Kenya

Kenya

• how law is used in counter insurgency
• short cuts often have negative repercussions

Lari - small village that traded with Nirobi

• the really nice land
• hold outs
• this created two groups of people
• sympathizers with the colonial administration because they got the really nice land

1953 - a fire and a massacre

• the home guard gets distracted by the fire
• then the village gets torched and massacred
• the early migrants were all massacred
• this meant that all the fence sitters had to choose a side
• the home guard carried out brutal and messy reprisals

British intervention

• the British gave tacit support to the home guard
• however, they attempt to foster legitimacy by putting them into a camp
• unnecessary interrogation methods
• the conditions in the camp were brutal
• 19 huge trials for 500 people
• the British decided it would be easier to execute them instead of risking releasing them and starting a reprisal cycle
• positive identification was the criteria used to convict - there was rampant witness collusion
• this brutality and farcical court system embarrassed the British
• most of the trials were id parades