Hundreds of mothers wept blood to accuse British soldiers of raping them and abandoning their children

People who run after big things

2024-06-18 13:00Posted in Hebei International Creators

Marianne Pannalosi poses for a photo at home. Her mother was one of many Kenyan women accused of rape by British soldiers.

Marianne Pannalosi, 17, is always in the spotlight in the small town of Archer Post, 320 kilometres north of Nairobi. As a light-skinned mixed-race girl who lives alone, she often feels marginalized in this place where mixed-race children are rare.

"They call me 'mzungu maskini,' which means poor white girl," she confided to reporters in her humble single room, her voice trembling slightly. "They're always asking, 'Why are you here?' Go find your kind. You don't belong here. You don't deserve to suffer here. ”

Marianne's father is said to be a British soldier, but she has never met him, and his name is unknown.

Marianne belonged to a special group of mixed-race children whose mother claimed to have become pregnant after being sexually assaulted by British soldiers. Her mother, Lydia Juma, was one of many Kenyan women who filed complaints with the British military, which have been documented by Kenyan human rights groups.

"I don't understand why God is punishing me like this," Juma tearfully said in her 2011 documentary, "The Suffering of the Samburu Women," when Marianne, who was only four years old at the time, sat on her lap and occasionally hugged her mother as she recounted her experience of assault and the pain she endured.

Juma's partner, who left her after giving birth to her mixed-race daughter, Marianne, because rape is taboo in their culture. "As soon as the child was born 'white,' he left and never came back," she recalls in the film.

Juma died two years after that interview, failing to find the alleged abuser.

Mixed-race children continue to be born in remote villages, where the British army was once trained. The headquarters of the British Army's Kenya Training Unit (BATUK) is located in the town of Nanyuki, about 110 kilometres southwest of the Archer outpost.

BATUK IS CURRENTLY UNDER INVESTIGATION BY THE DEFENCE, INTELLIGENCE AND FOREIGN RELATIONS COMMITTEE OF THE KENYA NATIONAL ASSEMBLY.

The Commission held public hearings in a number of British Army training areas and heard a litany of complaints of abuse, exploitation and sexual assault from surrounding communities.

According to a schedule revealed to the media, the committee plans to hear from BATUK officials and the British High Commissioner in Kenya before the end of the month.

One of the most controversial accusations against British soldiers involves the case of Agnes Wanjiru. According to the report, 21-year-old Wanjiru disappeared after entering a hotel with British soldiers in 2012, and his body was later found in a septic tank. Although an investigation in Kenya showed that the cause of her death was murder and a suspect was identified by a soldier, the British soldier involved was said not charged.

Lawyer Kelvin Kubai met with women accused of rape by British soldiers.

Wanjiru's family accused British officials of ignoring his case and asked for assistance during the British king's visit to Kenya. A spokesman for the British High Commission said they would take allegations from all communities seriously and ensure a thorough investigation is conducted.

"All abuse of sexual power, including the purchase of sexual services abroad, is strictly prohibited," the representative of the British High Commission, BATUK, stressed in a statement to the media.

"We are committed to preventing any form of sexual exploitation and will investigate and hold accountable any military personnel found to be involved in such acts.

Misconduct of British soldiers. The UK pays Kenya about $400,000 a year for military training in vast wildlife reserves in the eastern part of the country, mainly in Lekipia and Samburu counties.

Despite strong local opposition, Kenya renewed its defense agreement in 2021. BATUK has a permanent training base in Nanyuki with 100 full-time staff, located south of these reserves.

The Defence, Intelligence and Foreign Relations Council's investigation has refocused British military operations in Kenya, renewing attention to decades-old allegations of sexual assault.

Charges of sexual assault and other crimes, including murder, against British soldiers deployed there date back to the 1950s. "This is a reflection of the misconduct of British soldiers," said Marian Mutuji, a member of Kenya's National Human Rights Commission. "It's about protecting vulnerable groups in our society, and our constitution clearly calls for special protections for them."

She referred to hundreds of women from the nomadic communities of Marseille and Samburu who had been sexually assaulted by British troops in the 1970s and 80s.

In early 2000, British lawyer Martin Day represented them in landmark civil proceedings in London. Ntoye Lenkanan, 72, one of the plaintiffs in the British case, still trembles with emotion and irrepressible anger as she recounts the ordeal nearly four decades later.

"When I went to the river to fetch water, I was raided by a group of British soldiers hiding in the grass. One of them caught me and raped me," she told reporters at her home in Doldor, about 55 kilometres from Nanyuki.

For years, she waited for an official acknowledgment of the mistake and compensation, but to no avail. A few kilometres from the Lenkanan home, in the desolate and dry land of Doldore, Seth Notwalal, in his 70s, sits in the shade of a tree, blinded and completely dependent on his family.

She also claimed that she had been raped by a British soldier on a hillside near her home decades earlier, but she could not remember exactly when.

"I've waited so long that I'm no longer able to support myself. I don't want what happened to me to happen to someone else," she said.

She mentioned that after being raped, her quality of life deteriorated dramatically because of a miscarriage and subsequent blindness. Some of their peers, who also accused British troops of sexual assault, have died one after another while awaiting compensation.

In 2007, the UK Ministry of Defence dismissed allegations of sexual assault against 2,187 women, including Leenkanan and Nottevalal, on the grounds that "there is no credible evidence to support any single allegation".

An investigation by the Royal Gendarmerie at the time concluded that much of the evidence in Kenya appeared to be falsified. British investigators did not conduct DNA testing on any of the 69 mixed-race children allegedly born to British soldiers.

Some women testified in 2009 to the Kenya Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commission, which aims to expose injustices, including ethnic conflict and political violence, in the course of their daily activities, as they were assaulted by British soldiers in their daily activities.

The Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commission of Kenya claimed that the Government had lost the case file, but did not provide an explanation.

The 2009 report stated: "The most horrific rape is said to have occurred in Archer Post in October 1997, where 30 women were gang-raped by British soldiers, often under the threat of knife-pointing, and sometimes even inside the victims' manyattas (homes)." ”

A new dawn for the Tribunal. Under the new terms of the defence agreement signed in 2021, British soldiers can be prosecuted for misconduct in Kenya. This means that many women may eventually be able to seek justice in court.

Kenya has no statute of limitations for cases involving human rights violations, so 17 years later, lawyer Kelvin Kubay has represented more than 300 women who had previously made allegations of sexual assault in an effort to reopen cases in Kenyan courts.

Marianne, 17, will be the lead plaintiff. "For Marianne and many others, it is a great psychological trauma and unsettling to witness the British training around them without addressing these traumas and historical injustices," Kubay told reporters after meeting with some women from pastoral areas who claimed to be victims of British soldiers.

"We can win because we have a progressive constitution. Kenya's legal system offers a more effective avenue of redress than the UK," he added.

Generica Namoru poses with her five-year-old daughter, Nicole. She said she was in a consensual relationship with a British soldier, but since leaving Kenya, he has abandoned her and their children.

Forgotten children. Kenyan women say they are fighting for recognition even when they are conceived in a voluntary relationship with a British soldier.

Generica Namoru, 28, claimed that she had a consensual relationship with a soldier while working at BATUK headquarters in Nanyuki in 2017.

"He returned to the UK when I was two months pregnant. He named her," she said, referring to her five-year-old daughter, Nicole.

Namoru said the soldier provided personal information such as a passport to process his daughter's birth certificate. However, despite Nicole taking her father's surname, he did not provide any financial support. Namoru is unemployed, barely supporting her and Nicole by selling water in a semi-arid town.

"I'm a woman with 'white' children, which isn't easy for my family, especially with the high cost of raising children," she said, noting that Nicole doesn't have health insurance and doesn't have a stable place to live. "She suffered innocently. I want him to take care of her education, medical care, and shelter. That's all.

At the same time, Kubay and his team launched a crowdfunding campaign to help Marianne, Nico and other "children abandoned in Kenya by the British army," he told reporters.

Namoru said she tried unsuccessfully to get the Kenyan or British governments to find an ex-boyfriend and force him to take financial responsibility for her daughter.

The British High Commission in Nairobi told reporters that they were working with local custody agencies to process paternity tests. Neither Nicole nor Marianne had British citizenship, although they might have the right to prove that their father was British.

"These kids are not looking for a free ticket to the UK. We're just saying that they deserve the love of their fathers, which is the right of every child," said Mutugi of the Human Rights Commission, while accusing the British government of lacking the will to resolve such cases.

"These children should be granted British citizenship. They are British children! Their father is British! Mutuji stressed.

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