In the spirited and earnest attempts to hold the United Kingdom (UK) accountable for the dark atrocities it committed in Kenya, Kenyan lawyers have filed their petition to the UN Human Rights Council so that the UK can compensate those who were forcefully evicted from their land which they rightfully owned.
The British colonial era is one of the points in history that reveal how wicked the imperialist forces were by grabbing land illegally. Any country occupied by the British settlers in Africa saw the natives being relegated to unproductive and infertile land.
The Kenyans are demanding compensation from Britain. They claim that they were brutally forced off their land in what is now Kericho County in the fertile Rift Valley. When the land was seized, horrific acts of human rights abuses ensued and the natives were scattered. They were resettled in native reserves, where land could not be fully utilized. The land that the British seized belonged to the Kipsigis community.
The Kenyans were left without the capability to fully own their land. This is because the land that the colonial settlers had seized was later leased out to several multinationals, including tea companies.
For the elderly who suffered directly from this violent dispossession, it is only right for Britain to compensate them as an act of accountability. Hundreds of elderly people were forcefully removed from their rightful land in the most vicious and brutal ways.
In 2013, elderly Kenyans who were victims of the suppression and repression of the Mau Mau rebellion were awarded close to £20 million in compensation . Those who had been tortured when the British were quelling the Mau Mau uprising were compensated. The oldest claimant at that time was 91-years-old.
Revolting against British rule in the 1950s in Kenya was tantamount to a death sentence. There were rapes, abductions, tortures and killings inflicted on those who were against British rule.
The fight to hold European colonizers accountable for the horrors they committed in Africa is an endless one. A fight that is often met with a lot of resistance from the white capitalist establishment.
The legacies of this dispossession are still manifesting themselves in the present day, and it is not for the benefit of the black person.
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