Editing Mau Mau rebellion (section)

==== 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.