Kenya backs citizen's compensation quest against British atrocities

Kenya supports the pursuit for compensation from the British government for hostilities and human rights abuses suffered by citizens during colonial rule, the East African country's Prime Minister Raila Odinga said on Saturday. Speaking for the first time since the British High Court consented to a suit by three Kenyans to sue for compensation for illegal detention, sexual assault and other crimes classified as "unspeakable" and which include castration of men, the Kenyan authorities said the British should not appeal the ruling. Odinga said those who suffered the cruel treatment should be entitled to medical attention, which the government was willing to guarantee for hundreds of national heroes, but insisted the responsibility also lay upon the British authorities to provide compensation on compassionate grounds. "We applaud the decision of the British court which consented that our citizen's quest for compensation was still valid. We appeal to the British government not to appeal this decision," Odinga said in a brief speech during Kenya's National Heroes Day celebrations, known in Swahili as Mashujaa Day. He assured freedom fighters that the government will accord them free treatment in all public hospitals in recognition of the role they played during the struggle for independence. Odinga said most of those eligible for the compensation were elderly citizens in need of constant medical care, who badly need the compensation to survive. Vice President Kalonzo Musyoka said the government supported the reparations for its citizens for the human rights abuses committed during the colonial rule. "This is perhaps the time to pay compensation...the worst form of negative human rights regression was colonialism," Musyoka said. He said as a country that believes in the rule of law, the British government should not appeal the decision of the High Court. Three Kenyans, Muoka Nzili, 85, Wambugu wa Nyingi, 84, and Jane Muthoni Mara, 73, opened a legal battle against the British government with the help of local non-governmental organizations three years ago, to seek for compensation for torture, cruel treatment and sexual violations in detention in Kenya. The 1938 Operation Anvil, which rounded up thousands of Kenyans in towns and stuffed them in detention facilities countrywide, causing a national prison riot is remembered in history as some of the worst human rights violations in the East African state. Thousands of people were forced to till huge tracks of land using bare hands. Kenya's independence hero, Field Marshal Dedan Kimathi, whose statue graces one of Nairobi's main commercial streets in his honor, is among those who were honored during the country's third Heroes Day, inserted in the 2010 Kenyan constitution to honor those with immense national contributions. Musyoka said the prison authorities had finally located the site of Kimathi's burial at the Kamiti Maximum Security Prison, from where it would be exhumed for a proper state burial. The discovery and the re-burial of the freedom struggle hero was always a top national agenda of the current administration of President Mwai Kibaki.