Several women living in Archer’s Post a small town in Nairobi Kenya have accused British soldiers training in the city of raping and abandoning their children.
The British Army Training Unit, Kenya (BATUK), is stationed in the town of Nanyuki, few miles away from Archer’s Post.
According to CNN report, mixed-race children are still born in the remote villages where the British soldiers train in Kenya.
Following several allegations levelled against the BATUK men, the Defense, Intelligence and Foreign Relations Committee of Kenya’s National Assembly has commenced investigations into the matter.
The committee is set to hear from BATUK officials and the British High Commissioner to Kenya later this month, according to CNN.
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Are British soldiers above the law?
The case of Agnes Wanjiru, a 21-year-old Kenyan woman, who vanished in 2012 after accompanying British soldiers to a hotel remains controversial.
She was later found dead in a septic tank and the British soldier allegedly involved has gone Scot free despite a Kenyan inquest ruling her death a murder.
The family of the deceased decried the attitude of the British officials towards Wanjiru’s case and have appealed to the King for help during his visit to Kenya.
Allegations of rape and other crimes, including murder, by British soldiers deployed there date back to the 1950s.
Seventy- two year old Ntoyie Lenkanan, was among the complainants in the British case.
“I was going to fetch water when I was ambushed by a group of British soldiers who were hiding in the grass near the river. One of them grabbed me and raped me,” she told CNN.
She noted that no official acknowledgement of the violation and compensation has been made after several years of waiting.
Similarly, Saitet Noltwalal who is in her 70s, revealed that she was raped by a British soldier at a hill near her home a few decades ago.
A Royal Military Police investigation at the time concluded that most of the Kenyan evidence was fabricated.
Also, the UK investigators refused to conduct DNA tests on any of the 69 mixed-race children alleged to have been born from rape by British soldiers.
This entails that the soldiers have been getting away after perpetrating heinous crimes against Kenyan women.
However, the Defense, Intelligence and Foreign Relations committee’s work has brought to light the cases of women who have accused soldiers of rape over several decades while scrutinizing the British Army’s operations in Kenya.
Abandoned children
Seventeen-year-old, Marian Pannalossy, opened up to CNN about the social exclusion she faces as a result of being light-skinned.
“They call me ‘mzungu maskini,’ or a poor white girl, they always say ‘Why are you here?
“Just look for connections so that you can go to your own people. You don’t belong here. You’re not supposed to be here suffering”, she said.
According to Marian her father was a British soldier, but she has never met him.
She is one out of many mixed-race children who were conceived after British soldiers raped their mothers in Kenya.
Kenya’s human rights body reported that her mother, Lydia Juma, had filed complaints against the UK military years back.
Juma who featured In a 2012 documentary, ‘The Rape of the Samburu women’, alongside 4 year old Marian at the time revealed how she was violated and all the pain she went through.
“I don’t know why God is punishing me. I don’t understand”, she cried.
Two years after that interview Juma died without ever discovering the man who had raped her.
Good news! British soldiers can now be sued in Kenyan courts
The 2021 defence pact signed between both countries enables women to sue British soldiers in Kenyan courts over cases of abuse or misconduct.
Kelvin Kubai a lawyer will be reintroducing forgotten cases of over 300 women in court with Marian as the lead plaintiff.
“It is traumatic and psychologically disturbing to people like Marian and many others who continue to see the British training amidst them with all these unresolved trauma and historical injustices.
“We can win because we have a very progressive constitution. The Kenyan legal system offers a better redress than what is available in the UK,” Kubai told CNN.
Olekanma Favour is a resourceful, self-motivated, and result-driven writer with a passion for crafting compelling narratives and insightful content. She loves tackling complex topics and weaving engaging stories.
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