Editing Mau Mau rebellion (section)

===Detention programme===
{{further|List of British Detention Camps during the Mau Mau Uprising}}
{{quote box
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| quote = It would be difficult to argue that the colonial government envisioned its own version of a gulag when the Emergency first started. Colonial officials in Kenya and Britain all believed that Mau Mau would be over in less than three months.<ref name="Elkins 2005 p125">{{Harvnb|Elkins|2005|p=125}}.</ref>
| source = —Caroline Elkins
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| sstyle = text-align: right;}}When the mass deportations of Kikuyu to the reserves began in 1953, Baring and Erskine ordered all Mau Mau suspects to be screened. Of the scores of screening camps which sprang up, only fifteen were officially sanctioned by the colonial government. Larger detention camps were divided into compounds. The screening centres were staffed by settlers who had been appointed temporary district-officers by Baring.<ref name="Elkins 2005 pp62-90">{{Harvnb|Elkins|2005|pp=62–90}}.</ref>
<!--Christopher Todd, the first settler given such an appointment, had a major role in devising the screening strategy. Todd explained that the settlers had decided to "take the law into their own hands" when they didn't feel enough was done by the colonial government to combat the Mau Mau threat; the colonial government's response to settler vigilantism was to encourage settlers to join the government's Kenya Police Reserve—once part of the official security apparatus, the settlers would gain legal protection.<ref name="Elkins 2005 pp62-90"/>-->

Thomas Askwith, the official tasked with designing the British 'detention and rehabilitation' programme during the summer and autumn of 1953, termed his system the ''Pipeline''.<ref name="Elkins 2005 p109">{{Harvnb|Elkins|2005|p=109}}.</ref> The British did not initially conceive of rehabilitating Mau Mau suspects through brute force and other ill-treatment—Askwith's final plan, submitted to Baring in October 1953, was intended as "a complete blueprint for winning the war against Mau Mau using socioeconomic and civic reform".<ref name="Elkins 2005 p108">{{Harvnb|Elkins|2005|p=108}}.</ref> What developed, however, has been described as a British [[gulag]].{{efn|The term ''gulag'' is used by David Anderson and Caroline Elkins. For Anderson, see his 2005 ''Histories of the Hanged'', p.&nbsp;7: "Virtually every one of the acquitted men ... would spend the next several years in the notorious detention camps of the Kenyan gulag"; for Elkins, see the UK edition of her 2005 book, ''Britain's Gulag: The Brutal End of Empire in Kenya''.}}

The Pipeline operated a white-grey-black classification system: 'whites' were co-operative detainees, and were repatriated back to the reserves; 'greys' had been oathed but were reasonably compliant, and were moved down the Pipeline to works camps in their local districts before release; and 'blacks' were the 'hard core' of Mau Mau. These were moved up the Pipeline to special detention camps. Thus a detainee's position in Pipeline was a straightforward reflection of how cooperative the Pipeline personnel deemed her or him to be. Cooperation was itself defined in terms of a detainee's readiness to confess their Mau Mau oath. Detainees were screened and re-screened for confessions and intelligence, then re-classified accordingly.<ref name="Elkins 2005 p136">{{Harvnb|Elkins|2005|p=136}}.</ref>

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| quote = [T]here is something peculiarly chilling about the way colonial officials behaved, most notoriously but not only in Kenya, within a decade of the liberation of the [Nazi] concentration camps and the return of thousands of emaciated British prisoners of war from the Pacific. One courageous judge in Nairobi explicitly drew the parallel: Kenya's Belsen, he called one camp.
<ref name="guardian_11042011">{{cite news |newspaper=[[The Guardian]] |date=11 April 2011 |title=Mau Mau abuse case: Time to say sorry |author=Editorial |url=https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/apr/11/mau-mau-empire-british-government-responsibility |access-date=14 April 2011 |archive-date=30 September 2013 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130930033329/http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/apr/11/mau-mau-empire-british-government-responsibility |url-status=live }}</ref>
| source = —''Guardian'' Editorial, 11 April 2011
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A detainee's journey between two locations along the Pipeline could sometimes last days. During transit, there was frequently little or no food and water provided, and seldom any sanitation. Once in camp, talking was forbidden outside the detainees' accommodation huts, though improvised communication was rife. Such communication included propaganda and disinformation, which went by such names as the ''Kinongo Times'', designed to encourage fellow detainees not to give up hope and so to minimise the number of those who confessed their oath and cooperated with camp authorities. Forced labour was performed by detainees on projects like the thirty-seven-mile-long South Yatta irrigation furrow.<ref name="Elkins 2005 pp154-91"/> Family outside and other considerations led many detainees to confess.<ref name="Peterson 2008 75_76,89,91">{{Harvnb|Peterson|2008|pp=75–76, 89, 91}}: "Some detainees, worried that the substance of their lives was draining away, thought their primary duty lay with their families. They therefore confessed to British officers, and sought an early release from detention. Other detainees refused to accept the British demand that they sully other people's reputations by naming those whom they knew to be involved in Mau Mau. This 'hard core' kept their mouths closed, and languished for years in detention. The battle behind the wire was not fought over detainees' loyalty to a Mau Mau movement. Detainees' intellectual and moral concerns were always close to home. ... British officials thought that those who confessed had broken their allegiance to Mau Mau. But what moved detainees to confess was not their broken loyalty to Mau Mau, but their devotion to their families. British officials played on this devotion to hasten a confession. ... The battle behind the wire was not fought between patriotic hard-core Mau Mau and weak-kneed, wavering, broken men who confessed. ... Both hard core and soft core had their families in mind."</ref>

During the first year after Operation Anvil, colonial authorities had little success in forcing detainees to co-operate. Camps and compounds were overcrowded, forced-labour systems were not yet perfected, screening teams were not fully coordinated, and the use of torture was not yet systematised.<ref name="Elkins 2005 p178">{{Harvnb|Elkins|2005|p=178}}.</ref> This failure was partly due to the lack of manpower and resources, as well as the vast numbers of detainees. Officials could scarcely process them all, let alone get them to confess their oaths. Assessing the situation in the summer of 1955, Alan Lennox-Boyd wrote of his "fear that the net figure of detainees may still be rising. If so the outlook is grim."<ref name="Elkins 2005 p178"/> Black markets flourished during this period, with the native Kenyan guards helping to facilitate trading. It was possible for detainees to bribe guards in order to obtain items or stay punishment.<ref name="Elkins 2005 pp154-91">{{Harvnb|Elkins|2005|pp=154–191}}.</ref>

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| quote = [T]he horror of some of the so-called Screening Camps now present a state of affairs so deplorable that they should be investigated without delay, so that the ever increasing allegations of inhumanity and disregard of the rights of the African citizen are dealt with and so that the Government will have no reason to be ashamed of the acts which are done in its own name by its own servants.<ref name="times_13042011a">{{cite news |newspaper=[[The Times]] |date=13 April 2011 |title=Taking on the Boss: The quiet whistleblowers on events in Kenya deserve praise |author=Editorial |url=https://www.thetimes.com/article/taking-on-the-boss-vhtsstk98f0 |access-date=13 April 2011 |archive-date=4 October 2012 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121004210454/http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/opinion/leaders/article2982973.ece |url-status=live }}</ref>
| source = —Letter from Police Commissioner Arthur Young to Governor Evelyn Baring, 22 November 1954
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==== Interrogations and confessions ====
By late 1955, however, the Pipeline had become a fully operational, well-organised system. Guards were regularly shifted around the Pipeline too in order to prevent relationships developing with detainees and so undercut the black markets, and inducements and punishments became better at discouraging fraternising with the enemy.<ref name="Elkins 2005 pp179-191">{{Harvnb|Elkins|2005|pp=179–191}}.</ref> The grinding nature of the improved detention and interrogation regimen began to produce results. Most detainees confessed, and the system produced ever greater numbers of spies and informers within the camps, while others switched sides in a more open, official fashion, leaving detention behind to take an active role in interrogations, even sometimes administering beatings.<ref name="Elkins 2005 pp179-191"/>

The most famous example of side-switching was Peter Muigai Kenyatta—Jomo Kenyatta's son—who, after confessing, joined screeners at Athi River Camp, later travelling throughout the Pipeline to assist in interrogations.<ref name="Elkins 2005 p148">{{Harvnb|Elkins|2005|p=148}}. It is debatable whether Peter Kenyatta was sympathetic to Mau Mau in the first place and therefore whether he truly switched sides.</ref> Suspected informers and spies within a camp were treated in the time-honoured Mau Mau fashion: the preferred method of execution was strangulation then mutilation: "It was just like in the days before our detention", explained one Mau Mau member later. "We did not have our own jails to hold an informant in, so we would strangle him and then cut his tongue out." The end of 1955 also saw screeners being given a freer hand in interrogation, and harsher conditions than straightforward confession were imposed on detainees before they were deemed 'cooperative' and eligible for final release.<ref name="Elkins 2005 pp179-191"/>

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| quote = In a half-circle against the reed walls of the enclosure stand eight young, African women. There's neither hate nor apprehension in their gaze. It's like a talk in the headmistress's study; a headmistress who is firm but kindly.<ref>{{cite news |url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_9449000/9449775.stm |author=Mike Thompson |title=Mau Mau blame 'goes right to the top' |work=Today |publisher=BBC |date=7 April 2011 |access-date=12 May 2011 |at=00:40–00:54 |archive-date=10 April 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110410213759/http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_9449000/9449775.stm |url-status=live }}</ref>
| source = —A contemporary BBC-description of screening
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While oathing, for practical reasons, within the Pipeline was reduced to an absolute minimum, as many new initiates as possible were oathed. A newcomer who refused to take the oath often faced the same fate as a recalcitrant outside the camps: they were murdered. "The detainees would strangle them with their blankets or, using blades fashioned from the corrugated-iron roofs of some of the barracks, would slit their throats", writes Elkins.<ref name="Elkins 2005 176to77">{{Harvnb|Elkins|2005|pp=176–177}}.</ref> The camp authorities' preferred method of capital punishment was public hanging. Commandants were told to clamp down hard on intra-camp oathing, with several commandants hanging anyone suspected of administering oaths.<ref name="Elkins 2005 pp179-191"/>

Even as the Pipeline became more sophisticated, detainees still organised themselves within it, setting up committees and selecting leaders for their camps, as well as deciding on their own "rules to live by". Perhaps the most famous compound leader was [[Josiah Mwangi Kariuki]]. Punishments for violating the "rules to live by" could be severe.<ref name="Elkins 2005 pp154-91"/>

European missionaries and native Kenyan Christians played their part by visiting camps to evangelise and encourage compliance with the colonial authorities, providing intelligence, and sometimes even assisting in interrogation. Detainees regarded such preachers with nothing but contempt.<ref name="Elkins 2005 pp171-177">{{Harvnb|Elkins|2005|pp=171–177}}.</ref>

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| quote = The number of cases of pulmonary tuberculosis which is being disclosed in Prison and Detention Camps is causing some embarrassment.<ref name="Elkins 2005 p144">{{Harvnb|Elkins|2005|p=144}}.</ref>
| source = —Memorandum to Commissioner of Prisons John 'Taxi' Lewis<br />
from Kenya's Director of Medical Services, 18 May 1954
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The lack of decent sanitation in the camps meant that epidemics of diseases such as [[typhoid]], [[dysentery]] and [[tuberculosis]] swept through them. Detainees would also develop vitamin deficiencies, for example [[scurvy]], due to the poor rations provided. Official medical reports detailing the shortcomings of the camps and their recommendations were ignored, and the conditions being endured by detainees were lied about and denied.<ref name="Elkins C5">{{Harvnb|Elkins|2005|loc=Chapter&nbsp;5: The Birth of Britain's Gulag}}.</ref><ref name="Curtis 2003 pp316-333">{{Harvnb|Curtis|2003|pp=[https://books.google.com/books?id=SvRhIh5sbWAC&pg=PA316 316–333]}}.</ref><ref>{{cite news |author1=Ian Cobain |author2=Peter Walker |newspaper=The Guardian |date=11 April 2011 |title=Secret memo gave guidelines on abuse of Mau Mau in 1950s |url=https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/apr/11/mau-mau-high-court-foreign-office-documents |access-date=13 April 2011 |quote=Baring informed Lennox-Boyd that eight European officers were facing accusations of a series of murders, beatings and shootings. They included: "One District Officer, murder by beating up and roasting alive of one African." Despite receiving such clear briefings, Lennox-Boyd repeatedly denied that the abuses were happening, and publicly denounced those colonial officials who came forward to complain. |archive-date=12 April 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110412173711/http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/apr/11/mau-mau-high-court-foreign-office-documents |url-status=live }}</ref> A British rehabilitation officer found in 1954 that detainees from Manyani were in "shocking health", many of them suffering from malnutrition,<ref name="Peterson 2008 p84">{{Harvnb|Peterson|2008|p=84}}.</ref> while Langata and GilGil were eventually closed in April 1955<ref name="Elkins 2005 p262">{{Harvnb|Elkins|2005|p=262}}.</ref> because, as the colonial government put it, "they were unfit to hold Kikuyu ... for medical epidemiological reasons".<ref name="Elkins 2005 p262"/>

While the Pipeline was primarily designed for adult males, a few thousand women and young girls were detained at an all-women camp at Kamiti, as well as a number of unaccompanied young children. Dozens of babies<ref name="Elkins 2005 pp151-152">{{Harvnb|Elkins|2005|pp=151–2}}.</ref> were born to women in captivity: "We really do need these cloths for the children as it is impossible to keep them clean and tidy while dressed in dirty pieces of sacking and blanket", wrote one colonial officer.<ref name="Elkins 2005 p227">{{Harvnb|Elkins|2005|p=227}}.</ref> Wamumu Camp was set up solely for all the unaccompanied boys in the Pipeline, though hundreds, maybe thousands, of boys moved around the adult parts of the Pipeline.

====Works camps====
{{quote box
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| quote = Short rations, overwork, brutality, humiliating and disgusting treatment and flogging—all in violation of the United Nations [[Universal Declaration of Human Rights]].<ref name="Curtis 2003 p327">{{Harvnb|Curtis|2003|p=[https://books.google.com/books?id=SvRhIh5sbWAC&pg=PA327 327]}}.</ref>
| source = —One colonial officer's description of British works camps
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| sstyle = text-align: right;}}There were originally two types of works camps envisioned by Baring: the first type were based in Kikuyu districts with the stated purpose of achieving the Swynnerton Plan; the second were punitive camps, designed for the 30,000 Mau Mau suspects who were deemed unfit to return to the reserves. These [[forced-labour camp]]s provided a much needed source of labour to continue the colony's infrastructure development.<ref name="Elkins 2005 p153">{{Harvnb|Elkins|2005|p=153}}.</ref>

Colonial officers also saw the second sort of works camps as a way of ensuring that any confession was legitimate and as a final opportunity to extract intelligence. Probably the worst works camp to have been sent to was the one run out of Embakasi Prison, for Embakasi was responsible for the [[Jomo Kenyatta International Airport|Embakasi Airport]], the construction of which was demanded to be finished before the Emergency came to an end. The airport was a massive project with an unquenchable thirst for labour, and the time pressures ensured the detainees' forced labour was especially hard.<ref name="Elkins 2005 pp179-191"/>