Mau Mau Uprising has admitted taking the Mau Mau oath and said that all he did was to ferry food to the fighters in the forest. None has been accused, let alone convicted, of any crime." Upon publication of Caroline Elkins' "Imperial Reckoning" in 2005, Kenya called for an apology from the UK for atrocities committed during the 1950s. The British government claimed the issue was the responsibility of the Kenyan government on the grounds of "state succession" for former colonies, relying on an obscure legal precedent relating to Patagonian toothfish and the declaration of martial law in Jamaica in 1860. In July
Mau Mau Uprising enaction of Swynnerton Plan. The villages were surrounded by deep, spike-bottomed trenches and barbed wire, and the villagers themselves were watched over by members of the Home Guard, often neighbours and relatives. In short, rewards or collective punishments such as curfews could be served much more readily after villagisation, and this quickly broke Mau Mau's passive wing. Though there were degrees of difference between the villages, the overall conditions engendered by villagisation meant that, by early 1955, districts began reporting starvation and malnutrition. One provincial commissioner blamed child hunger on parents deliberately withholding food, saying the latter were aware of