Following the declaration of the State of Emergency, events moved swiftly with the Kenyan government making every effort to suppress the Mau Mau and protect its white citizens. Kenyatta was flown to Kapenquria, where he was placed under heavy armed guard to await trial (in 1953 he was sentenced to seven years’ imprisonment with hard labor), while approximately 112 others were also arrested on suspicion of Mau Mau involvement. On the morning of October 22, Nairobi’s citizens were alarmed to find the Lancashire Fusiliers patrolling their streets, and the next day the Royal Navy cruiser Kenya arrived in Mombassa carrying a detachment of Royal Marines, who were deployed to suppress any Mau Mau activity in that city as well.
Guards escort Mau Mau suspects to cells in Nairobi in November 1952. The month before, the Mau Mau problem had become so acute that a State of Emergency was declared and British troops were deployed in Kenya.
Yet, despite the mass arrests in Nairobi and the surrounding areas, it soon became apparent that the Mau Mau were still growing in strength. A Kikuyu chief who was sympathetic towards the British administration’s goals attempted to break up a Mau Mau oathing ceremony, only to be hacked to pieces with machetes by the crowd. Shortly afterwards the Mau Mau claimed their first white victim, a farmer by the name of Eric Bowyer. Bowyer lived with two African servants on an isolated holding. While he was taking a bath, Mau Mau rebels broke into the house and slaughtered all three occupants. Acts such as this continued apace, leaving the colonial administration feeling frustrated and impotent. Their problems appeared to be threefold. Firstly, there was an acute lack of reliable intelligence to indicate the Mau Mau’s organizational structure, how well it was armed and what its intentions were. This meant that government forces were unable to plan an appropriate strategy to overcome the rebels. Secondly, the armed forces operating in Kenya were of very mixed abilities. There was the British military, the colonial military, a critically understaffed civilian police force and an unarmed tribal police unit. Finally, all of the above units operated independently from each other, with very little organized coordination.
To resolve some of these problems it was decided that Kenya’s only intelligence agency (a Special Branch unit of the Kenyan police) would be upgraded and trained specifically to combat the Mau Mau. The Lancashire Fusiliers were deployed up-country to the Rift Valley province around Thomson’s Falls, Naivasha and Nakuru, which had all been designated Mau Mau trouble spots, while the King’s African Rifles were deployed mainly in the native reserves of the Central province as well as around Nairobi. The colonial administration also saw to it that those Kikuyu who were loyal to the British were allowed to form a self-defence unit known as the Home Guard. Slow headway was being made by the British administration, but it was always set against a background of continuing Mau Mau activity.
Charles Hamilton Ferguson lived on a remote farm in the Thomson’s Falls area of Kenya when, on January 1, 1953, while enjoying a late dinner with a friend, Richard Bingley, a gang of Mau Mau insurgents swept into the house and murdered the two men where they sat. The next evening, the Mau Mau attacked another farmhouse, this time located near Nyeri. This house was owned by a Mrs. Kitty Hesselberger and her companion Mrs. Raynes Simpson. Mrs. Simpson, according to a later police report on the incident, was seated in the living room of the house with her face to the door, and on the arm of the chair she was sitting in she had placed a gun. When the houseboy entered, Mrs. Simpson, noticing something odd about his appearance, swiftly picked up her weapon and was immediately confronted by a gang of Mau Mau thugs piling into the room. Her first shot mortally wounded the gang’s leader while it is believed her second shot distracted another Mau Mau member who was about to kill Mrs. Hesselberger. Mrs. Simpson then continued to fire her weapon, giving Mrs. Hesselberger the opportunity to pick up a shotgun, at the sight of which the remaining Mau Mau fled.
Other victims of Mau Mau attacks were not so fortunate. Over the following two weeks, it is believed that thirty-four Africans were murdered by the Mau Mau, yet it wasn’t until the events of January 24, 1953 that the world became fully aware of the type of atrocities the Mau Mau were prepared to commit in the name of freedom. On that night, at a remote farm owned by a Mr. Ruck, a gang of Mau Mau were smuggled onto the premises by Mr. Ruck’s African employees. At 9.00 p.m., while Mr. Ruck was having dinner with his wife, he was asked by one of his servants to step outside as they had caught an intruder on the premises. Mr. Ruck did as he was requested, only to be struck down as he exited the house. On hearing his cries for help, his wife grabbed a gun, but was quickly overcome by the insurgents before she could fire a shot. Both bodies were later found outside in the scrubland, where they had been badly mutilated. But as if that wasn’t sickening enough, the Mau Mau conducted a thorough search of the house, during which they came across the Ruck’s six-year-old son, Michael, asleep in bed. What was done to this little boy does not bear description.
However horrific these single incidents were, two months later on March 26, the Mau Mau stepped up their programme of terror and instigated two large-scale operations. The first targetted Naivasha police station – a change from previous operations, which normally concentrated on isolated farms. Just after midnight on March 24, approximately eighty-five Mau Mau, having shot the watchtower sentry, broke through the station’s outer perimeter of barbed wire. They then split into two groups. The first group headed for the police station’s main office, where they killed the duty clerk, while the second group headed straight for the station armory where they stole as many weapons and as much ammunition as they could carry. Having driven a truck into the compound, the armory raiders loaded it with their newly acquired arsenal while the other group breached the walls of a nearby detention center, releasing 173 prisoners. Naturally, during all this mayhem several gunshots were fired, awakening all those off-duty officers who were asleep in their barracks. Luckily for them, on realizing the nature of the attack they fled to safety rather than face up to the Mau Mau, who by this time were making away with their arms haul.
While the Naivasha raid was in full swing, another Mau Mau unit was gathering around the settlement of Lari, located approximately thirty miles south-southeast of Naivasha. Lari was home to many hundreds of Kikuyu men, women and children, most of whom were opposed to the Mau Mau or, worse still, were members of the Kikuyu Home Guard. Lari was also a base for the King’s African Rifles, but on the night of the 26th most of the soldiers had been sent to the Athi River Prison, where it was feared a mass break-out was planned.
With its defences down, Lari made an easy target for the Mau Mau. An estimated 1,000 insurgents, split into a number of groups, spread themselves throughout the village so that they could attack the homesteads simultaneously. Each unit had a specific task, with one group ensuring that all the huts were bound with cable around the outside to prevent the doors from opening. Another unit then soaked the huts with petrol while a third squad was tasked with attacking all those trying to escape the ensuing fires. Over 200 huts were burned to the ground during the attack at Lari. Thirty-one people are believed to have survived, but nearly all of these suffered horrendous injuries. Because a large percentage of Lari’s male population was out on patrol on the night in question, most of the dead were women and children. It has also been estimated that over 1,000 cattle were slaughtered during the raid.
Worldwide reactions of horror over both the Naivasha and Lari attacks bolstered the British administration’s resolve to wipe out the Mau Mau. More reinforcements were required so that the military could get on with the job. In addition, the police, the army and all the various civilian loyalist groups also began working more closely together and began conducting large-scale raids through areas that were thought to be Mau Mau strongholds.
6000 Africans in the shanty village of Kariobangi (near Nairobi) were rounded up for questioning April 24 and their village was ordered destroyed by bulldozers. 7000 natives in two villages northeast of Nairobi were evicted April 17 and their homes were levele
d similarly April 19. The area was called Nairobi’s Mau Mau headquarters.7
The administration also instigated what became known as the Kikuyu Registration Ordnance Act, which in effect meant that any Kikuyu living outside a designated reserve had to carry identification papers. But nothing was as easy as it seemed, for when the Mau Mau heard of this new initiative they ‘persuaded’ most of the Kikuyu to resist this order by returning to the reserves. The majority of white farmers, now more than ever before fearing Mau Mau attacks, dismissed their black servants and land workers who, having nowhere else to live, also returned to the reserves. Suddenly, tens of thousands of people were converging on land meant to house a fraction of that number, a situation which in turn led to overcrowding and bitter resentment among the largely Kikuyu population. The Mau Mau took full advantage of this disaffection, recruiting new members by the dozen. Yet, despite this sudden eagerness of Kikuyu to join the Mau Mau, there were still a fair number unwilling to sign up to such an organization – particularly given that the massacre at Lari, far from targeting white landowners, instead involved the murder of their fellow countrymen. Indeed, by mid-1953 the biggest question on the minds of most Kikuyu tribesmen was whether to join an organization which actively promoted the brutal and often irrational murder of their own kind, or to take a stand against them. Many chose the latter option, joining the British administration’s Home Guard. ‘Whatever use the Government made in publicizing the Lari Massacre to the world,’ wrote A. Marshall McPhee in his account of this time, ‘the fact remains that it was the turning point against the Mau Mau; many more rallied to the Kikuyu Guard and from this time on Mau Mau would meet increasing resistance from the people they sought to liberate.’8
This resistance was further strengthened by the British who, on the advice of a senior member of the army, now decided to provide the Home Guard with firearms – a move they had previously dismissed, fearing the Mau Mau would try to appropriate the weapons.
But the British had a long way to go before any of their military operations bore fruit, for despite an increase in the number of soldiers being deployed to Kenya, and despite the rapid growth within the ranks of the Home Guard, tracking the Mau Mau down was an almost impossible task. The British administration’s biggest break didn’t come until early in 1954 when Waruhiu Itote (better known by the nickname ‘General China’), one of the Mau Mau’s most powerful leaders, was wounded during a minor skirmish with government troops and subsequently captured. While he was in custody, the police’s Special Branch unit questioned Itote for days, trying to elicit from him not only information, but also an agreement that in return for his freedom he would attempt to negotiate a mass surrender of those men directly under his command. Before long, General Kaleba and General Tanganyika, both Mau Mau leaders like Itote, were also captured and ‘persuaded’ to participate in a negotiated surrender of their men. On March 30, 1954 members of the police, the army and the government sat down with a selection of Mau Mau representatives to thrash out a deal. The government guaranteed that all those who gave up their arms would not be executed, although inevitably their leaders would face long jail sentences. Furthermore, all those Mau Mau who weren’t thought to have been actively involved in terrorist activities would be gradually rehabilitated into the community. It was a good deal, one which the British administration gave the Mau Mau ten days to consider. In the interim, however, another Mau Mau general called Gatamuki, who was adamantly against surrender of any description, kidnapped several of those who had attended the government negotiations. Government forces now had to move very swiftly to address what was rapidly turning into a major crisis. Manoeuvring their troops into position they mounted a full-scale attack on Gatamuki and his men, killing twenty-five Mau Mau and capturing nine others, including Gatamuki himself.
Placed under arrest, Gatamuki announced that, having spoken at length with the Mau Mau he had kidnapped, these men had persuaded him that surrender was the best option considering how low morale was within the Mau Mau’s ranks. Conditions in the forests, where most of them were hiding out, had become intolerable. Food supplies were low, as were ammunition supplies, while the increasing strength of the government forces had left the Mau Mau’s communications system in disarray.
Meanwhile, back in Nairobi, operations were under way to settle the Mau Mau question once and for all. Knowing that large pockets of insurgents were both living and operating within the city itself, Operation Anvil swung into action. On April 24, 1954, British troops sealed all exits to the entire city, thus preventing anyone from entering or leaving Nairobi. Then police began a methodical house-to-house search of the city. All identification papers had to be produced, with anyone who was suspected of belonging to the Mau Mau was arrested and sent to a detention center at Langata, five miles from Nairobi where they underwent further investigation. Similar screening operations were also carried out in the reserves, as were large-scale military sweeps through the Aberdare Mountain Range, where it was known that large numbers of Mau Mau operatives were still hiding out. Naturally, given that the enemy was well-practiced in guerrilla warfare, there were as many steps back as there were forward, but slow progress was made until finally, with the deployment of small tactical units made up entirely of Home Guard officers who knew the terrain better than anyone, arrests started to mount up.
Former Mau Mau leader Jomo Kenyatta became Kenya’s first black Prime Minister in May 1963 and is pictured here (right) with Ugandan Prime Minister Milton Obote at a meeting in Nairobi the following month.
By the autumn of 1956, it was believed that there were only around 500 Mau Mau members still at large. The administration’s main concern now was to track down and capture the last major player in the Mau Mau organization, a commander by the name of Dedan Kimathi, who was thought still to be hiding out in the Aberdare Mountains.
On October 17, 1956, Kimathi was wounded by Henderson’s [Superintendent Ian Henderson, who conducted operations against the Mau Mau] men, but succeeded in escaping through the forest, but after traveling non-stop for just under twenty-eight hours and covering nearly eighty miles, he collapsed near the forest fringe. There he remained for three days, hiding in the day time, foraging for food at night. Early on the 21st he was found and challenged by a tribal policeman who fired three times at him, hitting him with the third shot. He was then captured, in his leopardskin coat, and in due course brought to trial and sentenced to death.9
Indeed, it seemed only fitting that it was an African who brought down one of the last of the Mau Mau, for despite being a group who were ostensibly fighting for African rights, during their operations it was their fellow Africans who bore the brunt of the violence. The statistics agree; for it has been calculated that during the whole State of Emergency while 32 Europeans were killed and 26 wounded, a total of 1,817 African civilians died, with 910 wounded.
The general State of Emergency was finally lifted in December 1960 and shortly thereafter Jomo Kenyatta was released from prison. While he had been in jail, the newly-formed Kenyan African National Union (KANU) party had voted him their president, and on his release he was also admitted onto Kenya’s Legislative Council.
In May 1963 Kenyatta became Kenya’s first black prime minister, and led the country to full independence on 13 December of the same year.
AUM SHINRIKYO – THE ‘SUPREME TRUTH’ SECT
Some strange malaise, some bitter aftertaste lingers on. We crane our necks and look around, as if to ask: where did all that come from? … We will get nowhere as long as [we] continue to disown the Aum phenomenon as something completely other, an alien presence viewed through binoculars on the far shore.
HARUKI MURAKAMI, from an article in the Guardian by Richard Lloyd Parry, March 18, 2005
The morning of March 20, 1995 began much like any other morning of any other day in Tokyo, Japan. People all over the city were rising, having breakfast, then heading off to the subway to get to work. But, unlike any other day, packages had been placed
on five different trains; packages which contained plastic bags filled with a lethal chemical agent. Once laid on the floor each parcel was punctured by an umbrella tip, which allowed the chemical inside – a lethal nerve gas called sarin – to be released. It then spread throughout the carriages. What Tokyo was experiencing was a co-ordinated terrorist attack, one that was carried out by a sinister, secretive cult named Aum Shinrikyo. In fact, this was a double tragedy for Japan, for only nine weeks earlier the city of Kobe had suffered a massive earthquake in which 6,000 people died. The Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami described the two events like, ‘the back and front of one massive explosion … these twin catastrophes will remain embedded in our psyche as two milestones in our life as a people.’1
The sarin-gas attack not only brought about a serious inquiry into the very heart of the Japanese state, it also spelt the beginning of the type of global terrorism best illustrated by the events of September 11, 2001, when two aeroplanes were deliberately flown into the Twin Towers in New York. But who was behind the events in Japan, in which thousands of people were injured and twelve people died? And what was the motive for causing havoc on such a large scale?
The self-proclaimed leader of Aum Shinrikyo was a man who called himself Shoko Asahara, although this wasn’t his real name. His actual name was Chizuo Matsumoto, and he was born in the provincial city of Kumamoto on March 2, 1955 to impoverished parents, his father earning a living as a tatami-mat maker. Matsumoto was partially blind from birth, a disability which meant he was sent to a special government-run boarding school for the blind. Unlike the other children, however, he could see out of one eye, and it is said Matsumoto took advantage of this situation to bully and manipulate the other children into doing his bidding. Money was his main motivation; he rarely, if ever, helped out his blind schoolmates without first extracting payment from them. Not everything went his way though, for several times he tried to become president of the student body, but was unsuccessful on each occasion due to his lack of popularity.
The Most Evil Secret Societies in History Page 15
