25 November 1952 Today in 1952, Sir Evelyn Baring, the governor of Kenya, issued new emergency measures designed to widen the conditions for the imposition of collective punishment in areas considered sympathetic to the anti-British Mau Mau insurgency. The pro-Empire Daily Express reported the same day that ‘Africans in the Thomson’s Falls District, where Commander Jock Meiklejohn…
20 October 1952 Today in 1952, Kenya’s governor, Evelyn Baring, signed a state of emergency. In the early hours of the following morning, in an operation code-named Jock Scott, 106 Kenyan civil rights leaders and individuals suspected of being overly sympathetic to an anti-British rebellion, known as the Mau Mau uprising, were arrested. Most of…
BRITAIN APPROVES THE ‘DILUTION TECHNIQUE’ OF TORTURE IN KENYA [ 25 June 1957 ] On 25 June 1957, Kenya’s governor, Sir Evelyn Baring, wrote to Alan Lennox-Boyd, the Colonial Secretary, seeking his approval for the ‘dilution technique’ – a method of subjecting detainees to gruesome physical torture without leaving long lasting marks or causing permanent…
JOMO KENYATTA SENTENCED TO SEVEN YEARS HARD LABOUR AFTER JUDGE IS BRIBED [ 8 April 1953 ] On 8 April 1953, Jomo Kenyatta, the moderate Kenyan civil rights activist and president of the Kenyan African Union, was sentenced to seven years hard labour to be followed by permanent exile to a remote northern area of…
