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The Mau Mau massacre is not 'unambigously right to apologize for'. The moral argument that one must make amends for his/her sin should apply to the perpetrators
by barrysteve 4y ago
The Mau Mau massacre is not 'unambigously right to apologize for'. The moral argument that one must make amends for his/her sin should apply to the perpetrators of the sin, not people who were uninvolved and the government has already compensated the victims of British torture financially.
But the Kenyan view that the Mau Mau were heroic freedom fighters and colonialism was bad, is painfully simplistic. The Mau Mau started the war by murdering innocents, they killed their own people if they did not swear an oath of alliegance and they escalated the brutality every step of the way.
The real Kenyans who wanted nothing to do with either the Brits or the Mau Mau are nearly completely unrecognized and yet the political narrative is dominated by the impacts of war, resources and money.
Your second link doesn't suggest anything to do with the British Empire. The values it's advertising are bog standard secular democratic stuff. The values of the British Empire were more religious, monarchical and imperialistic.
If this is the anti-empire narrative then it is disappointly anemic. Tribes who escalate economic warfare to the level of pure psychopathy and a small british colony that escalates to respond in war-camp, torturous kind, is not a good face value judgement of the largest empire the planet's seen, and all the good that it brought.