LONDON — In a remarkable admission that imperial forces tortured Kenyans fighting against British rule in the 1950s, Foreign Secretary William Hague said Thursday that the government would pay about $30 million in compensation to more than 5,000 victims of abuse in its former colony.
While Hague said the government regretted the abuses, some analysts said his words — the first such admission — fell short of a full apology to the Kenyans who confronted British colonial forces during the Mau Mau Uprising, which British forces suppressed several years before Kenya gained independence in 1963. About 12,000 Africans died in the revolt.
Hague’s words seemed to rewrite a narrative of essentially benevolent colonial rule relayed to generations of Britons back home, raising the possibility that citizens of other outposts of an empire that once spanned much of the globe could seek compensation.
“The British government recognizes that Kenyans were subject to torture and other forms of ill treatment at the hands of the colonial administration,” Hague told Parliament, reading from a prepared statement. “The British government sincerely regrets that these abuses took place, and they marred Kenya’s progress toward independence.”
Hague’s announcement came after the government settled out of court with lawyers representing the claimants following a landmark court ruling last October in which three Kenyan torture victims won the right to sue the British authorities after legal battles starting in 2009.
The claimants accused British forces of beating, torturing, raping, and even castrating people as they sought to put down the Mau Mau Uprising, a revolt that targeted whites settlers in an effort to end British domination.
Martyn Day, a lawyer for the Kenyan claimants, said he hoped that Hague’s statement would prove to be “the final resolution of this legal battle that has been going on for so many years.”
He added that the victims now have the recognition and justice they have sought for many years.
“For them, the significance of this moment cannot be overemphasized,” he said.
Britain also agreed on Thursday to pay for a memorial to be built in Nairobi, the Kenyan capital, to commemorate colonial abuses.
“This is a great day for us Mau Mau people,” Gitu Wa Kahengeri, a leader of the Mau Mau War Veterans Association, told Reuters in Nairobi.
“This is confirmation we were freedom fighters and not terrorists,’’ Kahengeri said. “We have been waiting a long time to hear the British say, ‘What we did in Kenya was wrong.’ ”