Editing Mau Mau rebellion (section)

=== British war crimes ===
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| quote = We knew the slow method of torture [at the Mau Mau Investigation Center] was worse than anything we could do. Special Branch there had a way of slowly electrocuting a Kuke—they'd rough up one for days. Once I went personally to drop off one gang member who needed special treatment. I stayed for a few hours to help the boys out, softening him up. Things got a little out of hand. By the time I cut his balls off, he had no ears, and his eyeball, the right one, I think, was hanging out of its socket. Too bad, he died before we got much out of him.<ref name="Elkins 2005 p87">{{Harvnb|Elkins|2005|p=87}}.</ref>
| source = One settler's description of British interrogation. The extent to which such accounts can be taken at face value has been questioned.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Bethwell |first1=Ogot |title=Review: Britain's Gulag |journal=The Journal of African History |date=2005 |volume=46 |issue=3 |page=494}}</ref>
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}}{{See also|British war crimes}}

The British authorities suspended [[civil liberties]] in Kenya. Many Kikuyu were forced to move. According to British authorities 80,000 were [[internment|interned]]. [[Caroline Elkins]] estimated that between 160,000 and 320,000 were interned in [[List of British Detention Camps during the Mau Mau Uprising|detention camps]] also known as concentration camps.<ref name=Guard>{{Cite news |date=18 August 2016 |title=Mau Mau uprising: Bloody history of Kenya conflict |work=The Guardian |url=https://www.theguardian.com/news/2016/aug/18/uncovering-truth-british-empire-caroline-elkins-mau-mau |access-date=3 July 2021 |archive-date=1 June 2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190601152655/https://www.theguardian.com/news/2016/aug/18/uncovering-truth-british-empire-caroline-elkins-mau-mau |url-status=live }}</ref>{{efn|Other estimates are as high as 450,000 interned.{{Citation needed|reason=Which estimates?|date=September 2022}}}} Most of the rest—more than a million Kikuyu—were held in "enclosed villages" as part of the villagisation program. Although some were Mau Mau guerrillas, most were victims of [[collective punishment]] that colonial authorities imposed on large areas of the country. Thousands were beaten or [[sexual assault|sexually assaulted]] to extract information about the Mau Mau threat. Later, prisoners suffered even worse mistreatment in an attempt to force them to renounce their allegiance to the insurgency and to obey commands. Prisoners were questioned with the help of "slicing off ears, boring holes in eardrums, flogging until death, pouring paraffin over suspects who were then set alight, and burning eardrums with lit cigarettes."{{sfn|Curtis|2003|p=324}}  The use of castration and denying access to medical aid to the detainees by the British were also widespread and common.{{sfn|Curtis|2003|pp=324–330}}{{sfn|Elkins|2005|pp=124–145}}<ref>{{cite book |title=Histories of the Hanged: The Dirty War in Kenya and the End of Empire |pages=150–154 |publisher=W. W. Norton |author=David Anderson |date=23 January 2013}}</ref> As described by Ian Cobain of ''The Guardian'' in 2013:<blockquote>Among the detainees who suffered severe mistreatment was [[Hussein Onyango Obama]], the grandfather of [U.S. President] [[Barack Obama]]. According to his widow, British soldiers forced pins into his fingernails and buttocks and squeezed his testicles between metal rods. Two of the original five claimants who brought the test case against the British were castrated.<ref name="MAU">{{cite news |author=Cobain, Ian |url=https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/05/kenyan-mau-mau-payout-uk-regret-abuse |title=Kenya: UK Expresses Regret Over Abuse as Mau Mau Promised Payout |date=5 June 2013 |work=The Guardian |location=London |quote=Among the detainees who suffered severe mistreatment was Hussein Onyango Obama, the grandfather of Barack Obama. According to his widow, British soldiers forced pins into his fingernails and buttocks and squeezed his testicles between metal rods. Two of the original five claimants who brought the test case against the British were castrated. |access-date=12 December 2016 |archive-date=2 March 2017 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170302094811/https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/05/kenyan-mau-mau-payout-uk-regret-abuse |url-status=live }}</ref></blockquote>

The historian Robert Edgerton describes the methods used during the emergency: "If a question was not answered to the interrogator's satisfaction, the subject was beaten and kicked. If that did not lead to the desired confession, and it rarely did, more force was applied. Electric shock was widely used, and so was fire. Women were choked and held under water; gun barrels, beer bottles, and even knives were thrust into their vaginas. Men had beer bottles thrust up their rectums, were dragged behind Land Rovers, whipped, burned and bayoneted... Some police officers did not bother with more time-consuming forms of torture; they simply shot any suspect who refused to answer, then told the next suspect, to dig his own grave. When the grave was finished, the man was asked if he would now be willing to talk."<ref>{{cite book |first=R. |last=Edgerton |title=Mau Mau: An African Crucible |location=London |publisher=I.B. Tauris |year=1990 |pages=144–159 |isbn=1-85043-207-4}}</ref>

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| quote = [E]lectric shock was widely used, as well as cigarettes and fire. Bottles (often broken), gun barrels, knives, snakes, vermin, and hot eggs were thrust up men's rectums and women's vaginas. The screening teams whipped, shot, burned and mutilated Mau Mau suspects, ostensibly to gather intelligence for military operations and as court evidence.<ref name="Elkins 2005 p66">{{Harvnb|Elkins|2005|p=66}}.</ref>
| source = —Caroline Elkins
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In June 1957, [[Eric Griffith-Jones]], the attorney general of the British administration in Kenya, wrote to the [[List of colonial governors of Kenya|Governor]], [[Evelyn Baring, 1st Baron Howick of Glendale|Sir Evelyn Baring]], detailing the way the regime of abuse at the colony's detention camps was being subtly altered. He said that the mistreatment of the detainees is "distressingly reminiscent of conditions in [[Nazi Germany]] or [[Soviet Union|Communist Russia]]". Despite this, he said that in order for abuse to remain legal, Mau Mau suspects must be beaten mainly on their upper body, "vulnerable parts of the body should not be struck, particularly the spleen, liver or kidneys", and it was important that "those who administer violence ... should remain collected, balanced and dispassionate"; he also reminded the governor that "If we are going to sin", he wrote, "we must sin quietly."<ref name="MAU" /><ref>{{cite news |url=https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/05/kenyan-mau-mau-payout-uk-regret-abuse |title=Sins of colonialists lay concealed for decades in secret archive |date=18 April 2012 |work=The Guardian |location=London |access-date=12 December 2016 |archive-date=2 March 2017 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170302094811/https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/05/kenyan-mau-mau-payout-uk-regret-abuse |url-status=live }}</ref>

According to author [[Wangari Maathai]], three out of every four Kikuyu men were in detention in 1954. Maathai states that detainees were made to do forced labor and that their land was taken from them and given to collaborators. Maathai further states that the Home Guard in particular, raped women and had a reputation for cruelty in the form of terror and intimidation, whereas the Mau Mau soldiers were initially respectful of women.<ref>{{cite book|title=Unbowed: a memoir|author=Wangari Maathai|pages=65, 67|publisher=Alfred A. Knopf|date=2006|isbn=0307263487}}</ref> Only a small handful of rape cases went to trial. Fifty-six British soldiers and colonial police officers were tried for rape, of which 17 were convicted. The harshest sentences imposed were six-year sentences imposed on three British soldiers convicted of gang-raping a woman.<ref>{{Cite journal |last1=Anderson |first1=David M. |last2=Weis |first2=Julianne |date=2018 |title=The Prosecution of Rape in Wartime: Evidence from the Mau Mau Rebellion, Kenya 1952–60 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/26564585 |journal=Law and History Review |volume=36 |issue=2 |pages=267–294 |doi=10.1017/S0738248017000670 |issn=0738-2480 |jstor=26564585 |access-date=8 February 2024 |archive-date=8 February 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240208055326/https://www.jstor.org/stable/26564585 |url-status=live }}</ref>

====Chuka massacre====
The [[Chuka massacre]], which happened in [[Chuka, Kenya]], was perpetrated by members of the [[King's African Rifles]] B Company in June 1953 with 20 unarmed people killed during the Mau Mau uprising. Members of the 5th KAR B Company entered the Chuka area on 13 June 1953, to flush out rebels suspected of hiding in the nearby forests. Over the next few days, the regiment had captured and executed 20 people suspected of being Mau Mau fighters for unknown reasons. The people executed belonged to the [[Kikuyu Home Guard]]—a loyalist militia recruited by the British to fight the guerrillas. All of the soldiers involved in the Chuka patrols were placed under open arrest at Nairobi's Buller Camp, but were not prosecuted. Instead, only their commanding officer, Major Gerald Selby Lee Griffiths, stood trial. Furthermore, rather than risk bringing publicity to the incident, Griffiths was charged with the murder of two other suspects in a separate incident that had taken place several weeks earlier. He was acquitted, but following public outcry, Griffiths was then tried under six separate charges of torture and disgraceful conduct for torturing two unarmed detainees, including a man named Njeru Ndwega. At his court-martial, it was stated that Griffiths had made Ndwega take off his pants, before telling a teenage African private to castrate him. When the private, a 16-year-old Somali named Ali Segat, refused to do this, Griffiths instead ordered him to cut off Ndwega's ear, to which Segat complied.<ref>{{Cite magazine |date=1954-03-22 |title=KENYA: Court-Martial |url=https://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,819577,00.html |access-date=2024-03-21 |magazine=Time |language=en-US |issn=0040-781X |archive-date=21 March 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240321043152/https://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,819577,00.html |url-status=live }}</ref> On 11 March 1954, Griffiths was found guilty on five counts. He was sentenced to five years in prison and was [[cashiered]] from the Army.<ref>{{Cite news |date=1954-03-12 |title=Griffiths |url=https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-sydney-morning-herald-griffiths/143798091/ |access-date=2024-03-21 |work=The Sydney Morning Herald |pages=1 |archive-date=21 March 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240321043202/https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-sydney-morning-herald-griffiths/143798091/ |url-status=live }}</ref> He served his sentence at [[HM Prison Wormwood Scrubs|Wormwood Scrubs Prison]] in London.<ref name="auto">{{cite web |last1=Anderson |first1=David |date=September 2008 |title=A Very British Massacre |url=https://historyslc.files.wordpress.com/2008/09/a-very-british-massacre.pdf |accessdate=16 August 2020 |website=[[History Today]] |archive-date=1 November 2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20191101080555/https://historyslc.files.wordpress.com/2008/09/a-very-british-massacre.pdf |url-status=live }}</ref><ref>{{London Gazette
| issue = 40270
| date = 3 September 1954
| page = 5124
| supp = y
}}</ref> None of the other ranks involved in the massacre has been prosecuted.<ref name="FAB">{{cite journal |last1=Anderson |first1=David |last2=Bennett |first2=Huw |last3=Branch |first3=Daniel |date=August 2006 |title=A Very British Massacre |url=http://www.historytoday.com/david-anderson/very-british-massacre |journal=History Today |volume=56 |issue=8 |pages=20–22 |access-date=21 March 2024 |archive-date=5 January 2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190105091255/https://www.historytoday.com/david-anderson/very-british-massacre |url-status=live }}</ref><ref>{{Cite news|url=https://allafrica.com/stories/200607170327.html|title=Kenya: Unveiling Secrets of Kenya's|first=David|last=Anderson|newspaper=The Nation|date=17 July 2006|via=AllAfrica|access-date=8 April 2024|archive-date=15 November 2023|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231115005652/https://allafrica.com/stories/200607170327.html|url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{citation |title=MoD 'refusing to release file on massacre of Kenyans' |date=10 July 2006 |work=Telegraph.co.uk |url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1523502/MoD-refusing-to-release-file-on-massacre-of-Kenyans.html |access-date=21 March 2024 |archive-date=2 December 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231202091437/https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1523502/MoD-refusing-to-release-file-on-massacre-of-Kenyans.html |url-status=live }}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal|last=Lewis|first=Joanna|s2cid=154259805|date=April 2007|title=Nasty, Brutish and in shorts? British colonial rule, violence and the historians of Mau Mau|journal=The Round Table|volume=96|issue=389|pages=201–223|doi=10.1080/00358530701303392|issn=0035-8533}}</ref><ref name="auto"/>

====Hola massacre====
The [[Hola massacre]] was an incident during the conflict in [[Kenya]] against [[British Empire|British colonial rule]] at a colonial detention camp in [[Hola, Kenya]]. By January 1959, the camp had a population of 506 detainees, of whom 127 were held in a secluded "closed camp". This more remote camp near [[Garissa]], eastern Kenya, was reserved for the most uncooperative of the detainees. They often refused, even when threats of force were made, to join in the colonial "rehabilitation process" or perform manual labour or obey colonial orders. The camp commandant outlined a plan that would force 88 of the detainees to bend to work. On 3 March 1959, the camp commandant put this plan into action—as a result, 11 detainees were clubbed to death by guards.<ref>Maloba, Wunyabari O. ''Mau Mau and Kenya: An Analysis of a Peasant Revolt''. (Indiana University Press, Bloomington, Indiana: 1993) pp. 142–143.</ref> 77 surviving detainees sustained serious permanent injuries.<ref name="ogiek">{{cite web|url=http://www.ogiek.org/indepth/special-report-3.htm|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20041021223543/http://www.ogiek.org/indepth/special-report-3.htm|url-status=dead|archive-date=21 October 2004|title=indepth/special-report-3|publisher=ogiek.org|access-date=28 July 2016}}</ref> The British government accepts that the colonial administration tortured detainees, but denies liability.<ref>{{cite news|url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-20543140|title=Mau Mau massacre documents revealed|publisher=BBC News|date=30 November 2012|access-date=6 December 2013|archive-date=5 March 2022|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220305111344/http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-20543140|url-status=live}}</ref>