Country Watch
be moved down the Pipeline to work the forced- labor camps in their local districts; and “blacks” were committed Mau Mau followers who were moved up the Pipeline to special detention camps where they suffered unspeakable horrors.
The capture of Mau Mau leader Dedan Kimathi in 1956 and his execution for terrorism in 1957 marked the end of the Mau Mau rebellion. And while many Kenyans regarded the movement as a proud moment in their country’s history and an essential building block toward the inde- pendence they achieved in 1963, the British (as evidenced by the recent release of government documents), viewed that chapter of imperialism as an embarrassing black eye.
In 2006, lawyers from Leigh Day, the law firm representing the four Kenyans, submitted a Freedom of Information request for government documents pertaining to the suppression of the Mau Mau rebellion. The UK Foreign and Com- monwealth Office (FCO) first denied their exis- tence, stating that any existing records were on file with the National Archives. But due to the persistence of a small handful of FCO officers, as well as a witness statement by David Anderson, a professor of African Politics at Oxford Univer- sity who personally saw the files in December 2010, the “misplaced” papers were eventually uncovered in January 2011.
According to Justice McCombe of the UK High Court, the Mau Mau documents reveal substan- tial evidence of systemic torture of detainees. The detention camps in which the four claimants were placed were the sites of unimaginable suf- fering. If prisoners were unfortunate enough to survive the rampant outbreaks of disease due to the lack of medical and sanitation infrastructure, they were often subjected to ruthless torture in an effort to extract intelligence about the move- ments of the Mau Mau rebels. The files detail several tactics employed by British interrogators and their loyalist Kikuyu counterparts, including:
beatings, solitary confinement, starvation, cas- tration, whipping, burning alive, rape, sodomy, and forceful insertion of objects into orifices. Public hangings were also liberally used to send a message to potential trouble-makers.
Following the disclosure of the documents, the FCO denied responsibility for any colonial atroci- ties committed during the Mau Mau rebellion, claiming instead that all liability passed to the new Kenyan government upon gaining their in- dependence in 1963. But on July 21, 2011, the High Court disagreed with the FCO’s position and granted the claimants the right to sue for damages; with the four surviving Kenyans all in their 70s and 80s, their lawyers are hoping to get to trial as soon as possible. The true significance of the ruling still remains unknown, but many scholars believe it is not only an important step towards reconciliation, but also that it may have the potential to pave the way for future class ac- tion claims brought by those who suffered dur- ing times of imperial rule.
* Submitted by James Foster
Mexican Citizen Executed in Texas Despite Possible VCCR Violation In His Case
On July 7, 2011, the state of Texas executed Hum- berto Leal Garcia by lethal injection for the 1994 kidnapping, rape, and murder of a sixteen-year-old girl. Leal was a Mexican national who had lived in the United States since a young age, and he had been on death row for thirteen years. In Leal’s ap- plication for a stay of execution, he claimed his conviction was in violation of the Vienna Conven- tion on Consular Relations (1963) (hereinafter “VCCR”). The VCCR provides that foreign nation- als must be informed, without delay, of their right to communicate with their consulate when they are detained by law enforcement officials. It also requires law enforcement officials to notify the appropriate consulate if the foreign national so re- quests. Leal argued that he was not informed of
ILSA Quarterly » volume 20 » issue 1 » October 2011
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