Saturday 9 April 2011

An Old Evil Still Craving Blood

A group of octogenarian Kenyan ex-Mau-Mau terrorists have begun a legal action in London's high court, seeking compensation for alleged abuse they suffered in the 1950’s, when Britain was still the colonial rulers, and they were part of a Communist backed insurgency. As this case continues we can be sure there will be some very selective media reporting of details revealed in the high court.

Apart from the couple of left wing historians who are supporting the plaintiffs, and wilfully blind to any facts which conflict with their anti-British prejudice, anyone who has studied the uprising will be nauseated by the obscenity of any member of the Mau- Mau accusing anyone else of an atrocity.

The media sneer that only 32 whites were killed by the Mau-Mau, but fail to mention the tens of thousand of blacks they killed (estimates range from 11,000 to over 100,000) and how they were killed. It is hard to read of incidents such as the Lari massacre, where 120 Christian Kikuyu were either burnt alive or hacked to bits in a single act, which horrifyingly foreshadowed events in Rwanda almost 40 years later, without questioning the humanity of those capable of doing such things.

Of course, we will not hear of that, nor will be hear of the oath taking ceremonies, where the use of victims body parts, usually cut from victims whist they still lived, combined sorcery with a particularly African form of terror.

The Oath taking made the killers all the more deadly. A man who has swallowed the eye plucked from a living child whilst promising to kill for his God, Ngai, will not easily surrender or abandon his deadly cause, and regular exposure to such horrors will inure him to the savagery he must in turn commit.

It is also unlikely, we will hear that the Colonial government were faced with one of the first recorded instances of biological warfare being used by insurgents, when herds of cattle owned by loyal African tribes were poisoned by the insurgents in order intimidate their black owners and punish them from supporting the Colonial government.

In truth, the vast majority of the native Kenyans were loyal to the Colonial government, but every man woman and child was under threat from violent terrorists capable of the most unspeakable savagery.

There may have only been thirty two white victims, but their deaths were marked by inhuman levels of brutal cruelty

Dr Esme Ruck, well known for providing free medicine to Africans, had her unborn child ripped from her belly, her husband Roger was hacked to death with machetes and her six year old son Michael was dispatched amongst his toy trains and Teddy bears, his tiny body partially skinned.

One of Michael’s killers was a man who had worked for the Ruck’s for years, but who had joined in the slaughter knowing what would face him if he didn’t. An incentive reinforced by the fact that a Kikuyu house servant who did not participate was also killed. It is thus that terror begets terror.

Even younger than Michael Ruck was four year old Andrew Stevens who met a similar fate, chopped to death while playing in the family garden a few months later. Unless his parents still live, who still remembers that young life?

Other deaths were just as savage but their victims took longer to die. After being forced to watch the rape and murder of his wife Arundell Gray Leakey was force marched to the lower slopes of Mount Kenya, where the Kikuyu believe Ngai resides. He was then disembowelled and buried upside down, alive.

In another act of unspeakable barbarism, two teen aged boys Geoffrey Danby and Christopher Robin Twohey, 15 and 13 respectively were captured while out riding their bicycles and sexually tortured for some hours before they were killed. To the mau mau a young white boy was a prize to be enjoyed.

A now long neglected gravestone in Nairobi's City Park cemetery (pictured above) is all that now stands testimony to the short lives and cruel deaths of those children. It reads
“In proud and loving memory of two innocent victims, murdered by the mau mau on April 20th 1955, Geoffrey Danby aged 15 years and his friend Christopher Robin Twohey aged 13 years, suffer little children to come unto me”.
You can be sure there will no mention of those two boys or any of the Mau-Mau's other victims in the news reports you will hear about this case.

Thousands of Africans were killed in even crueller ways, the horrors inflicted upon them intended to punish them and terrify others.

What chance is there that the craven, lying, media will publish a word of that? This is not the truth they want to tell, these are not the facts they want the public to know.

When interviewing hate raddled Harvard educated “historian” Caroline Elkins, the author of Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of Britain's Gulag in Kenya (a title referenced in some of the pre-prepared signs carried by the plaintiffs) who is supporting the claims of atrocities, and who's "research" effectively led to this case being launched, Channel 4's Jon Snow behaved as if he was in the presence of some great authority on African history and not the politically driven hack many of her contemporaries (and betters) consider her to be.

Tellingly there was mention the serious criticism of Elkin's work has received, such as fellow historian James Mitchell's comment that Elkins “doesn't let facts stand in the way of a good rant.” or David Elstein assessment of her research that that her casualty figures are derived from an idiosyncratic reading of census figures and a tendentious interpretation of the fortified village scheme.

Elkins' Harvard colleague Niall Ferguson, who's acclaimed if chilling series “Civilisation – is the West History?” is currently running on Channel 4 politely described Elkin's book as a highly "sensationalist account of the rebellion". Meanwhile Rutger's university Professor Susan Carruthers accused Elkins of being excessively condescending towards the Kikuyu whilst casting the white settlers as “cartoonish grotesques”

There was of course no mention of that or that demographer John Blacker writing in African Affairs demonstrated in detail that Elkins' estimates of casualties were grossly over estimated.

No doubt both Snow and Elkins would view the attacks by white academics as inspired by racism, however, they are not alone Kenyan historian Bethwell Ogot, currently the chancellor of Moi University, accused Elkins of being ideologically “incapable of seeing atrocities on the part of the mau mau”. Ogot goes on to say of the mau mau:
“..assaulted old people, women and children. 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 practising it on themselves."
However, such facts will not appear in the media reporting of this case, and probably not in the increasingly truth free environment of a British Court

Yet it is on the politically motivated words of “historians” such as Caroline Elkins that this prosecution and the reporting of it is based.

The truth is that the colonial government were faced with one of the most brutal uprisings in British history, when thousands of innocent citizens under British protection were being slaughtered. However, far from the racist caricatures penned by Ms. Elkins, justice continued to be applied fairly the courts regularly threw out prosecution evidence in one instance 48 men facing the death penalty had their convictions overturned at just one appeal hearing.

Of course the approach taken was tough, it had to be, and there certainly was some mistreatment, however, here we come to another lie which the media and the pretend historians will tell, or more likely, allow to be perceived.

The media will find ways of suggesting that any brutality which captured Mau Mau terrorists did suffer was inflicted on them by white men. In fact the vast majority of all violence on both sides during the uprising was black on black. The mau mau had especially targeted the families of loyal black policemen and soldiers, and some retaliation may have been enacted when they were captured. However, the images of white men torturing blacks which the media is seeking to evoke are complete fantasy.

Of course this is not the first such trial, remember the lurid stories of British soldiers who had supposedly been raping hundreds of Kenyan woman? You perhaps will not remember how quietly those stories were dropped when it all turned out to be a pack of lies.

Our history is being rewritten by charlatanism and people who hate us, this includes the history of our empire, it is done to undermine, to damage and to destroy us. This in itself is a crime, but it is a crime which becomes an obscenity when truly evil men and women, such as those behind the Mau Mau atrocities can come forward claiming compensation and be treated as victims by corrupt historians and a by a debased and lying media.

10 comments:

The Watcher on the Wall said...

Sarah you certainly have a knack for evoking memories. The Mau Mau Emergency was my first African conflict - what a long time ago that was!
Mau Mau was Britain's first [and last] black African post-WW2 insurgency and it caused quite a headline-grabbing stir at the time. And since Kenya was a Crown Colony, it was also the last such event that was oversighted and bumbled by Whitehall. For example, its first response was to send a warship to Mombasa - which is about as useful as sending a nuclear submarine to Torquay after an terrorist act in Glasgow: but you get the picture.
Your piece is quite right regarding the death of White civilians - more of them died in motor accidents in Nairobi over the same period than at the hands of Mau Mau. But it was the manner of their deaths which was so horrific. Your piece is also right on the money in stating the bulk of deaths were incurred by black civilians - but that inconvenient truth has been brushed away by the Kikuyu politicians who gained power on independence in 1963.
That a bunch of Kuks now expect compensation is not surprising. A more self-confident Britain would simply dismiss their claim on the basis that any actions taken by Her Majesty's authorities were in full accordance with Emergency Regulations signed into law by the Governor with approval by HM Government of the day. However I'm sure that their hopes will met by an audience with Mr Cameron at which he will tender his apologies and a generous cheque.
For those readers wanting to know more of this interesting episode of British colonial history without any revisionist PC drivel, there are a few newsreel clips on Youtube, plus I can recommend Fred Majdalany's "State of Emergency: The full story of Mau Mau" [1963] - long out of print but worth a hunt - and Robert Ruark's novel "Something of Value" - somewhat melodramatic but he was there at the time so the basic facts ring true and he captures the atmosphere well.
Incidentally after some initial success Mau Mau was confined to the Mt Kenya/Abedare area in which it was finally run to ground by the Kenya Police. Many UK conscripts saw service in Kenya and regulars were able to secure the main towns, but it was the Kenya Police, Kenya Regiment, KAR and, above all, local tribesmen and "turned" Mau Mau working with the authorities that won the day.

Anonymous said...

Sara...

I believe I came across a copy of Imperial Reckoning at a bookstore some months ago. It was on the remainder table. I thought about buying it but decided the point of view was a bit much...as in forced. I remember the American author to be a Prof up in New England.

It may have been on the flyleaf that mention was made of an Italian family that had arrived in Kenya as immigrants, and two days after their arrival, they were all hacked to death by the Mau-Mau. I was seven years in 1955 so remember nothing from the American papers of this at that time.

Don't like them. But hey, its all swag...you can't get if you don't ask. As I understand it, the four blacks in this articles picture were Mau-Mau who were victims of the Brits? Gotta give them credit for BRASS...

Sarah Maid of Albion said...

Thank you watcher on the Wall, I am pleased I have managed to give an accurate, if brief, account of the events, it something which has long interested me. I will look up those books you mention, I wish I could lay my hands on the official HM Government report on the uprising, but that has completely vanished.

This article was partly a repeat of a previous article I wrote called "The Deadly Dream of Uhuru"
http://sarahmaidofalbion.blogspot.com/2010/02/deadly-dream-of-uhuru.html

Which linked what happened in Kenya to what is (and could) happen in South Africa.

I know it is long ago, but we must not let history be rewritten, because it is an attack on us.

Sarah Maid of Albion said...

@ Anonymous 19:59

The Italian family were the Meloncellis, a mother and two children Mario 11 and Maria 10, they had indeed only just arrived in Kenya to join the children's father.

I am pleased you saved your money rather than buying Elkins' book, you will find more factual accuracy in Harry Potter.

Sadly I suspect the elderly Mau Mau's claim will succeed, when it comes to such cases the British courts are no longer interested in the truth.

Arap Koskei said...

Watcher on the Wall has posted a very realistic view of the Mau Mau Emergency.

Well done Sarah, for telling it like it is. It is a sad reflection on humanity that so much these days is governed by political correctness which is totally out of hand, and by greed on the part of people such as those instigating and supporting this "claim for compensation". You can bet your bottom dollar that there are some unscrupulous relatives or politicians behind the claim - the claimants would see very little of any compensation!

As for apologising - maybe Cain must make an official apology for killing Abel - History is history and nothing will change that.

alanorei said...

Thank you, Sarah

I trust that this most informative article gets as wide a circulation as possible.

Overviews of Fred Majdalany's book can be found here.

It doesn't seem to be readily available online but thank you for the notification, Watcher.

brian boru said...

I lived in Rhodesia in the 1970s and the situation was quite similar there. Mugabe's thugs performed some of the most outrageous atrocities during the war, mostly against black civilians. The 'western' media carefully ignored it all, while publishing outlandish accusations against the Rhodesians. We see the same story in South Africa today. There never seems to be a shortage of such creatures as Elkins in their university ivory towers to spew lies and slanders against the creators and protectors of civilisation.

misterfox said...

The Watcher on the Wall -
I hope this helps:

http://www.questia.com/library/book/state-of-emergency-the-full-story-of-mau-mau-by-fred-majdalany.jsp?CRID=bp_state_of_emergency_the_full_story_of_mau_mau_by_fred_majdalany&OFFID=se1&KEY=bp_state_of_emergency%3a_the_full_story_of_mau_mau

The Watcher on the Wall said...

In a similar theme, an even worse insurgency broke out in March 1961 in North West Angola [Portuguese West Africa]. This is when African conflict got personal for me and I weep for those Portuguese whose lives and hopes were blighted by a conflict that spread throughout their African provinces in the years thereafter.

Truly one could not wish for more brave, hardworking and generous people than the average Portuguese of the day - many of whom had gone to Africa in the expectation of bettering themselves from a homeland that was the poorest country in Europe and who lived humble lives on hardscrabble farms cut out of the virgin bush at a level not too far above those of the African tribes people around them.

Here is a link to a website featuring images from March 1961. Warning! The photos are pretty graphic but even these pull the punch since in one horrific episode, Portuguese women were gang raped before being tied down and passed through the blade of a sawmill.

http://ultramar.terraweb.biz/Imagens/Angola_Quitexe_47anos.htm#Fotos_de_Augusto_Cabrita_

Anonymous said...

http://ultramar.terraweb.biz/Imagens/Angola_Quitexe_

The link is bad friend