Thousands of Mau Mau suspects were detained in prison camps Legal action taken against the British government to secure compensation for four Kenyans allegedly tortured during the Mau Mau uprising will cast the spotlight on one of the Empire's bloodiest conflicts.
The uprising is now regarded in Kenya as one of the most significant steps towards a Kenya free from British rule.The Mau Mau fighters were mainly drawn from Kenya's major ethnic grouping, the Kikuyu.
More than a million strong, by the start of the 1950s the Kikuyu had been increasingly economically marginalised as years of white settler expansion ate away at their land holdings.
Since 1945, nationalists like Jomo Kenyatta of the Kenya African Union (KAU) had been pressing the British government in vain for political rights and land reforms, with valuable holdings in the cooler Highlands to be redistributed to African owners.
But radical activists within the KAU set up a splinter group and organised a more militant kind of nationalism.
By 1952 Kikuyu fighters, along with some Embu and Meru recruits, were attacking political opponents and raiding white settler farms and destroying livestock. Mau Mau supporters took oaths, binding them to their cause.
In October 1952 the British declared a state of emergency and began moving army reinforcements into Kenya.
So began an aggressively fought counter-insurgency, which lasted until 1960 when the state of emergency was ended.
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End Quote Professor David Anderson Oxford UniversityBasically you could get away with murder - it was systematic”
The number killed in the uprising is a subject of much controversy. Officially the number of Mau Mau and other rebels killed was 11,000, including 1,090 convicts hanged by the British administration. Just 32 white settlers were killed in the eight years of emergency.
However, unofficial figures suggest a much larger number were killed in the counter-insurgency campaign. The Kenya Human Rights Commission has said 90,000 Kenyans were executed, tortured or maimed during the crackdown, and 160,000 were detained in appalling conditions.
David Anderson, professor of African Politics at Oxford University, says he estimates the death toll in the conflict to have been as high as 25,000.
He said: "Everything that could happen did happen. Allegations about beatings and violence were widespread. Basically you could get away with murder. It was systematic."Continued
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