NANYUKI, Kenya (AP) — Margaret Wandia became pregnant after a week-long relationship with a British soldier training near her community in Kenya. They met when she was working in a bar in her early twenties. She knew little about him. He left her with a biracial child.
Now that son is 26, and part of a Kenyan lawyer’s attempt to bring some such children to Britain. The aim is to confront authorities with hundreds of such cases reported over the years, and to find the fathers and seek their support.
It’s a gamble after years of attempts by human rights groups to hold the British military and its personnel accountable for their actions during weeks of training in Kenya – including alleged rapes – and the children they leave behind.
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The countries’ $44 million defense cooperation agreement was extended in 2021. This will allow up to 10,000 British troops to train in Kenya for eight weeks each year. The biracial children in Kenya are part of wider concerns about the British mission, particularly the ongoing allegations of rape against local girls and women.
Like many biracial children in largely conservative Kenya, Wandia’s son, Louise Gitonga, said he felt excluded from society and excluded from education and employment because he was “too white.”
“I have an identity crisis that has driven me to alcoholism,” unemployed Gitonga told The Associated Press at his home in the central city of Nanyuki. “Everywhere I pass, people call me a white man. Others call me an albino. These names cause me a lot of pain and anguish.”
His mother recalled taking him to boarding school and being asked to pay higher fees for her white child. She later married a local farmer, Paul Wachira, who recognized the challenges of raising a biracial child.
“Sometimes I had to hide him from the rest of the family during gatherings to avoid a lot of questions because he looked very different from his siblings,” Wachira said.
Kenyan lawyer Kelvin Kubai represents ten such children of visiting British troops. He claimed that not all of their parents’ relationships were consensual. Working with a British law firm which he does not want to name, he hopes to bring a number of children to Britain next year and appear in court.
“You know, such children don’t know the conditions under which they were born,” Kubai said.
He hopes they will obtain citizenship. Under British law, children of British citizens are eligible for British citizenship and care for both parents if they are under 18 years of age. Seven of the children Kubai represents are under 18 years old. For those over 18, the journey is a search for identity and support.
Kubai is also raising money — $4,600 so far — to conduct DNA tests to help find the children’s fathers.
The identity crisis affects children of white fathers. Kubai said he has not yet come across any children born to black British fathers. “They would not be easily identified and would not be discriminated against,” he said.
A spokesperson for the British High Commission said in a statement to the AP that the country and the British military training mission in Kenya “cooperate fully with local child support authorities if there are any claims of paternity.” Those authorities did not respond to questions.
But Kenyan mothers and community groups have long said British authorities have provided little or no help.
Jenerica Namoru, 29, has a 5-year-old after dating a British man with the Training Mission. The man’s name appears on the birth certificate as the father after he gave consent and shared his documentation for the process.
Namoru said the man initially accepted the child and communicated with her, but refused to send financial support. She sought help from the British Army Training Unit offices in Kenya. She said they wouldn’t listen.
“Sometimes they even blocked me from entering the gate,” she said. She is now represented by Kubai.
Biracial children in the area around the British training center date back to the 1960s, when Kenya was under British rule. Those born decades ago are also part of the current efforts to seek justice and support.
David Mwangi Macharia, 68, goes by the nickname “British” because of his light complexion. He said his mother was in a relationship with a British soldier. He works as a night watchman and part-time bricklayer after leaving primary school because he was ridiculed and discriminated against.
“(Kenyans) always think that I cannot do menial work despite the fact that I have no education,” Macharia said. He even found it difficult to get along with his dark-skinned siblings.
Efforts to hold visiting British troops to account have long gained little ground, Kenyans say.
Marion Mutugi, commissioner at the Kenya National Commission for Human Rights, said relationships between British soldiers and local women range from consensual to transactional to coercive.
The commission says it has documented more than 200 cases of rape involving British troops between 1983 and 2003 and is still collecting data.
The British Ministry of Defense has dismissed the rape cases as ‘inauthentic’ and a 2007 investigation by the Royal Military Police did not lead to compensation or justice for the victims, the KNCHR said in a report to the Kenyan parliament protesting an earlier renewal of the countries. defense agreement.
“(Authorities) also interfere with investigations by endangering the local community. Human rights defenders on the ground are being threatened and intimidated by both BATUK and the Kenyan Armed Forces and Kenyan officials to ensure that justice is not achieved,” Mutugi said.
“Our view at the committee was that they wanted to put a band-aid on a wound instead of tearing it, treating it and operating,” the commissioner added.
The British High Commission has said it is investigating the allegations. The Kenyan authorities never responded to the allegations.
The most famous case is that of Agnes Wanjiru, who was murdered in 2012 after an evening in the company of British soldiers. An inquest in 2019 concluded that Wanjiru was murdered by British soldiers, but no suspect has been charged. A public hearing by the Kenyan parliament’s defense committee, which began in May, revived the investigation.
Kubai said he wants to give Kenyan children of British soldiers a much-needed sense of identity.
“What we are bringing before the British court is not just the issue of rape, it is the issue of these children who happen to be prisoners of an identity not of their own choosing,” he said.
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