DRIVE AGAINST MAU MAUS

Press, Volume LXXXVIII, Issue 26869, 23 October 1952, Page 9

DRIVE AGAINST MAU MAUS

Arrests Made Without Trouble (Rec. 10 p.m.) NAIROBI, October 22. Police and troops hunting for terrorists in the Kikuyu reserve, the headquarters of the Mau Mau movement, have now made 98 arrests. l Nearly every African leader suspected of any connexion with the movement is now behind bars. The arrests were carried out without trouble, except at one coffee farm, where some women went on strike in protest. The only African reaction so tar has been complete bewilderment, arid a Government spokesman said the situation was now “business as usual.” There is relief throughout Kenya that Britain has shown she can rapidly reinforce .the colony with troops by air and sea. The cruiser Kenya has been delayed and will not reach Mombasa before Thursday. A Kenya police inspector, Mr Douglas Copland, aged 28, died in hospital in Mombasa today of stab wounds inflicted by an African he tried to arrest on October 18. The Colonial Secretary (Mr Oliver Lyttelton) will leave for Kenya next week to see for himself what is happening. Detention of Leader

Mr Lyttelton told the House of Commons yesterday that the Kenya African Union, the most powerful African political organisation in the country, was not being proscribed. Its leader, Mr Jomo Kenyata, had been arrested “as an individual concerned with Mau Mau terrorism, who happens also to be the leader of the Kenya African Union.” Mr James Griffiths (Labour), a former Colonial Secretary, had expressed concern at the detention of Mr Kenyata in the belief that the support of all Africans and Asians should be enlisted against the terrorist organisation, on a basis of racial co-operation. Mr Kenyata has a white wife and child in Britain. He first went to Britain 23 years ago, to seek land reform for the Kikuyu tribe. In 1942 he married an engineer’s daughter, but four years later he returned to Africa, and his wife has heard nothing from him smee. Mr Lyttelton told the House of Commons that he would not discuss the present measures against Mau Mau terrorism. “Mau Mau terrorism is carefußy planned and centrally directed,” he said. “Its object is to destroy all authority other than the Mau Mau. “Its leaders are establishing tb«ir own courts in an attempt to usurp the functions of the Government, Aciion against these leaders is imperative. The ordinary process of the law is necessarily slow.” Mr Mbiyu Kinage, the Kenya African Union’s London representative, said tonight that the present unrest in the colony was due to the Kenya Government’s failure to meet the African peoples’ urgent legitimate demands. The African Union had repeatedly declared its opposition to terrorism. It was now clear that the alleged activities of the Mau Mau served as camouflage, behind which the authorities intensified the repression of the African national movement.