Enlarge imageBy Katie Nguyen
ARCHERS POST, Kenya (Reuters) - Just the sight of a white man in uniform makes Halima Mohamud feel ill.
It revives memories of the day 10 years ago when, she says, British troops in Kenya on a military exercise raped her and her sister in a corner of the country’s remote northern scrubland.
Mohamud now wants the British government to make recompense, a goal shared by 650 other women who also allege rape by British soldiers in the African country from the 1970s onwards.
"Whenever I see a uniform, I get sick. Especially a white man in uniform with tattoos," says Mohamud, who says she and her younger sister were attacked as they gathered firewood.
"They had tattoos all over their body. I still have nightmares about it," said the 46-year-old, arriving on Monday in this dusty town 400 km (250 miles) north of Nairobi.
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She was one of dozens of women who left remote rural homes to queue up to meet visiting British lawyer Martyn Day, who is preparing lawsuits against the British government on their behalf.
The Ministry of Defence has declined to comment on the allegations but points out that its own Royal Military Police is conducting an investigation.
The allegations surfaced after Day won over $7 million (4.3 million pounds) in compensation from Britain for 233 nomadic herdsmen from the Maasai and Samburu tribes maimed by unexploded munitions left by the British army or whose relatives were killed by the weapons.
Overnight many victims became rich by Kenyan standards.
"When the women first came I was very sceptical. I was wary of them jumping on the bandwagon," Day told Reuters. "But what persuaded me was the level of corroborative evidence."
The women recently won legal backing to take the army to court. Day says he has uncovered enough police and medical records so far to support 100 cases.
JUSTICE
"It is my job to try and see you get some justice," Day told about 200 women, including Maasai women adorned with beads and brightly coloured cloth, gathered under acacia trees.
Rape is a complex trauma in traditional societies where men have the automatic right to divorce their wives for sex outside marriage, and many women said they were afraid to speak out.
"My best guess is that...75-80 percent of the claims are true. It’s a lot higher than the bomb cases because women have more to lose," Day said.
He hopes to win 25,000 pounds for each successful case and more where there are mixed-race offspring.
Margaret Chelangat alleges she was raped in 1987 by three British soldiers, who, she says, used abusive language before attacking her.
She said she was raped by three men, adding without elaborating that two of them were white and one was black.
"I could not open up as a mother, as a woman after that," she said. "I fear men. I feel that they are beasts. Mzungu (white) men and African men -- they are the same."
