Thursday, November 29, 2012

USA Africa Dialogue Series - Mau Mau massacre cover-up detailed in newly-opened secret files

Mau Mau massacre cover-up detailed in newly-opened secret files

Documents reveal how British officials concocted cover story to
explain death of men killed by prison guards in Kenya

Ian Cobain, Richard Norton-Taylor
guardian.co.uk, Friday 30 November 2012 00.00 GMT


The full story of the British government's attempts to mount a cover-
up following a massacre of unarmed prisoners during the 1950s Mau Mau
insurgency in Kenya has been disclosed with the declassification of
hitherto secret files from the era.

The documents - held for five decades in a secret Foreign Office
archive - show that ministers and officials were claiming that the men
had died after drinking contaminated water long after they had been
informed of the truth: that all 11 had been been beaten to death.

They were also aware that the deaths at Hola prison camp in the south
east of the country resulted from a programme of systematic abuse that
prison guards had been authorised to inflict on Mau Mau prisoners in
an attempt to break their will and force them to submit to authority
of the colonial government.

The files, now available to the public at the National Archives at
Kew, south west London, are among the latest batch to be transferred
after the foreign office acknowledged the existence of its secret
archive, during litigation brought on behalf of Mau Mau veterans at
the high court in London.

Among the files are a series of exchanges between Sir Evelyn Baring,
governor of Kenya, and Alan Lennox-Boyd, secretary of state for the
colonies, in March 1959. In the first, sent the day after the
massacre, Baring stated that the men had died "after they had drunk
water from a water cart". He added that although some of the dead
"were suffering from slight bruises" following a scuffle, "there is
not the slightest indication that that any force used had any
connection with any of the deaths". A press release to this effect was
then published in Nairobi.

In fact, prison officers and guards had been authorised to beat Mau
Mau detainees if they refused to carry out work at the country's
prison camps, with the colony's attorney general, Eric Griffith-Jones,
rewriting local law in order to decrimininalise such assaults.
Documents transferred to Kew from the secret archive earlier this year
show that this redrafting was done in secret, with Griffith-Jones
warning Baring: "If we are going to sin, we must sin quietly."

Another document made public shows that more than a week after being
informed that post-mortem examinations had shown that the men had been
beaten to death - with some suffering fractured skulls and jaws, and
several dying from organ failure brought on by shock - Lennox-Boyd
planned to deploy the "water cart" cover-up while facing questions in
the House of Commons from Barbara Castle, the Labour MP who was
campaigning for an end to the mistreatment of Mau Mau prisoners.

"We fully recognise there can be no legal liability upon you but
public opinion is extremely sensitive on Hola problem, and Kenya
government are widely regarded rightly or wrongly as under a moral
obligation for the deaths," Lennox-Boyd wrote to Baring. "We could I
fear maintain a rigid stand on the legal rights and wrongs at best
only at the cost of a great deal of bitter and unnecessary political
trouble here. I am sure you will agree we should try to let this
unhappy incident drop out of sight as soon as possible. If a
'niggardly' attitude is taken this will be impossible".

Baring advised Lennox-Boyd to avoid the water cart claim, and
suggested he should simply evade the question on the grounds that it
would be "inappropriate" to anticipate the outcome of an inquest.

The colonial authorities then decided that they should scour their
files for evidence that the dead men were criminals. When it was
discovered that none of them had been convicted of committing any
criminal offence, and had been held without trial because of their
support for the insurgency, Baring instructed that "an exercise should
be done on the dossiers" in order provide some useful material. He
also suggested that they should secure an opinion that the dead men
may have been more susceptible to injuries as a result of suffering
scurvy.

When the inquest was held, witnesses described how the men had been
sitting down, refusing to dig an irrigation ditch, when the guards
began beating them with clubs. The prison's superintendent, Michael
Sullivan, and his deputy, Walter Coutts, had been present. When called
to give evidence, Coutts attempted to tell the magistrate who was
presiding over the inquest that the 11 men had "willed themselves to
death".

The magistrate concluded that the men had been beaten to death, but
that the question of criminal charges was a matter for the attorney
general, Griffith-Jones - the official who had altered the law in
order to permit the beatings. Griffith-Jones concluded that nobody
should be prosecuted, as it was impossible to ascertain which guards
had inflicted which blows.

The secret archive was held at Hanslope Park, north of London, and
acknowledged only once historians employed by lawyers representing the
Mau Mau veterans realised that some documents from the era were being
withheld. One of those claimants, Wambuga Wa Nyingi, was among the
prisoners who survived the beating at Hola.

the Hanslop Park archives holds late-colonial files from many other
parts of the world. However, many of the most damning documents were
destroyed on the instructions of ministers.


© 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies.
All rights reserved.


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