By Joab Apollo
An investigative report by one of UK’s Independent newspapers, The Sunday Times, has stirred a hornet’s nest in Kenya. In the heart-rending expose, a British soldier, whose name the paper concealed, proudly admitted to having sex with a Kenyan woman named Agnes Wanjiru before killing her and dumping her body in a septic tank in Nanyuki, the training base of the British army in Kenya.
In a country reeling from ugly and brutal colonial experience from the British, the report has elicited an outcry, with many Kenyans calling for the permanent closure of the British Army Training Unit in Kenya (BATUK).
The permanent training camp has always come under fire from hosting communities, the Maasai and Samburu, that have incessantly accused the British soldiers of gleeful rape and murder of their women, allegations which the British government has persistently denied.
Narok County Senator Ledama Ole Kina has blamed the billions in loans the East African country receives from the British government as the reason its Kenyan counterpart is too timid to pursue cases of atrocities meted out by the British army in Nanyuki.
“Our women are raped day and night by British soldiers. Thousands of Maasai and Samburu domestic animals are killed on a daily basis by British soldiers,” the outspoken legislature reacted.
“As long as we continue receiving donations and loans from the British, we can cover up such I’ll which will embarrass our status. Ridiculous!” He added
The Kenyan government has not reacted to the story. Neither has its British partner. But on and off social media, outrage intensified.
@Jessykaranja9 tweeted: “I don’t even get to understand how our oppressors of many years come to get an army training base on our motherland.”
@Negihe_Tab observed: “These have been the haunting Revelations of colonialism which will never see civil or legal condemnation. Though historical facts are available, the only we can do is to remember such heinous crimes but with no means to address them.”
@davetnid:31 noted ” It’s probably time we cancelled foreign military trainings from our motherland.”
This is not only cause of tension between Kenya and Britain. Early this month, Nandi elders of the North Rift region of Kenya launched a legal battle to secure the head of Independence heroe, Koitalel Arap Samoei, believed to be gathering dust in UK.
Koitalel is said to have been brutally killed by the British colonialists after he strongly opposed the construction of the iconic Kenya-Ugand Railway, which he christened a snake, during the colonial days.
In 2012, the battle-hardened Kenyan independence fighters, the MAU MAU, won a case against the British government for damages incurred during the bloody colonial war.
Kenya attained full independence from the British colonialists in 1963.