July 16 (Reuters) - Here is a look at what happened in Kenya during the Mau Mau rebellion as three Kenyans seek compensation in a British court on Monday:
* OVERVIEW:
-- The Mau Mau militant African nationalist movement originated in the 1950s among the Kikuyu people of Kenya. The Mau Mau - the origin of the name is uncertain - advocated violent resistance to British domination in Kenya. The movement was especially associated with the ritual oaths employed by leaders of the Kikuyu Central Association to promote unity in the independence movement.
* WHAT HAPPENED IN KENYA?
-- In 1950 the Mau Mau were banned by British authorities, and in October 1952, after a campaign of sabotage and assassinations attributed to Mau Mau militants, the British Kenya government declared a state of emergency and began years of military operations against Kikuyu rebels. The state of emergency was finally lifted in 1960.
-- By the end of 1956, more than 11,000 rebels had been killed in the fighting, along with about 100 Europeans and 2,000 pro-British African "loyalists". The Kenya Human Rights Commission has estimated 90,000 Kenyans were killed or maimed and 160,000 detained during what was known by Kenyans as "the emergency". Britain defined Mau Mau as a "civil disobedience".
-- The Mau Mau, drawn mainly from the Kikuyu, Embu and Meru tribes, waged war from the central Aberdare and Mount Kenya forests targeting the "white highlands" favoured by settlers from 1952 until 1956.
-- They scored some successes again the British military, but the colonial authority eventually crushed the insurgency by military action and rounding up entire communities into guarded camps to cut off support to fighters living in the bush. Despite government actions, Kikuyu resistance spearheaded the Kenya independence movement, and Jomo Kenyatta, who had been jailed as a Mau Mau leader in 1953, became the first prime minister of an independent Kenya 10 years later.
-- Veterans have said that British authorities subjected them to mass detention, torture and beatings in a bid to crush the uprising. Britain acknowledged "serious allegations" existed, but said its government was not liable because the colonial authority legally became the Kenyan government at independence in 1963.
* SINCE 1963:
-- Far from being a celebrated liberation movement, the Mau Mau since 1963 have been a divisive subject and still occupy an ambiguous place in Kenyan history.
-- Kikuyu society was marked by divisions between the fighters' descendants and those of "loyalists" who fought for the British. Most of the former forest fighters live in poverty, never having won the land they fought for, which was given mostly to their loyalist foes.
-- Kenya's government only lifted a legal ban on the Mau Mau movement in 2003.
Sources: Reuters/www.britannica.com (Reporting by David Cutler, London Editorial Reference Unit) (Reporting by David Cutler, London Editorial Reference Unit; Editing by Mark Heinrich)
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