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“go away”
Memusi Lochede sits on a bed as her 24-year-old daughter Chaula lies motionless on the floor of her home in Archer’s Post, in the shadow of the training grounds. A donated wheelchair sits in the corner. Her daughter’s right leg is gone; Metal rods stretch a body so badly injured that she struggles to hold her head up.
“I have so much pain in my heart to see my daughter in this condition,” 46-year-old Lochede tells Al Jazeera, wiping the drool from her daughter’s chin. “I feel ashamed that she needs so much help, and I don’t know how to help her.”
In 2019, Chaula, then a teenager, says she was hit by a speeding BATUK vehicle while crossing the road. Her leg was amputated and, her mother says, she was paralyzed and spent almost three years in the hospital.
A BATUK representative later came to see Lochede, she says.
“He apologized for what happened and said they don’t want a court case and will take care of my daughter – everything she needs,” she recounts.
The MOD said it “found no record of an approach being made by a BATUK representative to the family.”
When her daughter was discharged, BATUK paid the hospital bills — without a receipt or disclosing the amount — and disappeared, Lochede says. For years, Lochede called her community liaison officer, the Kenyan official tasked with receiving complaints like hers, who never responded. Finally she gave up.
The MOD told Al Jazeera in August that BATUK is aware of the claim that one of its drivers “hit and injured a minor” in 2019, “resulting in permanent injuries”.
It said legal representatives were in contact with the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights about the case and that an offer of compensation was made but the commission did not respond.
At the end of September, Al Jazeera asked the MOD what was offered, when and by whom. It did not provide these details, saying instead that BATUK “remains prepared to engage with the child’s family, through an appropriate representative and without prejudice”, but that “to date, we have not been able to establish contact with the family or an authorized representative”. Any resolution would have to rely on “verified medical and factual information” and, since the claim concerns a minor, be approved by a Kenyan court.
Ruth Getobai Nchagwa, a deputy director at the commission, says it “never engaged with BATUK directly because our letters to them went unanswered”.
Chaula’s case “has not been addressed so far,” she noted, and the commission is not aware of any discussions about compensation. Lochede similarly says no one ever approached her about the compensation.
Before the accident, Lochede supported her five children by making pearl necklaces and selling them in Nairobi. Now she can’t leave her daughter’s side, and Chaula’s care costs about 30,000 Kenyan shillings ($230) a month — more than Lochede usually earns.
“It’s a shameful feeling to pick up the phone and call so many numbers for help, and no one picks up your call,” she explains, her lips quivering as she fights back tears. “In those moments when I can’t take care of my daughter, I just lock myself in the room and lie in my bed and cry.”
Her daughter, once healthy and active, now barely speaks.
“There are some days where she wakes up and just says one word, like ‘food’ or ‘bathroom,'” says Lochede. “Those are the good days. Other days she refuses to eat. I see that she is depressed and lonely. Her soul is broken inside.”
“These soldiers do these things because they know they can get away with it,” she adds sharply. “They know we have no money. We have no power. It is extremely difficult for us to fight.”
Cases like Chaula’s are far from isolated. Last year, a landmark two-year investigation by Kenya’s parliamentary defense committee put decades of alleged BATUK abuses on the official record.
The 94-page report gathered testimony from hearings on Laikipia and Samburu, including a herdsman who was allegedly shot dead by a British sergeant; the alleged gang rape of 30 women at knife point in 1997; a boy who lost both his arms and an eye to unexploded ordnance; and women with children their British fathers had never recognized.
BATUK refused to appear, citing its status and immunities under the defense arrangements. The committee condemned the refusal as contemptible, calling it “emblematic of the institutional contempt for the authority of Parliament and, by extension, the sovereignty of the people of Kenya”.
It concluded that BATUK is “increasingly seen as an occupying presence rather than a development partner”, with concerned residents drawing parallels to colonial injustices. Witnesses told the committee that “suspected BATUK abuses not only go unpunished but are actively covered up” – that whenever a BATUK member is implicated, police files are often “missing” and complainants are “intimidated into silence.”
An MOD spokesman told Al Jazeera that the UK “deeply” values its relationship with Kenya, “which has long been the UK’s defense partner of choice in East Africa”.
The MOD “addresses concerns raised by Kenyan authorities and communities, focusing on legal accountability, ethical standards, environmental stewardship, economic benefit and social responsibility,” the spokesperson said.
Regarding road traffic incidents, the spokesperson said that BATUK “cooperates fully with local authorities and Kenyan police”, that all such incidents are “thoroughly investigated” and that “where claims are made, BATUK submits to the jurisdiction of the Kenyan courts”.
When asked what progress the MOD had made on the concerns raised by the committee and whether it was investigating any of the specific cases, he referred Al Jazeera to the written statement it submitted to the inquiry, which said it was “not aware of any evidence to support any allegations of collusion with security forces to suppress or dismiss complaints, or intimidate, bribe or coerce such serious evidence and such serious evidence will be examined accordingly”.
For Awino Okech, professor of feminist and security studies at SOAS University of London, the parliamentary report points to individual abuse. “This is no longer a case of a few bad apples, but reckoning with what many interpret as an accepted militarized institutional culture,” she tells Al Jazeera.
“The fundamental question that the British government is asked to reflect on is their responsibility when there is a documented pattern of abuse by their employees in a foreign country.”
Okech says that the pattern cannot be separated from the race. “We cannot ignore the racist element. In this case, it is visible when crimes committed in Kenya are taken less seriously.”
