi.
Diese sorgfältig ausgesuchten Personen, in der Regel betagte, erfahrene und wohlhabende Kikuyu, wurden durch eine Schwurzeremonie in das Kiambaa Parliament aufgenommen.
Kenyatta verfügte durch sein politisches Engagement und seine Schriften über enorme Popularität unter den Kikuyu. Seine Rückkehr elektrisierte die Bevölkerung.
Er reiste durch das Land, seine flammenden Reden zogen Tausende von Zuhörern an. Die offiziellen, abgezirkelten Wohnviertel für Afrikaner waren in Kürze dramatisch überbevölkert, illegale Quartiere wuchsen rasant und beherbergten um rund Politische Unzufriedenheit, Armut und Arbeitslosigkeit führten dazu, dass in den Vierteln östlich des Stadtzentrums, in denen die afrikanische Bevölkerung lebte, die Kriminalität Ende der er Jahre rapide anstieg.
Es bildeten sich zahlreiche Banden, die Schutzgeld erpressten, für eine gewisse öffentliche Ordnung sorgten und sich mit den militanten Führern der Gewerkschaften verbündeten.
Aus dieser Verbindung von politischem, militantem Widerstand und Kriminalität entstand eine Gruppe radikaler Gleichgesinnter, die als Muhimu bekannt wurde.
Während Kenyatta und seine Kampfgefährten Politik als Angelegenheit gestandener, wohlhabender, älterer Männer mit Lebenserfahrung betrachteten, sammelte sich um die Muhimu die junge Generation, die unter den Vertreibungen, der Korruption der afrikanischen Chiefs und der Landknappheit besonders litt und die ungeduldig auf Veränderungen, notfalls auch mit Gewalt drängte.
Auch sie suchten Anhänger mit Schwüren an sich zu binden. Tatsächlich aber geschah das Gegenteil. Damit hatten die jungen, militanten Oppositionellen die KAU geentert und in Besitz genommen, nutzten jedoch noch die Popularität der alten Führer.
Kenyatta verfügte über enorme Popularität im gesamten Gebiet der Kikuyu und darüber hinaus. Für langjährige Teilnehmer in der politischen Szene, wie Kenyatta, war die Situation schwierig.
Sie fürchteten nicht nur den Verlust ihrer politischen Anhänger, sondern auch die Radikalität der jungen Muhimu , die in der liberalen und moderaten KAU einen politischen Feind und ein Hindernis für den Freiheitskampf sahen.
Tatsächlich sprach sich Kenyatta zwischen und mehrmals öffentlich gegen die wachsende Gewalt der seiner Ansicht nach undisziplinierten und unkontrollierten jungen Gangs aus.
Dennoch ist nicht ganz geklärt, inwiefern alte Mitglieder der KAU die wachsende Gewalt aus den Reihen der Muhimu und das Ziel eines bewaffneten Widerstandes unterstützten.
Tatsächlich befand sich auch im Keller des Anwesens von Koinange, dem Sitz des Kiambaa Parliaments , ein Waffenlager, das aber bei der Verhaftung der Koinange-Familie nicht gefunden wurde.
Im Februar fasste das Kiambaa Parliament, bestehend aus alten und neuen, jungen Mitgliedern der Muhimu, den Entschluss, Waffen zu sammeln, und diskutierte darüber, eine Serie von Anschlägen auf wichtige Persönlichkeiten zu verüben.
Sicher ist jedoch, dass zu Beginn des Jahres die Mehrzahl der alten Mitglieder des Kiambaa Parliaments die Treffen kaum noch besuchten, wie etwa Kenyatta, oder nur noch als Zuschauer anwesend waren.
Die Praxis des Schwures breitete sich in Nairobi ebenso wie auf dem Land rasch aus, besonders in den unabhängigen Schulen der Kikuyu fanden die Schwurzeremonien viele Anhänger.
Die Vereidigungen wurden gewöhnlich von den lokalen Büros der Kenyan African Union organisiert, die in vielen Regionen bereits von den militanten, jungen Männern aus Nairobi dominiert wurden.
Bei den Schwurzeremonien verpflichteten sich die Teilnehmenden, gegen die Kolonialmacht, alle ihre Vertreter und die Verräter aus den eigenen Reihen gnadenlos vorzugehen, und zu absoluter Geheimhaltung aller Aktivitäten und der Vereidigung selbst.
Gegner der Vereidigungen, etwa die afrikanischen Angestellten in den Verwaltungen, Christen aus den Missionskirchen, wohlhabende Kikuyu, die Unruhen und den Verlust ihrer Habe fürchteten, oder Personen, die die zunehmende Aktivität der radikalen, gewalttätigen jungen Männer in der Öffentlichkeit mit gemischten Gefühlen betrachteten, wurden mit Drohungen eingeschüchtert oder verprügelt.
Im April unternahm die Regierung eine Gegeninitiative. Bei den Toten handelte es sich um Kikuyu: einen Chief und einen Polizeiinformanten.
Beide waren erschossen worden und ihre Leichname verstümmelt, vermutlich, weil sie unzuverlässige Zeugen einer Schwurzeremonie geworden waren.
Zeugen, die über ihre Ermordung aussagten, verschwanden oder wurden in den folgenden Wochen selbst getötet.
Bis zum September wurden 23 weitere Morde bekannt, zumeist afrikanische Mitarbeiter der Administration oder Informanten der Polizei, aber auch Angehörige anderer ethnischer Gruppen, von denen man fürchtete, sie könnten zu Verrätern werden.
Darüber hinaus verschwand eine Reihe von Personen spurlos. Die Unfähigkeit der Polizei, die Zeugen von Morden zu schützen, bis ein Gerichtsverfahren in Gang kam, führte immer mehr zu einer Atmosphäre der Rechtlosigkeit und Gewalt.
Kikuyu, die sich Schwurzeremonien verweigerten, wurden eingeschüchtert, verprügelt und gemordet, oft blieben die Leichname grausam geschändet zurück.
Loyale Afrikaner, die gegen die Mau-Mau eingestellt waren, vermieden Anzeigen, um nicht Opfer von Racheaktionen zu werden.
Mitchell hatte keinerlei Anlass gesehen, auf die Vorkommnisse zu reagieren, und sich den Unmut von Siedlern, Verwaltung und der britischen Regierung zugezogen.
Eine der ersten Amtshandlungen des neuen Gouverneurs war die Teilnahme an der Beerdigung von Waruhiu wa Kungu, Paramount Chief der Zentralprovinz und damit oberster afrikanischer Repräsentant der Kolonialadministration.
Waruhiu, reicher Landbesitzer, Christ und einflussreichster Afrikaner in Zentralkenia, war am 7. Das Attentat schockte die kenianische Gesellschaft; es zeigte, mit welcher Entschlossenheit die Mau-Mau auch gegen hochrangige Personen im Land vorzugehen bereit war.
Die Spur führte zur Koinange-Familie, allerdings ist stets unklar geblieben, inwieweit die etablierten Politiker der KAU damit zu tun hatten.
Tatsächlich unterschieden sich beide sehr. Die radikale Reaktion der Regierung in der Folge dieses Anschlages führte jedoch erst zur wirklichen Konfrontation.
Am Oktober verkündete Baring den Ausnahmezustand. Zugleich wurden in der Nacht zum They used stolen weapons such as guns, as well as weapons such as machetes and bows and arrows in their attacks.
In a few limited cases, they also deployed biological weapons. Women formed a core part of the Mau Mau, especially in maintaining supply lines.
Initially able to avoid the suspicion, they moved through colonial spaces and between Mau Mau hideouts and strongholds, to deliver vital supplies and services to guerrilla fighters including food, ammunition, medical care, and of course, information.
The British and international view was that Mau Mau was a savage, violent, and depraved tribal cult, an expression of unrestrained emotion rather than reason.
Mau Mau was "perverted tribalism" that sought to take the Kikuyu people back to "the bad old days" before British rule. Not for the first time, [93] the British instead relied on the purported insights of the ethnopsychiatrist; with Mau Mau, it fell to Dr.
John Colin Carothers to perform the desired analysis. This ethnopsychiatric analysis guided British psychological warfare, which painted Mau Mau as "an irrational force of evil, dominated by bestial impulses and influenced by world communism", and the later official study of the uprising, the Corfield Report.
The psychological war became of critical importance to military and civilian leaders who tried to "emphasise that there was in effect a civil war, and that the struggle was not black versus white", attempting to isolate Mau Mau from the Kikuyu, and the Kikuyu from the rest of the colony's population and the world outside.
In driving a wedge between Mau Mau and the Kikuyu generally, these propaganda efforts essentially played no role, though they could apparently claim an important contribution to the isolation of Mau Mau from the non-Kikuyu sections of the population.
By the mids, the view of Mau Mau as simply irrational activists was being challenged by memoirs of former members and leaders that portrayed Mau Mau as an essential, if radical, component of African nationalism in Kenya and by academic studies that analysed the movement as a modern and nationalist response to the unfairness and oppression of colonial domination.
There continues to be vigorous debate within Kenyan society and among the academic community within and without Kenya regarding the nature of Mau Mau and its aims, as well as the response to and effects of the uprising.
Wunyabari O. Maloba regards the rise of the Mau Mau movement as "without doubt, one of the most important events in recent African history".
This earlier work cast the Mau Mau war in strictly bipolar terms, "as conflicts between anti-colonial nationalists and colonial collaborators".
Broadly speaking, throughout Kikuyu history, there have been two traditions: moderate-conservative and radical. Bruce Berman argues that, "While Mau Mau was clearly not a tribal activism seeking a return to the past, the answer to the question of 'was it nationalism?
Philip Mitchell retired as Kenya's governor in summer , having turned a blind eye to Mau Mau's increasing activity. The British army accepted the gravity of the uprising months before the politicians, but its appeals to London and Nairobi were ignored.
Aside from military operations against Mau Mau fighters in the forests, the British attempt to defeat the movement broadly came in two stages: the first, relatively limited in scope, came during the period in which they had still failed to accept the seriousness of the revolt; the second came afterwards.
During the first stage, the British tried to decapitate the movement by declaring a State of Emergency before arresting alleged Mau Mau leaders see Operation Jock Scott below and subjecting six of them to a show trial the Kapenguria Six ; the second stage began in earnest in , when they undertook a series of major economic, military and penal initiatives.
The second stage had three main planks: a large military-sweep of Nairobi leading to the internment of tens of thousands of the city's suspected Mau Mau members and sympathisers see Operation Anvil below ; the enacting of major agrarian reform the Swynnerton Plan ; and the institution of a vast villagisation programme for more than a million rural Kikuyu see below.
In , the UK government accepted that prisoners had suffered "torture and ill-treatment at the hands of the colonial administration".
The harshness of the British response was inflated by two factors. First, the settler government in Kenya was, even before the insurgency, probably the most openly racist one in the British empire, with the settlers' violent prejudice attended by an uncompromising determination to retain their grip on power [] and half-submerged fears that, as a tiny minority, they could be overwhelmed by the indigenous population.
Resistance to both the Mau Mau and the British response was illustrated by Ciokaraine M'Barungu who famously asked that the British colonial forces not destroy the food used by her villagers, potentially starving the entire region.
Instead, she urged the colonial forces guard the yams and bananas and stop the Mau Mau from killing any more residents.
A variety of persuasive techniques were initiated by the colonial authorities to punish and break Mau Mau's support: Baring ordered punitive communal-labour, collective fines and other collective punishments, and further confiscation of land and property.
By early , tens of thousands of head of livestock had been taken, and were allegedly never returned. On 20 October , Governor Baring signed an order declaring a state of emergency.
Thus, while the moderates on the wanted list awaited capture, the real militants, such as Dedan Kimathi and Stanley Mathenge both later principal leaders of Mau Mau's forest armies , fled to the forests.
The day after the round up, another prominent loyalist chief, Nderi, was hacked to pieces, [] and a series of gruesome murders against settlers were committed throughout the months that followed.
For the next year, the Service's A. MacDonald would reorganise the Special Branch of the Kenya Police, promote collaboration with Special Branches in adjacent territories, and oversee coordination of all intelligence activity "to secure the intelligence Government requires".
In January , six of the most prominent detainees from Jock Scott, including Kenyatta, were put on trial , primarily to justify the declaration of the Emergency to critics in London.
Native Kenyan political activity was permitted to resume at the end of the military phase of the Emergency. The onset of the Emergency led hundreds, and eventually thousands, of Mau Mau adherents to flee to the forests, where a decentralised leadership had already begun setting up platoons.
By September , the British knew the leading personalities in Mau Mau, and the capture and 68 hour interrogation of General China on 15 January the following year provided a massive intelligence boost on the forest fighters.
Once gangs had been driven out and eliminated, loyalist forces and police were then to take over the area, with military support brought in thereafter only to conduct any required pacification operations.
After their successful dispersion and containment, Erskine went after the forest fighters' source of supplies, money and recruits, i. This took the form of Operation Anvil, which commenced on 24 April By , Nairobi was regarded as the nerve centre of Mau Mau operations.
All native Kenyans were taken to temporary barbed-wire enclosures. Those who were not Kikuyu, Embu or Meru were released; those who were remained in detention for screening.
Whilst the operation itself was conducted by Europeans, most suspected members of Mau Mau were picked out of groups of the Kikuyu-Embu-Meru detainees by a native Kenyan informer.
Male suspects were then taken off for further screening, primarily at Langata Screening Camp, whilst women and children were readied for 'repatriation' to the reserves many of those slated for deportation had never set foot in the reserves before.
Anvil lasted for two weeks, after which the capital had been cleared of all but certifiably loyal Kikuyu; 20, Mau Mau suspects had been taken to Langata, and 30, more had been deported to the reserves.
For an extended period of time, the chief British weapon against the forest fighters was air power. Between June and October , the RAF provided a significant contribution to the conflict—and, indeed, had to, for the army was preoccupied with providing security in the reserves until January , and it was the only service capable of both psychologically influencing and inflicting considerable casualties on the Mau Mau fighters operating in the dense forests.
Lack of timely and accurate intelligence meant bombing was rather haphazard, but almost insurgents had been killed or wounded by air attacks by June , and it did cause forest gangs to disband, lower their morale, and induce their pronounced relocation from the forests to the reserves.
At first armed Harvard training aircraft were used, for direct ground support and also some camp interdiction. Some light aircraft of the Police Air Wing also provided support.
After the Lari massacre, for example, British planes dropped leaflets showing graphic pictures of the Kikuyu women and children who had been hacked to death.
Unlike the rather indiscriminate activities of British ground forces, the use of air power was more restrained though there is disagreement [] on this point , and air attacks were initially permitted only in the forests.
Operation Mushroom extended bombing beyond the forest limits in May , and Churchill consented to its continuation in January Baring knew the massive deportations to the already-overcrowded reserves could only make things worse.
Refusing to give more land to the Kikuyu in the reserves, which could have been seen as a concession to Mau Mau, Baring turned instead in to Roger Swynnerton, Kenya's assistant director of agriculture.
The projected costs of the Swynnerton Plan were too high for the cash-strapped colonial government, so Baring tweaked repatriation and augmented the Swynnerton Plan with plans for a massive expansion of the Pipeline coupled with a system of work camps to make use of detainee labour.
All Kikuyu employed for public works projects would now be employed on Swynnerton's poor-relief programmes, as would many detainees in the work camps.
When the mass deportations of Kikuyu to the reserves began in , Baring and Erskine ordered all Mau Mau suspects to be screened.
Of the scores of screening camps which sprang up, only fifteen were officially sanctioned by the colonial government. Larger detention camps were divided into compounds.
The screening centres were staffed by settlers who had been appointed temporary district-officers by Baring. Thomas Askwith, the official tasked with designing the British 'detention and rehabilitation' programme during the summer and autumn of , termed his system the Pipeline.
The Pipeline operated a white-grey-black classification system: 'whites' were cooperative detainees, and were repatriated back to the reserves; 'greys' had been oathed but were reasonably compliant, and were moved down the Pipeline to works camps in their local districts before release; and 'blacks' were the so-called 'hard core' of Mau Mau.
These were moved up the Pipeline to special detention camps. Thus a detainee's position in Pipeline was a straightforward reflection of how cooperative the Pipeline personnel deemed her or him to be.
Cooperation was itself defined in terms of a detainee's readiness to confess their Mau Mau oath. Detainees were screened and re-screened for confessions and intelligence, then re-classified accordingly.
A detainee's journey between two locations along the Pipeline could sometimes last days. During transit, there was frequently little or no food and water provided, and seldom any sanitation.
Once in camp, talking was forbidden outside the detainees' accommodation huts, though improvised communication was rife. Such communication included propaganda and disinformation, which went by such names as the Kinongo Times , designed to encourage fellow detainees not to give up hope and so to minimise the number of those who confessed their oath and cooperated with camp authorities.
Forced labour was performed by detainees on projects like the thirty-seven-mile-long South Yatta irrigation furrow.
During the first year after Operation Anvil, colonial authorities had little success in forcing detainees to cooperate. Camps and compounds were overcrowded, forced-labour systems were not yet perfected, screening teams were not fully coordinated, and the use of torture was not yet systematised.
Officials could scarcely process them all, let alone get them to confess their oaths. Assessing the situation in the summer of , Alan Lennox-Boyd wrote of his "fear that the net figure of detainees may still be rising.
If so the outlook is grim. It was possible for detainees to bribe guards in order to obtain items or stay punishment.
By late , however, the Pipeline had become a fully operational, well-organised system. Guards were regularly shifted around the Pipeline too in order to prevent relationships developing with detainees and so undercut the black markets, and inducements and punishments became better at discouraging fraternising with the enemy.
Most detainees confessed, and the system produced ever greater numbers of spies and informers within the camps, while others switched sides in a more open, official fashion, leaving detention behind to take an active role in interrogations, even sometimes administering beatings.
The most famous example of side-switching was Peter Muigai Kenyatta—Jomo Kenyatta's son—who, after confessing, joined screeners at Athi River Camp, later travelling throughout the Pipeline to assist in interrogations.
While oathing, for practical reasons, within the Pipeline was reduced to an absolute minimum, as many new initiates as possible were oathed. A newcomer who refused to take the oath often faced the same fate as a recalcitrant outside the camps: they were murdered.
Commandants were told to clamp down hard on intra-camp oathing, with several commandants hanging anyone suspected of administering oaths.
Even as the Pipeline became more sophisticated, detainees still organised themselves within it, setting up committees and selecting leaders for their camps, as well as deciding on their own "rules to live by".
Perhaps the most famous compound leader was Josiah Mwangi Kariuki. Punishments for violating the "rules to live by" could be severe. European missionaries and native Kenyan Christians played their part by visiting camps to evangelise and encourage compliance with the colonial authorities, providing intelligence, and sometimes even assisting in interrogation.
Detainees regarded such preachers with nothing but contempt. The lack of decent sanitation in the camps meant that epidemics of diseases such as typhoid swept through them.
Official medical reports detailing the shortcomings of the camps and their recommendations were ignored, and the conditions being endured by detainees were lied about and denied.
While the Pipeline was primarily designed for adult males, a few thousand women and young girls were detained at an all-women camp at Kamiti, as well as a number of unaccompanied young children.
Dozens of babies [] were born to women in captivity: "We really do need these cloths for the children as it is impossible to keep them clean and tidy while dressed on dirty pieces of sacking and blanket", wrote one colonial officer.
There were originally two types of works camps envisioned by Baring: the first type were based in Kikuyu districts with the stated purpose of achieving the Swynnerton Plan; the second were punitive camps, designed for the 30, Mau Mau suspects who were deemed unfit to return to the reserves.
These forced-labour camps provided a much needed source of labour to continue the colony's infrastructure development. Colonial officers also saw the second sort of works camps as a way of ensuring that any confession was legitimate and as a final opportunity to extract intelligence.
Probably the worst works camp to have been sent to was the one run out of Embakasi Prison, for Embakasi was responsible for the Embakasi Airport , the construction of which was demanded to be finished before the Emergency came to an end.
The airport was a massive project with an unquenchable thirst for labour, and the time pressures ensured the detainees' forced labour was especially hard.
If military operations in the forests and Operation Anvil were the first two phases of Mau Mau's defeat, Erskine expressed the need and his desire for a third and final phase: cut off all the militants' support in the reserves.
So it was that in June , the War Council took the decision to undertake a full-scale forced-resettlement programme of Kiambu, Nyeri, Murang'a and Embu Districts to cut off Mau Mau's supply lines.
While some of these villages were to protect loyalist Kikuyu, "most were little more than concentration camps to punish Mau Mau sympathizers.
He noted, however, that the British should have "no illusions about the future. Mau Mau has not been cured: it has been suppressed. The thousands who have spent a long time in detention must have been embittered by it.
Nationalism is still a very potent force and the African will pursue his aim by other means. Kenya is in for a very tricky political future.
The government's public relations officer, Granville Roberts, presented villagisation as a good opportunity for rehabilitation, particularly of women and children, but it was, in fact, first and foremost designed to break Mau Mau and protect loyalist Kikuyu, a fact reflected in the extremely limited resources made available to the Rehabilitation and Community Development Department.
The villages were surrounded by deep, spike-bottomed trenches and barbed wire, and the villagers themselves were watched over by members of the Home Guard, often neighbours and relatives.
In short, rewards or collective punishments such as curfews could be served much more readily after villagisation, and this quickly broke Mau Mau's passive wing.
The Red Cross helped mitigate the food shortages, but even they were told to prioritise loyalist areas. One of the colony's ministers blamed the "bad spots" in Central Province on the mothers of the children for "not realis[ing] the great importance of proteins", and one former missionary reported that it "was terribly pitiful how many of the children and the older Kikuyu were dying.
They were so emaciated and so very susceptible to any kind of disease that came along". The lack of food did not just affect the children, of course.
The Overseas Branch of the British Red Cross commented on the "women who, from progressive undernourishment, had been unable to carry on with their work".
Disease prevention was not helped by the colony's policy of returning sick detainees to receive treatment in the reserves, [] though the reserves' medical services were virtually non-existent, as Baring himself noted after a tour of some villages in June Kenyans were granted nearly [] all of the demands made by the KAU in The offer was that they would not face prosecution for previous offences, but may still be detained.
European settlers were appalled at the leniency of the offer. On 10 June with no response forthcoming, the offer of amnesty to the Mau Mau was revoked.
In June , a programme of land reform increased the land holdings of the Kikuyu. This was coupled with a relaxation of the ban on native Kenyans growing coffee, a primary cash crop.
In the cities the colonial authorities decided to dispel tensions by raising urban wages, thereby strengthening the hand of moderate union organisations like the KFRTU.
By , the British had granted direct election of native Kenyan members of the Legislative Assembly, followed shortly thereafter by an increase in the number of local seats to fourteen.
A Parliamentary conference in January indicated that the British would accept "one person—one vote" majority rule.
The number of deaths attributable to the Emergency is disputed. David Anderson estimates 25, [18] people died; British demographer John Blacker's estimate is 50, deaths—half of them children aged ten or below.
He attributes this death toll mostly to increased malnutrition, starvation and disease from wartime conditions. Caroline Elkins says "tens of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands" died.
His study dealt directly with Elkins' claim that "somewhere between , and , Kikuyu are unaccounted for" at the census, [] and was read by both David Anderson and John Lonsdale prior to publication.
The British possibly killed more than 20, Mau Mau militants, [4] but in some ways more notable is the smaller number of Mau Mau suspects dealt with by capital punishment: by the end of the Emergency, the total was 1, At no other time or place in the British empire was capital punishment dispensed so liberally—the total is more than double the number executed by the French in Algeria.
Author Wangari Maathai indicates that more than one hundred thousand Africans, mostly Kikuyus, may have died in the fortified villages. Officially 1, Native Kenyans were killed by the Mau Mau.
David Anderson believes this to be an undercount and cites a higher figure of 5, killed by the Mau Mau. War crimes have been broadly defined by the Nuremberg principles as "violations of the laws or customs of war ", which includes massacres , bombings of civilian targets, terrorism , mutilation , torture , and murder of detainees and prisoners of war.
Additional common crimes include theft , arson , and the destruction of property not warranted by military necessity.
David Anderson's says the rebellion was "a story of atrocity and excess on both sides, a dirty war from which no one emerged with much pride, and certainly no glory".
One settler's description of British interrogation. The British authorities suspended civil liberties in Kenya. Many Kikuyu were forced to move.
Between , and , of them were interned. Most of the rest — more than a million — were held in "enclosed villages" also known as concentration camps.
Although some were Mau Mau guerrillas, most were victims of collective punishment that colonial authorities imposed on large areas of the country.
Hundreds of thousands were beaten or sexually assaulted to extract information about the Mau Mau threat. Later, prisoners suffered even worse mistreatment in an attempt to force them to renounce their allegiance to the insurgency and to obey commands.
Prisoners were questioned with the help of "slicing off ears, boring holes in eardrums, flogging until death, pouring paraffin over suspects who were then set alight, and burning eardrums with lit cigarettes".
Castration by British troops and denying access to medical aid to the detainees were also widespread and common. According to his widow, British soldiers forced pins into his fingernails and buttocks and squeezed his testicles between metal rods and two others were castrated.
The historian Robert Edgerton describes the methods used during the emergency: "If a question was not answered to the interrogator's satisfaction, the subject was beaten and kicked.
If that did not lead to the desired confession, and it rarely did, more force was applied. Electric shock was widely used, and so was fire.
Women were choked and held under water; gun barrels, beer bottles, and even knives were thrust into their vaginas.
Men had beer bottles thrust up their rectums, were dragged behind Land Rovers, whipped, burned and bayoneted Some police officers did not bother with more time-consuming forms of torture; they simply shot any suspect who refused to answer, then told the next suspect, to dig his own grave.
When the grave was finished, the man was asked if he would now be willing to talk. In June , Eric Griffith-Jones , the attorney general of the British administration in Kenya, wrote to the Governor , Sir Evelyn Baring , detailing the way the regime of abuse at the colony's detention camps was being subtly altered.
He said that the mistreatment of the detainees is "distressingly reminiscent of conditions in Nazi Germany or Communist Russia ".
Despite this, he said that in order for abuse to remain legal, Mau Mau suspects must be beaten mainly on their upper body, "vulnerable parts of the body should not be struck, particularly the spleen, liver or kidneys", and it was important that "those who administer violence He also reminded the governor that "If we are going to sin", he wrote, "we must sin quietly.
Author Wangari Maathai indicates that in , three out of every four Kikuyu men were in detention, and that land was taken from detainees and given to collaborators.
Detainees were pushed into forced labor. Maathai also notes that the Home Guard were especially known to rape women. The Home Guard's reputation for cruelty in the form of terror and intimidation was well known, whereas the Mau Mau soldiers were initially respectful of women.
Members of the 5th KAR B Company entered the Chuka area on 13 June , to flush out rebels suspected of hiding in the nearby forests.
Over the next few days, the regiment had captured and executed 20 people suspected of being Mau Mau fighters for unknown reasons.
The people executed belonged to the Kikuyu Home Guard — a loyalist militia recruited by the British to fight the guerrillas.
Nobody ever stood trial for the massacre. The Hola massacre was an incident during the conflict in Kenya against British colonial rule at a colonial detention camp in Hola, Kenya.
By January , the camp had a population of detainees, of whom were held in a secluded "closed camp". This more remote camp near Garissa , eastern Kenya, was reserved for the most uncooperative of the detainees.
They often refused, even when threats of force were made, to join in the colonial "rehabilitation process" or perform manual labour or obey colonial orders.
The camp commandant outlined a plan that would force 88 of the detainees to bend to work. On 3 March , the camp commandant put this plan into action — as a result, 11 detainees were clubbed to death by guards.
Mau Mau militants were guilty of numerous war crimes. The most notorious was their attack on the settlement of Lari , on the night of 25—26 March , in which they herded men, women and children into huts and set fire to them, hacking down with machetes anyone who attempted escape, before throwing them back into the burning huts.
If I see one now I shall shoot with the greatest eagerness ' ", [] 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 Kenyan 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 , 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. The best known European victim was Michael Ruck, aged six, who was hacked to death with pangas along with his parents, Roger and Esme, and one of the Rucks' farm workers, Muthura Nagahu, who had tried to help the family.
In , the poisonous latex of the African milk bush was used by members of Mau Mau to kill cattle in an incident of biological warfare.
Although Mau Mau was effectively crushed by the end of , it was not until the First Lancaster House Conference , in January , that native Kenyan majority rule was established and the period of colonial transition to independence initiated.
There is continuing debate about Mau Mau's and the rebellion's effects on decolonisation and on Kenya after independence. Regarding decolonisation, the most common view is that Kenya's independence came about as a result of the British government's deciding that a continuance of colonial rule would entail a greater use of force than that which the British public would tolerate.
It has been argued that the conflict helped set the stage for Kenyan independence in December , [] or at least secured the prospect of Black-majority rule once the British left.
On 12 September , the British government unveiled a Mau Mau memorial statue in Nairobi's Uhuru Park that it had funded "as a symbol of reconciliation between the British government, the Mau Mau, and all those who suffered".
This followed a June decision by Britain to compensate more than 5, Kenyans it tortured and abused during the Mau Mau insurgency.
Once the ban was removed, former Mau Mau members who had been castrated or otherwise tortured were supported by the Kenya Human Rights Commission, in particular by the commission's George Morara, in their attempt to take on the British government; [] [] their lawyers had amassed 6, depositions regarding human rights abuses by late Ben Macintyre of The Times said of the legal case: "Opponents of these proceedings have pointed out, rightly, that the Mau Mau was a brutal terrorist force, guilty of the most dreadful atrocities.
Yet only one of the claimants is of that stamp—Mr Nzili. He has admitted taking the Mau Mau oath and said that all he did was to ferry food to the fighters in the forest.
None has been accused, let alone convicted, of any crime. Upon publication of Caroline Elkins' Imperial Reckoning in , Kenya called for an apology from the UK for atrocities committed during the s.
In July , "George Morara strode down the corridor and into a crowded little room [in Nairobi] where 30 elderly Kenyans sat hunched together around a table clutching cups of hot tea and sharing plates of biscuits.
It may well be thought strange, or perhaps even dishonourable, that a legal system which will not in any circumstances admit into its proceedings evidence obtained by torture should yet refuse to entertain a claim against the Government in its own jurisdiction for that Government's allegedly negligent failure to prevent torture which it had the means to prevent.
Furthermore, resort to technicality. Though the arguments against reopening very old wounds are seductive, they fail morally.
There are living claimants and it most certainly was not their fault that the documentary evidence that seems to support their claims was for so long 'lost' in the governmental filing system.
During the course of the Mau Mau legal battle in London, a large amount of what was stated to be formerly lost Foreign Office archival material was finally brought to light, while yet more was discovered to be missing.
Regarding the Mau Mau Uprising, the records included confirmation of "the extent of the violence inflicted on suspected Mau Mau rebels" [] in British detention camps documented in Caroline Elkins' study.
Commenting on the papers, David Anderson stated that the "documents were hidden away to protect the guilty", [] and "that the extent of abuse now being revealed is truly disturbing".
Allegations about beatings and violence were widespread. Basically you could get away with murder. It was systematic", Anderson said.
Bennett said that "the British Army retained ultimate operational control over all security forces throughout the Emergency", and that its military intelligence operation worked "hand in glove" with the Kenyan Special Branch "including in screening and interrogations in centres and detention camps".
The Kenyan government sent a letter to Hague insisting that the UK government was legally liable for the atrocities. It is time that the mockery of justice that was perpetrated in this country at that time, should be, must be righted.
I feel ashamed to have come from a Britain that did what it did here [in Kenya]. Thirteen boxes of "top secret" Kenya files are still missing. On 6 June , the foreign secretary, William Hague, told parliament that the UK government had reached a settlement with the claimants.
The Government will also support the construction of a memorial in Nairobi to the victims of torture and ill-treatment during the colonial era.
It is often argued that Mau Mau was suppressed as a subject for public discussion in Kenya during the periods under Kenyatta and Daniel arap Moi because of the key positions and influential presence of some loyalists in government, business and other elite sectors of Kenyan society post Members of Mau Mau are currently recognised by the Kenyan Government as freedom-independence heroes and heroines who sacrificed their lives in order to free Kenyans from colonial rule.
This official celebration of Mau Mau is in marked contrast to a post-colonial norm of Kenyan governments rejection of the Mau Mau as a symbol of national liberation.
It was also the name of another militant group that sprang up briefly in the spring of ; the group was broken up during a brief operation from 26 March to 30 April.
Contract labourers are those who sign a contract of service before a magistrate, for periods varying from three to twelve months.
Casual labourers leave their reserves to engage themselves to European employers for any period from one day upwards. The phenomenon of squatters arose in response to the complementary difficulties of Europeans in finding labourers and of Africans in gaining access to arable and grazing land.
The alleged member or sympathiser of Mau Mau would be interrogated in order to obtain an admission of guilt—specifically, a confession that they had taken the Mau Mau oath—as well as for intelligence.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Kenyan insurgency, — This article is about the conflict in Kenya. For other uses, see Mau Mau disambiguation.
Mau Mau Uprising. The principal item in the natural resources of Kenya is the land, and in this term we include the colony's mineral resources.
It seems to us that our major objective must clearly be the preservation and the wise use of this most important asset.
You may travel through the length and breadth of Kitui Reserve and you will fail to find in it any enterprise, building, or structure of any sort which Government has provided at the cost of more than a few sovereigns for the direct benefit of the natives.
The place was little better than a wilderness when I first knew it 25 years ago, and it remains a wilderness to-day as far as our efforts are concerned.
If we left that district to-morrow the only permanent evidence of our occupation would be the buildings we have erected for the use of our tax-collecting staff.
The greater part of the wealth of the country is at present in our hands. This land we have made is our land by right—by right of achievement.
It is often assumed that in a conflict there are two sides in opposition to one another, and that a person who is not actively committed to one side must be supporting the other.
During the course of a conflict, leaders on both sides will use this argument to gain active support from the "crowd".
In reality, conflicts involving more than two persons usually have more than two sides, and if a resistance movement is to be successful, propaganda and politicization are essential.
Between and , when the fighting was at its worst, the Kikuyu districts of Kenya became a police state in the very fullest sense of that term.
Our sources have produced nothing to indicate that Kenyatta, or his associates in the UK, are directly involved in Mau Mau activities, or that Kenyatta is essential to Mau Mau as a leader, or that he is in a position to direct its activities.
Main article: Swynnerton Plan. It would be difficult to argue that the colonial government envisioned its own version of a gulag when the Emergency first started.
Colonial officials in Kenya and Britain all believed that Mau Mau would be over in less than three months. One courageous judge in Nairobi explicitly drew the parallel: Kenya's Belsen, he called one camp.
In a half-circle against the reed walls of the enclosure stand eight young, African women. There's neither hate nor apprehension in their gaze. It's like a talk in the headmistress's study; a headmistress who is firm but kindly.
The number of cases of pulmonary tuberculosis which is being disclosed in Prison and Detention Camps is causing some embarrassment.
Short rations, overwork, brutality, humiliating and disgusting treatment and flogging—all in violation of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
At the end of , the Administration were faced with the serious problem of the concealment of terrorists and supply of food to them. This was widespread and, owing to the scattered nature of the homesteads, fear of detection was negligible; so, in the first instance, the inhabitants of those areas were made to build and live in concentrated villages.
This first step had to be taken speedily, somewhat to the detriment of usual health measures and was definitely a punitive short-term measure.
Whilst they [the Kikuyu] could not be expected to take kindly at first to a departure from their traditional way of life, such as living in villages, they need and desire to be told just what to do.
From the health point of view, I regard villagisation as being exceedingly dangerous and we are already starting to reap the benefits.
We knew the slow method of torture [at the Mau Mau Investigation Center] was worse than anything we could do.
Special Branch there had a way of slowly electrocuting a Kuke—they'd rough up one for days. Once I went personally to drop off one gang member who needed special treatment.
I stayed for a few hours to help the boys out, softening him up. Things got a little out of hand. By the time I cut his balls off, he had no ears, and his eyeball, the right one, I think, was hanging out of its socket.
Too bad, he died before we got much out of him. See also: British war crimes. 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, ostensibly to gather intelligence for military operations and as court evidence.
Mau Mau fighters,. The horrors they practiced included the following: decapitation and general mutilation of civilians, torture before murder, bodies bound up in sacks and dropped in wells, burning the victims alive, gouging out of eyes, splitting open the stomachs of pregnant women.
No war can justify such gruesome actions. In man's inhumanity to man, there is no race distinction. The Africans were practicing it on themselves.
There was no reason and no restraint on both sides. Main article: Lari massacre. If we are going to sin, we must sin quietly.
Main article: Foreign and Commonwealth Office migrated archives. Main criticism we shall have to meet is that 'Cowan plan' [] which was approved by Government contained instructions which in effect authorised unlawful use of violence against detainees.
Partisan questions about the Mau Mau war have. How historically necessary was Mau Mau? Did its secretive violence alone have the power to destroy white supremacy?
Did Mau Mau aim at freedom for all Kenyans? Has the self-sacrificial victory of the poor been unjustly forgotten, and appropriated by the rich?
We are determined to have independence in peace, and we shall not allow hooligans to rule Kenya. We must have no hatred towards one another. Mau Mau was a disease which had been eradicated, and must never be remembered again.
Retrieved 8 March Retrieved 12 February BBC News. Retrieved 23 July Unbowed: a memoir. Alfred A. The investigations of the Kenya Land Commission of — are a case study in such lack of foresight, for the findings and recommendations of this commission, particularly those regarding the claims of the Kikuyu of Kiambu, would serve to exacerbate other grievances and nurture the seeds of a growing African nationalism in Kenya".
Retrieved 11 April Francis Hall, an officer in the Imperial British East Africa Company and after whom Fort Hall was named, asserted: "There is only one way to improve the Wakikuyu [and] that is wipe them out; I should be only too delighted to do so, but we have to depend on them for food supplies.
Naked spearmen fall in swathes before machine-guns, without inflicting a single casualty in return. Meanwhile the troops burn all the huts and collect all the live stock within reach.
Resistance once at an end, the leaders of the rebellion are surrendered for imprisonment. Risings that followed such a course could hardly be repeated.
A period of calm followed. And when unrest again appeared it was with other leaders. Strayer 9 February The New York Times.
Retrieved 20 March
The failure of KAU to attain any significant reforms or redress of grievances from the colonial authorities shifted Dresden Elbepark political initiative to younger and more militant figures within the native Kenyan trade union movement, among the squatters on the settler estates in the Rift Valley and in KAU branches in Nairobi and the Kikuyu districts of central province. This strategy had a limited effect on the Nackt Dating Show Mau fighters and only a handful were killed, but their position was tenuous enough that the constant disruption further weakened their forces. Did Mau Mau Mosasaurus at freedom for all Kenyans? Such communication included propaganda and disinformation, which Taboo Kinox by such names as the Kinongo Google Streamingdesigned to encourage fellow detainees not to give up hope and Pokemon Deutsch to minimise the number of those who confessed their oath and cooperated with Weil Ich Ein Mädchen Bin authorities. By Januarythe camp had a population of detainees, of whom were held in a secluded "closed camp". The vast majority of Kenyan employees' violations of labour legislation were settled with "rough justice" meted out by their employers.
