Brutal stuff. And yet the subhed for the story reads:Hussein Onyango Obama, Mr Obama's paternal grandfather, became involved in the Kenyan independence movement while working as a cook for a British army officer after the war. He was arrested in 1949 and jailed for two years in a high-security prison where, according to his family, he was subjected to horrific violence to extract information about the growing insurgency.
"The African warders were instructed by the white soldiers to whip him every morning and evening till he confessed," said Sarah Onyango, Hussein Onyango's third wife, the woman Mr Obama refers to as "Granny Sarah".
Mrs Onyango, 87, described how "white soldiers" visited the prison every two or three days to carry out "disciplinary action" on the inmates suspected of subversive activities.
"He said they would sometimes squeeze his testicles with parallel metallic rods. They also pierced his nails and buttocks with a sharp pin, with his hands and legs tied together with his head facing down," she said The alleged torture was said to have left Mr Onyango permanently scarred, and bitterly antiBritish. "That was the time we realised that the British were actually not friends but, instead, enemies," Mrs Onyango said. "My husband had worked so diligently for them, only to be arrested and detained."
The President-elect's relatives have told how the family was a victim of the Mau Mau revolt.Yes, yes. If those Kenyans hadn't decided to fight for self-rule, we wouldn't have had to torture them. Seriously, I'm sure it was a mistake. If a weird one.
The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood 
it's an english paper, man. might not be a mistake.
Before and/or shortly after the invasion of Iraq, the British success in putting down the Mau Mau insurgency, and the brutality required to achieve that success was cited as a cautionary tale. (Probably in the Atlantic) I'm quite sure I never imagined that a few months later we would be running prisons where we tortured Iraqis to death.)
And no, it's not a mistake. Then as now, no one is responsible. Everyone -- tortured and torturer alike -- are victims of circumstance.
No mistakes at all TNC. The british know what they hade done in Kenya, and they don't want to be reminded when looking at Barack Hussein Obama grand son of Hussein Onyango Obama. History is a Motherf***er!
That was the time we realised that the British were actually not friends but, instead, enemies," Mrs Onyango said. "My husband had worked so diligently for them, only to be arrested and detained."
I hope this doesn't come off as racist, but has there ever been a time in history when white men DIDN'T sell out people of African descent? Every time I watch Hotel Rwanda I start yelling at my TV for Don Cheadle to slap the sh!t out of Nick Nolte. Now I am not by any means saying all white men are that way. But its hard to argue with history thats for sure. Oh and how about this gem from the newly released Nixon tapes?
One can only wonder what are on the Bush 43 tapes.
.......when I saw the Abu Ghraib photos my first thought was "so the Brits are up to their old tricks again". Imagine my surprise, etc.
Mind you, I'm Irish and 1500 years of dealing with the Saxons will leave you with no illusions about them.
"Mind you, I'm Irish and 1500 years of dealing with the Saxons will leave you with no illusions about them.
Word.
Torture is a signature element of an empire's response to insurgency. It was commonly practiced in Kenya against political dissidents from all ethnic groups. The "short, sharp shock" was justified by the 'mau mau' killings, even though that uprising was a local phenomenon involving the WaKikuyu people only.
It had a lot to do with the British losing moral authority in Africa, although, frankly, they never had as much of that as they liked to think.
has there ever been a time in history when white men DIDN'T sell out people of African descent?
Not many that I can remember, no.
Reference for the original article please? If there was a link in TNC's post, it's not showing up anymore...
@Xenos
Torture is a signature element of an empire's response to insurgency. It was commonly practiced in Kenya against political dissidents from all ethnic groups. The "short, sharp shock" was justified by the 'mau mau' killings, even though that uprising was a local phenomenon involving the WaKikuyu people only.
Kikuyu over here. Mau Mau had multi-ethnic elements in the latter part (and this was the nightmare that the British had feared, hence their segregation of africans by tribe and the fanning of ethnic rivalries) and was seeded by the africans who had served in WW2 and come to realize after seeing white people bleeding and dying just like them that whites were mortal too.
The movement did not kill many whites bug it did essentially bring the economy of Kenya to a stand-still and turn Kenya from a resource bounty into a resource drain that the British could ill afford to keep. The african cost of the British response (and also the Mau Mau civil war) was horrendous.
A good book on the Mau Mau and the atrocious acts of the British (which are only coming to light in the last few years because a lot of Kenya's current leaders colluded with the Brits and kept this hidden) is Caroline Elkins phenomenal "imperial reckoning the untold story of britain's gulag in kenya"
The irony is that Elkins began her research because she was interested in how the British had been able to 'rehabilitate' 'violent' prisoners so successfully and with no bloodshed.
Here is an excerpt from Mahmood Mamdani's review of Imperial Reckoning and History of the Hanged. I don't mean to gross people out but just to show how terrible the torture was.
The regime of torture gave plenty of
room for perversions to flourish. Elkins
recounts these, sometimes in gruesome de-
tail. Settlers set up illegal, informal, some-
times mobile, screening centers. One set-
tler claimed that he “could get a very good
idea as to how many oaths a man had taken
just by looking at him.” Another – nick-
named Joseph Mengele of Kenya – oper-ated his own screening camp and boasted
that his exploits “included burning the skin
of live Mau Mau suspects and forcing them
to eat their own testicles.”
Then there was the slow and protracted
method of torture, reminiscent of the worst
of brutalities in the Rwandan genocide. In
the words of an interrogator at the Special
Branch center: “By the time I cut his balls
off he had no ears, and his eye ball, the right
one, I think, was hanging out of its socket.
Too bad, he died before we got much out of
him.”
Often, sadism mixed with cruelty as
when whites used villagers for target prac-
tice, or when they delighted in specially hu-
miliating occupants of detention villages:
“The Johnnies (whites) would make us run
around with toilet buckets on our heads. …
The contents would be running down our
faces and we would have to wipe it off and
eat it, or else we were shot.” Another com-
mon practice in the detention villages was
that of the confessional baraza (public meet-
ing): “Those taken to the front of the crowd
were often stripped naked and forced to lead
the rest of the village in rounds of anti-Mau
Mau songs. When the music stopped and the
questioning began, those who refused to
confess were beaten, often unconscious. …
Some people who had refused to confess
were put in sacks, one covering the lower
part of their bodies while the other covered
their upper part. Then petrol or paraffin
would be poured over the sacks, and those
in charge would order them to be lit. The
people who refused to confess … were al-
ways killed in order to instill fear into oth-
ers who might think of concealing the truth.”
At the same time, “confession did not mean
an end to forced labor … only that they were
spared from death, for the time being.”
As one reads through Elkins’ extended
descriptions of the regime of torture, one is
struck by its predominantly sexual nature.
Male detainees were often sexually abused
“through sodomy with foreign objects, ani-
mals, and insects, cavity searches, the im-
position of a filthy toilet bucket-system, or
forced penetrative sex.” A common prac-
tice during interrogation was to squeeze tes-
ticles with pliers. The Christian Council of
Kenya complained to the Governor that Mau
Mau suspects were being castrated, citing
an instance of a man who “had his private
parts laid on a table and beaten till the scro-
tum burst because he would not speak.”
Women had “various foreign objects
thrust into their vaginas, and their breasts
squeezed and mutilated with pliers.” Varia-
tions abounded, with sand, pepper, banana
leaves, flower bottles (often broken), gun
barrels, knives, snakes, vermin, and hot eggs
being thrust up men’s rectum and women’s
vaginas
We must insist on Geneva standards for all prisoners. They are truly the least of our brethren.
I believe that torture inevitably accompanies conflict. To minimize torture, we must minimize conflict. To minimize conflict, we must insist on social, economic and political equality. Everywhere.
Xenos back here---
My education about "mau mau" dates from the late 80s, so these gruesome details are new to me. Not too surprising, but ugly - I can see how the victims would be intimidated from talking about this in the latter Nyayo years. It is good that people are free to confront this shit now. It reminds me of American lynchings, the photos of which I can't bring myself to view.
What I had been referring to was not settler-based torture of random people but that done by British soldiers against political leaders in prisons... I think the main ones were in Mombasa and in the desert north. The parallel that struck me was the policy of torture by the French in Algeria.
Link for the article:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/africa/article5276010.ece
It's curious that the first paragraph appears, word for word, as the subheading in the Telegraph article on the story:
"Barack Obama’s grandfather was imprisoned and tortured by the British during the violent struggle for Kenyan independence, the Kenyan family of the US President-elect has claimed."
The reviews that I’ve seen indicate that Caroline Elkins provides an honest account in Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of Britain's Gulag in Kenya (2004). http://tiny.cc/gh11n
First of all, TNC, what's up with not posting a link to the story? The blogosphere isn't 'Nam; there are rules here.
Second, I think you're overlooking the obvious heroism of these British Jack Bauers who made the brave decision to utilize these enhanced interrogation techniques, which some critics describe as torture.
The problem with e-irony is that it has to be spread awfully thick..
"I hope this doesn't come off as racist, but has there ever been a time in history when white men DIDN'T sell out people of African descent?"
Orwell makes the point in "Marrakesh."
"First of all, TNC, what's up with not posting a link to the story? The blogosphere isn't 'Nam; there are rules here"
Uhh. Human error? Next time just send an e-mail and I'll fix.