Brilliant. Thanx for sharing Kabir. I associate myself wholly with Mukoma's
opinion and it is long overdue. I will follow the suit and I think other
victims of colonialism should seek compensation for damages and past atrocities. I
have long believed that Reparations ought to be refined and focused
severally rather than the friggin diluted concoction it had been all along. There is
a valid case to be made for remedy by Great Britain, Germany, Portugal,
Spain, Italy, and Australia. We must not however wait for the remedy to develop
ourselves. Our continued diligence will be the wild card in yielding remedy.
Thanx again for sharing.
Haroun Masoud. MQDT. AL Khairawan. Darbo.
In a message dated 11/3/2007 4:49:30 P.M. Mountain Daylight Time,
[log in to unmask] writes:
OPINION
Kenyans should be compensated for atrocities suffered during the Mau Mau
rebellion.
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-ngugi3nov03,0,4270221.story?coll=la-
opinion-rightrail
By Mukoma Wa Ngugi
November 3, 2007
Lately, saving Africa has become very fashionable. Hollywood celebrities are
adopting African babies. Bono and Bob Geldof sing for Africa. And Bill
Gates, former heads of state Bill Clinton and Tony Blair and a sprinkling of
former World Bank officials have probably caused traffic jams there as they tout
their campaigns.
Put aside the irony of Clinton doing little for Africa when holding the most
powerful office in the world and now, as a private citizen, wanting to save
the whole continent. In the "save Africa" caldron, you will find two active
ingredients missing: Africans and modern African history.
Africans want former colonial powers to be held accountable for a history of
suffering. One example is the lawsuit the Kenya Human Rights Commission
plans to file in the British High Court on behalf of the survivors of what came
to be known as the Mau Mau rebellion. (The commission is a nonpartisan,
nongovernmental organization focused on human rights in Kenya.) The colonial
government declared the rebellion a "state of emergency," and it lasted from 1952
until the rebels' defeat in 1960.
Kenya had been officially made a British colony in 1920. The rebellion began
with the Kikuyu -- the largest ethnic group -- fighting against British rule
and British settlers' land grabbing. Some Kikuyu leaders mobilized fighters
against the British through oaths of allegiance (the term "Mau Mau" was
coined by the British, likely from the Kikuyu word for oath).
The British response, through the British army, the Royal Air Force and the
help of Kenyan collaborators, was brutal, with innocents swept up along with
the rebels. The official number of fighters killed was 11,000, but some
estimate that tens of thousands more Kenyans died and as many as 1 million --
mostly women, children and elderly men -- were detained.
Because recent authoritarian governments suppressed Mau Mau history and
threatened survivors with arrest if they tried to organize, the Mau Mau movement
was not legally recognized in Kenya until 2003.
The lawsuit, to be filed in February, will now seek justice, alleging that
from 1952 to 1960, the Kenyan colonial government killed and tortured Mau Mau
detainees. A background document I obtained from the Kenya Human Rights
Commission argues that because the injuries "were sustained in the detention camps
of the Kenya colonial government" operating under the mandate of the
British, it follows that the British government is liable. Further, it claims the
British did not do enough to prevent the torture and abuse.
In her Pulitzer Prize-winning book, "Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of
Britain's Gulag in Kenya," historian Caroline Elkins estimates that more
than 100,000 people died in the detention camps in the process of
"re-education." Thousands of others were shot in combat, hanged or killed as collateral
damage, and the majority of the Kikuyu people were interned.
The lawsuit raises several questions: Can and should one generation be held
accountable for another's atrocities? Should citizens be held accountable --
through the taxes they pay -- for the atrocities committed by their
governments? Should corporations and banks be held accountable for profits gained
through past actions that hurt others?
Historical precedence answers in the affirmative. For example, Germany and
Austria have paid billions of dollars to the Israeli government and individual
Holocaust survivors for World War II atrocities.
But there is also a compelling moral argument for Mau Mau reparations.
Philosophers have argued that, as moral beings, we have three sets of duties:
helping those in need, doing no harm and alleviating problems inherited from the
past to prevent further harm in the future.
We, the living, become accountable for the past, for the sake of the future.
For a British citizen, the wealth created by colonialism (not to mention
slavery) is the foundation of today's well-being in much the same way that the
poverty created by colonialism is the foundation of the infamous Nairobi
slums. Poverty and wealth can both be inherited.
If a society continues to gain from a past atrocity, doesn't it have a duty
to the children of the victims?
Forgiveness, justice and healing are closely related. In the Truth and
Reconciliation Commission of South Africa, the perpetrator of the crime had to own
up to the wrongs of the past, then ask for forgiveness.
But the perpetrators also should give back (a step missing in the South
African commission), in one form or another, what they took from the victims.
The whole truth, an apology and a tangible gesture of righting the wrong
would go a long way in making this living history truly a thing of the past.
Mukoma Wa Ngugi, a Kenyan writer and author of "Hurling Words at
Consciousness," is a political columnist for the BBC's Focus on Africa magazine.
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