Chuka
Chuka (Kenya)
The Chuka massacre, which happened in Chuka, Kenya, was perpetrated by members of B Company, 5th Battalion, King's African Rifles (KAR) in June 1953 with 20 unarmed people killed during the Mau Mau uprising. [1]
The Chuka massacre, which happened in Chuka, Kenya, was perpetrated by members of B Company, 5th Battalion, King's African Rifles (KAR) in June 1953 with 20 unarmed people killed during the Mau Mau uprising. [1]
The 5th KAR B Company had been sent to the Chuka area on 13 June 1953, to flush out rebels of the Kenya Land and Freedom Army (Mau Mau) suspected of hiding in the nearby forests. The company commander, Major Gerald Selby Lewis Griffiths of the Durham Light Infantry, set up a base camp from which he directed operations – two platoons would sweep through the forest to flush out the rebels, while African members of the local Kikuyu Home Guard policed the forest boundary. The sweeps were conducted by two junior officers. This was a typical anti-Mau Mau operation. [2]
Two captured Mau-Mau fighters were brought by the soldiers to act as guides to reveal hideouts. When they were questioned, neither were willing to provide information. Major Gerald Griffiths and his two junior officers interrogated the detainees, and when the first prisoner seemed unwilling to co-operate, Griffiths ordered that a hole be made in his ear with a bayonet. A string was passed through the gaping wound, to be used as a tether over the next four days. The second prisoner also proved uncooperative. His ear was amputated on Griffiths' orders, and he was then summarily shot dead. Griffiths would later claim he had been shot while trying to escape. [2]
Over the next two days, the KAR platoons flushed out a number of Mau Mau fighters who were caught by the Home Guard stationed at the forest edge. Then, in the early afternoon of 17 June, a patrol of ten men led by an African warrant officer moved out of the forest and into the surrounding farmland. It came across twelve members of the Home Guard gathered at a farmhouse. For reasons that have never become clear, the twelve men were ordered to lie face down, and were badly beaten. Two of the victims were sent to fetch food for the soldiers and made their escape while the remaining ten were escorted into the forest by the KAR patrol. They reached the soldiers' camp around 4 pm and made to lie face down in a line. At sunset, they were shot where they lay, at close range and in cold blood. [2] [3]
The following morning, 18 June, the warrant officer led his patrol along the forest edge, close to the settlement of Karege. Again it encountered and interrogated a group of Home Guards. The soldiers pillaged food gardens in Karege and shot a farmer before escorting their captives into the forest. African witnesses saw a British officer with the patrol. Early that afternoon, the captives – nine men and one child – were executed in a clearing near a small coffee farm at the forest edge. Soldiers cut off the hands of six of the victims and tucked these into their packs before returning to camp. The final killing occurred between 2 and 3 am the next day, when the surviving guide, still tethered by his ear, was shot, allegedly while trying to escape. At dawn, the soldiers broke camp, heading back to B Company's headquarters at Nyeri, leaving the body of their dead guide. [2]
Days after the massacre, a new commander-in-chief, General George Erskine, arrived in Kenya in June 1953. He quickly sought to change the conduct of the security forces. In a directive to all troops he stated: "I will not tolerate breaches of discipline leading to unfair treatment of anybody," and ordered that "every officer ... should stamp on at once any conduct which he would be ashamed to see used against his own people." However, Erskine took the decision to cover up what had happened. [2]
A military inquiry was convened for the following Monday on 22 June but its findings were never made public. Rumours of what had happened spread, but the colonial government refused to acknowledge the affair publicly. Fragments of information nonetheless found their way into the public record. In an effort to prevent a haemorrhaging of support towards the Mau Mau in the Chuka area, the colonial government authorised the payment of compensation to the families of the murdered villagers. General Erskine then wrote to local chiefs, up to then allies, to reassure them that "investigations have satisfied me that whoever is to blame, it is not any of the persons killed." The army did not pass its findings to the Attorney General, and so prosecutions could not be taken forward "due to lack of evidence". [2]
All of the soldiers involved in the Chuka patrols were placed under open arrest at Nairobi's Buller Camp, but Erskine decided not to prosecute them. Instead, he would make an example of their commanding officer, Major Griffiths. And, rather than risk bringing publicity to the Chuka affair, Erskine was able to obtain evidence to have Griffiths charged with the murder of two other suspects in a separate incident that had taken place a few weeks before the Chuka massacre. However, the 5th KAR soldiers giving evidence at the courts martial in November 1953 refused to speak frankly against Griffiths. He was acquitted of the charge and the rest of the soldiers were not charged. Griffiths was put before a second court-martial following the McLean inquiry's findings charged with the murder of the first guide. In November 1953, he was acquitted. [4]
Following public outcry, however, Griffiths was then tried under six separate charges of torture and disgraceful conduct for torturing two unarmed detainees, including a man named Njeru Ndwega. At his court-martial, it was stated that Griffiths had made Ndwega take off his pants, before telling a teenage African private to castrate him. When the private, a 16-year-old Somali named Ali Segat, refused to do this, Griffiths instead ordered him to cut off Ndwega's ear, to which Segat complied. [5] On 11 March 1954, Griffiths was found guilty on five counts. He was sentenced to five years in prison and was cashiered from the Army. [6] He served his sentence at Wormwood Scrubs Prison in London. [7] [8] None of the other ranks involved in the massacre has been prosecuted. [2] [9] [10]
In a letter to the War Office, in December 1953, now in the UK National Archives, Erskine wrote: "There is no doubt that in the early days, i.e. from Oct 1952 until last June there was a great deal of indiscriminate shooting by Army and Police. I am quite certain prisoners were beaten to extract information." To avoid a scandal, McLean's inquiry drew a veil of official secrecy over the first eight months of the emergency. Though McLean went into the details of the Chuka affair, his final report was a whitewash. He concluded that, whilst there may have been some irregularities in procedures by some units, the conduct of the British Army in Kenya "under difficult and arduous circumstances, showed that measure of restraint backed by good discipline which this country has traditionally expected". [2] [11]
The Kenya Defence Forces (KDF) are the armed forces of the Republic of Kenya. They are made up of the Kenya Army, Kenya Navy, and Kenya Air Force. The current KDF was established, and its composition stipulated, in Article 241 of the 2010 Constitution of Kenya; it is governed by the KDF Act of 2012. Its main mission is the defence and protection of the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Kenya, recruitment to the KDF is done on yearly basis. The President of Kenya is the commander-in-chief of the KDF, and the Chief of Defence Forces is the highest-ranking military officer, and the principal military adviser to the President of Kenya.
William Laws Calley Jr. is a former United States Army officer, war criminal, and mass murderer who was convicted by court-martial for the murder of 22 unarmed South Vietnamese civilians in the My Lai massacre on March 16, 1968, during the Vietnam War. Calley was released to house arrest under orders by President Richard Nixon three days after his conviction. A new trial was ordered by the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit but that ruling was overturned by the Supreme Court. Calley served three years of house arrest for the murders. Public opinion at the time about Calley was divided. Since his dismissal from the U.S. Army and release from prison, Calley has avoided public attention.
The Mau Mau rebellion (1952–1960), also known as the Mau Mau uprising, Mau Mau revolt, or Kenya Emergency, was a war in the British Kenya Colony (1920–1963) between the Kenya Land and Freedom Army (KLFA), also known as the Mau Mau, and the British authorities. Dominated by Kikuyu, Meru and Embu fighters, the KLFA also comprised units of Kamba and Maasai who fought against the European colonists in Kenya, the British Army, and the local Kenya Regiment.
The King's African Rifles (KAR) was a British Colonial Auxiliary Forces regiment raised from Britain's East African colonies in 1902. It primarily carried out internal security duties within these colonies along with military service elsewhere during the world wars and other conflicts, such as the Malayan Emergency and the Mau Mau uprising. The regiment's enlisted soldiers were drawn from the native Africans, while most officers were seconded from the British Army. During the 1960s, as part of the decolonisation of Africa, more African officers were commissioned into the regiment before it was gradually disbanded. KAR battalions would go on to form the core of newly established armed forces throughout East Africa.
The 45th Infantry Division was an infantry division of the United States Army, most associated with the Oklahoma Army National Guard, from 1920 to 1968. Headquartered for most of its history in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, the guardsmen fought in both World War II and the Korean War.
Waruhiu Itote, nom de guerreGeneral China, was one of the key leaders of the Mau Mau Uprising (1952–1960) in British Kenya alongside Dedan Kimathi, Stanley Mathenge, Kurito ole Kisio, Musa Mwariama and Muthoni Kirima.
The Kenya Regiment was a unit of the British Army recruited primarily among white settlers in Kenya and to a lesser extent Uganda. Formed in 1937, it was disbanded at the oubreak of World War II in 1939. It was reformed in 1950 and participated in the suppression of the Mau Mau uprising (1952–56). It was finally disbanded on Kenyan independence in May 1963.
The Houston race riot of 1917, also known as the Camp Logan Mutiny, was a mutiny and riot by 156 soldiers from the all-black 24th Infantry Regiment of the United States Army, taking place on August 23, 1917, in Houston, Texas. The incident occurred within a climate of overt hostility from members of the all-white Houston Police Department (HPD) against members of the local black community and black soldiers stationed at Camp Logan. Following an incident where police officers arrested and assaulted black soldiers, many of their comrades mutinied and marched to Houston, where they opened fire and killed eleven civilians and five policemen. Five soldiers were also killed.
The 1959 Hola massacre was a massacre committed by British colonial forces during the Mau Mau Uprising at a colonial detention camp in Hola, Kenya.
The Parit Sulong Massacre was a Japanese war crime committed by members of the Imperial Japanese Army on 22 January 1942 in the village of Parit Sulong, British Malaya. Soldiers of the Imperial Guards Division summarily executed approximately 150 wounded Australian and Indian prisoners of war who had surrendered.
The Kikuyu Home Guard was a government paramilitary force in Kenya from early 1953 until January 1955. It was formed in response to insurgent attacks during the Mau Mau Uprising.
General Sir George Watkin Eben James Erskine, was a British Army officer from Hascombe, Surrey. After he graduated from Royal Military College, Sandhurst, Erskine was commissioned into the King's Royal Rifle Corps and saw action on the Western Front of the First World War. During the Second World War, he commanded the 7th Armoured Division from 1943 to 1944. Erksine later commanded counterinsurgency operations against the Kenya Land and Freedom Army (KLFA) during the Mau Mau rebellion.
East Africa Command was a Command of the British Army. Until 1947 it was under the direct control of the Army Council and thereafter it became the responsibility of Middle East Command. It was disbanded on 11 December 1963, the day before Kenya became independent, and replaced by British Land Forces Kenya, tasked with withdrawing all remaining British troops. All remaining troops left by December 1964 and British Land Forces Kenya was disestablished.
British war crimes are acts committed by the armed forces of the United Kingdom that have violated the laws and customs of war since the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907, from the Boer War to the War in Afghanistan (2001–2021). Such acts have included the summary executions of prisoners of war and unarmed shipwreck survivors, the use of excessive force during the interrogation of POWs and enemy combatants, and the use of violence against civilian non-combatants and their property.
The Hill 303 massacre was a war crime that took place during the opening days of the Korean War on August 17, 1950, on a hill above Waegwan, Republic of Korea. Forty-one United States Army (US) prisoners of war were murdered by troops of the North Korean People's Army (KPA) during one of the engagements of the Battle of Pusan Perimeter.
The Kenya Army is the land arm of the Kenya Defence Forces.
The units of the Kenya Army Infantry are the principal fighting arms of the Kenya Army. The primary mission of the Infantry formations is to fight and win land battles within area of operational responsibilities in the defence of the nation against land – based aggression, while the secondary mission is the provision of aid and support to civil authorities in the maintenance of order. The Kenyan School of Infantry (SOI) is located in Isiolo County.
The involvement of the British Colony of Kenya in World War II began with the declaration of war on Nazi Germany by the British Empire in September 1939.
Operation Anvil was a British military operation during the Mau Mau Uprising where British troops attempted to remove suspected Mau Mau from Nairobi and place them in Langata Camp or reserves. The operation began on 24 April 1954 and took two weeks, at the end of which 20,000 Mau Mau suspects had been taken to Langata, and 30,000 more had been deported to the reserves.