Kenya’s parliament has accused British soldiers that were stationed at the British Army Training Unit in Kenya (BATUK) base of decades of sexual assaults, killings, maimings, the abandonment of children, human rights violations and environmental destruction. A 94-page report follows a two-year inquiry into accusations surrounding BATUK. The report suggests that the base used dangerous substances like white phosphorus in its field exercises, resulting in serious health and environmental impacts for the local community. The investigating panel also accused the soldiers of refusing to cooperate with the investigation, claiming diplomatic immunity. As Jean-Christophe Servant wrote in 2022 : ‘BATUK, which has been stationed in Kenya since 1964 and trains up to 4,000 British infantry a year, long enjoyed diplomatic immunity, but this ended in 2016 when Nairobi and London renewed their five-year defence agreement. Justice [Antonina Cossy] Bor was the first to follow through on the implication...
“The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion (to which few members of other civilizations were converted) but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact; non-Westerners never do.” —Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilisation and the Remaking of the World Order, 1996, p. 51