In 2009, five Kenyan people took a petition to the British Prime Minister’s office, claiming they endured human rights abuses in the 1950s while Kenya was under British colonial rule and demanded reparations. They had vivid accounts and physical scars from their experiences, but their testimonies were undermined due to lack of documentary evidence. However, in 2010 a historian joined the trial as an expert witness and attested to seeing references to missing documents. It was then discovered that Britain had refused Kenya’s requests for the return of stolen papers, and that many historians suspected there were gaps in the archives. As a result, the court ordered the release of any relevant documents and British officials acknowledged 1,500 pertinent files were being held in a high-security archive.
It was soon revealed that these were just a small sample of documents Britain had hidden between the 1950s and 70s, as part of a widespread colonial British policy called Operation Legacy, which was intended to obscure critical aspects of the truth. An independent historian located more than 20,000 previously hidden Operation Legacy files from 37 former colonies, as well as an estimated 1.2 million colonial files, spanning kilometers in the archive’s “Special Collections”. Additionally, 3.5 tons of colonial documents were slated for incineration in Kenya.
Beginning in 1895, the British administration had forcibly removed people from their traditional lands, implemented forced labor systems, and restricted movement. Kenyan people resisted these incursions, leading to the Kenya Land and Freedom Army’s attempt to forcibly remove white settlers and overthrow the colonial government. When the British declared a state of emergency in 1952, they were giving themselves permission to take otherwise illegal measures to regain control.
The newly revealed Operation Legacy documents confirmed that people suspected of participating in the resistance were subjected to horrible abuses. Between 1952 and 1959, the British imprisoned over 80,000 people without trial, sentenced over 1,000 people convicted as terrorists to death, and imposed extreme surveillance and interrogation tactics. Testimonies included people being beaten to death, raped, castrated, shackled at the wrist for years, and children being killed. One person was even burnt alive. In the words of Britain’s attorney-general in Kenya, “If we are going to sin, we must sin quietly.” In response to the new evidence, the British government issued a formal apology and made an out-of-court financial settlement with the 5,228 Kenyan claimants involved in the case. The original five claimants made history by paving the way for the truth to be revealed. The uncovered files challenge the myth that British colonialism was a benevolent institution that brought freedom and democracy to its subjects before graciously giving them independence. Instead, the newly exposed evidence confirms what many people already knew from their own experiences.