Kenya, which recently earned itself the status of a ‘ Major Non-NATO Ally (MNNA)’ has, as a former colony of Britain, allowed British military to operate bases in the country. And, over the years, the British soldiers in Kenya have been accused of engaging in the systemic rape of thousands of Kenyan village women while training in the East African nation.
One of such Kenyan territory leased to Britain as a military base, is located in a remote village in the central region, about 200KM from Nairobi, and it is used by the British Army Training Unit (BATUK) to train its troops. Year after year, dozens of Mixed-race, mullato children continue to be born in the villages neighboring this Kenyan-British military base, the unplanned and unwanted products of both consensual relationship and outright rape by British soldiers, who scram away after their trainings, leaving behind the children that they fathered to the sole care of their hapless, poor villager mothers. Regardless of the nature of the relationship, the children always end up with no support or contact from their fathers, who returned home after finishing their training, leaving the offspring of their itchy loins to be stigmatized and ostracized by their neighbors as bastard children.
British troops hosted in Kenyan bases have a long history, dating back to the 1950s, of committing violent sexual crimes, including rape and even, murder. In a well documented case in 2012, a 21-year-old Kenyan woman vanished after being seen going into a hotel with British troops. Her body was later found in a septic tank. The soldier identified as the suspected killer by other troops was never made to face any trial. A result of the kind clauses usually inserted into the basing agreements; to guarantee the immunity of foreign troops from local laws.
In 2009, during the hearings of the Kenyan Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commission, which looked into the demands for justice by the rape victims, some of the village girls who testified narrated that they were preyed upon by British troops as they went about their daily chores; working in the farm, fetching firewood, washing in the stream or fetching water. In several accounts, British soldiers were accused of kidnapping and gang-raping scores of women at knifepoint.
Sadly, the UK Defense Ministry have neither agreed to bring the accused troops to justice nor offered any help to the identified victims. When such efforts were made In 2007, the British nonchalantly dismissed the accusations of about 2,187 Kenyan women, identified as victims of rape by British troopers, with a dismissive “ there is no reliable evidence to support any single allegation.” statement. Despite every other pressure, the British authorities have consistently refused to carryout DNA testing on any of the mixed-race mullato children, born to alleged rape victims; concluding that much of the Kenyan evidence is dubious. Sadly,many of the rape victims have died, waiting in vain to have justice. Going by the recent MNA agreement that offers more Kenyan bases to American troops, the Kenyan government seems to be more interested in the dollar-rent that they get from foreign ‘partners’ than in the well-being of their own citizens. As it is reported, the UK pays the Kenyan government about $400,000 annually for permission to conduct training near the country’s Laikipia and Samburu wildlife reserves.