Speaking to CNN, Seventeen-year-old Marian Pannalossy who was called ‘mzungu maskini,’ or a poor white girl said: “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 she has never seen his British father.
According to the CNN report, her mother, Lydia Juma, was among hundreds of Kenyan women who filed complaints with the UK military over the years, as documented by Kenya’s human rights body.
“The moment he saw that the child is ‘white,’ he went, and he went forever,” Marian’s mother said about her live-in boyfriend, with whom she had two older children.
Juma was reported to die two years after that interview without ever finding the man she says raped her.
The brutal crimes committed by the British soldiers in Kenya made the Defense, Intelligence and Foreign Relations Committee of Kenya’s National Assembly investigate the crimes of the British Army Training Unit, Kenya (BATUK), in Nanyuki, about 70 miles southwest of Archer’s Post.
Britain pays Kenya about $400,000 a year to allow its soldiers to train in the East African country, mostly in the expansive wildlife conservancies in Laikipia and Samburu counties.
Kenya renewed the defense pact in 2021 despite strong local opposition. BATUK has a permanent training base in Nanyuki, to the south of those wildlife conservancies, with 100 full-time staff.
The Defense, Intelligence and Foreign Relations committee’s work has renewed scrutiny of the British Army’s operations in Kenya and once again brought attention to the cases of the women who have accused soldiers of rape over several decades.
Allegations of rape and other crimes, including murder, by British soldiers deployed there date back to the 1950s.
Ntoyie Lenkanan, 72, one of the complainants in the British case told CNN that she was going to fetch water when she 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 said with her voice trembling after about 40 years.
She said that she was raped by a British soldier at a hill near her home a few decades ago but she no longer remembers the exact period.
“I have been waiting a long time and I can no longer fend for myself. I wouldn’t like what happened to me to happen to anyone else,” Ntoyie said.
British soldiers can now be sued in Kenyan courts for any wrongdoing as part of a new addition to the 2021 defense pact signed between both countries. It means many of these women may finally have their day in court.
Kenya also has no statute of limitations on cases involving alleged human rights abuses. So, 17 years later, lawyer Kelvin Kubai has signed up more than 300 of the women who previously brought rape claims and is working to reintroduce the case in Kenyan courts.
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