United Kingdom High Commissioner in Kenya Neil Wigan has openly said that they won’t apologize to Kenya after all.
Mr Wigan said that offering an apology to the country for atrocities committed many decades ago would expose the European nation to convoluted legal battles.
The high commissioner further said that those issues had been settled amicably in out-of-court set up, a move that he said showed their honesty and remosefulness over the ills that were meted against the Kenya’s MAU MAU.
“An apology starts to take you into difficult legal territory so to say and the agreement we made was an out-of-court settlement so it showed our sincerity and openness about recognising that abuses had been committed and that is the route that we chose and was accepted by the Mau Mau Veterans Association,” Wigan said during an interview in one of the radio stations.
“We haven’t made an apology really in any context, it is an extremely difficult thing to do. What we think we want to do is to acknowledge the difficult bits of history, talk about them openly both to affected countries and to individuals and communities.”
The UK High Commissioner added that they have also been very careful with the words they use to address the colonial era issues.
Wigan, however, noted that the UK has engaged all affected parties and remains open about the history between the two countries and all affected countries – a reason why he feels UK ought not apologize to Kenya.
“We choose the language carefully, we express deep regret we said it in parliament and in the most public way. We’ve engaged very closely with Mau Mau Veterans who are affected and we have paid compensation individually and also arranged for the monument which now sits in Uhuru Park. We’ve been very open about those difficult parts of our history.”
His remarks come ahead of King Charles III and Queen Camilla’s planned visit to Kenya at the end of October.
