British MP: Teach Sotik massacre in UK schools

The deeply buried dark history in which 1,800 members of the Kipsigis community were massacred by the colonial government is still haunting the British government.

The killing in Sotik, Bomet County 115 years ago, has resurfaced in London, some 10,423 kilometres away from the scene of crime.

A British Member of Parliament wants the 1905 massacre mainstreamed in the United Kingdom’s national school curriculum, arguing this would be a critical step by the UK to end the scourge of institutional racism and Britain’s destructive legacy of colonialism.

The killing of men, women and children followed the refusal by members of the Kipsigis community to surrender heads of cattle alleged to have been stolen from the Maasai residing in the current Narok County.

Ms Cluadia Webbe, the MP for Leicester East in the House of Commons, terms the incident as one of the most sordid history of the British Empire.

She cites the successful appeal by the Kericho County government in 2018 to the United Nations Special Rapporteur in Geneva where it claimed that some 90,000 acres of land was given to white settlers.

In the process, it is reported that some 115,000 people were forcibly removed from their ancestral lands to Gwassi where thousands of people died due to the harsh environment, diseases and malnutrition.

“If we are to end the scourge of institutional racism and the destructive legacy of colonialism, it is vital that young people are taught the true history of race relations. I urge you to ensure that this atrocity is included in the national curriculum,” she wrote in her appeal to the Secretary of State for Education in the House of Commons Gavin Williamson on August 7

She claimed the massacre led by Major Pope-Hennessey in which 1,800 out of an estimated 20,000 members of the community were killed in cold blood have been ‘air brushed in the British history’.

“There has never been any form of apology, and no reparations ever offered for this act of historic genocide. There is a collective British amnesia of this atrocity,” Ms Webbe said.

Dr Kimutai Bosek, a Nairobi-based advocate, said the victims are seeking to compel the British government to apologise for the crimes and offer reparation.

“People were subjected to all manner of injustice from 1895 which escalated in the 1920s where houses were burned down the displaced taken to Nyanza, Samburu, Nakuru and Laikipia where they were dumped as the British citizens planted tea bushes in the land.

The victims were subjected to undignified life and treated like wild animals,” said Dr Bosek.