On his first day in Nairobi on Tuesday, the 74-year-old British head of state said the ‘wrongdoings of the past are a cause of the greatest sorrow and the deepest regret’, but stopped short of an apology.
King Charles III met Kenyan veterans of World World II on Wednesday, after acknowledging there was “no excuse” for colonial-era abuses during Britain’s rule of the East African country.
On his first day in Nairobi on Tuesday, the 74-year-old British head of state said the “wrongdoings of the past are a cause of the greatest sorrow and the deepest regret”, but“There were abhorrent and unjustifiable acts of violence committed against Kenyans as they waged … a painful struggle for independence and sovereignty. And for that, there can be no excuse,” he told a state banquet.
“I hope we can do something special for you,” Charles told one of the veterans as he handed out medals to the former soldiers, part of a British initiative to belatedly recognise the contribution of non-European forces to the war effort.he had originally received a medal during colonial rule but got rid of it because he “feared retribution” from independence fighters.“There were a lot of people who were not happy we … fought in the war,” said Mburia, who served in Egypt, Ethiopia and Myanmar.
The gardens were built on the site of a camp where British colonial authorities detained suspected Mau Mau guerrillas during the suppression of their 1952-1960 uprising.The so-called “Emergency” period was one of the bloodiest insurgencies of the British empire and at least 10,000 people — mainly from the Kikuyu tribe — were killed, although some put the true figures much higher.
But it did suggest the monarch could help in the return of artefacts including the skull of a revered tribal leader who led a bloody resistance movement against colonial rule more than a century ago.
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