Kenyan communities are suing the UK over colonial-era land grabbing that now hosts hectares of tea plantation farms. A community of more than 100,000 people in Kenya is seeking compensation from the British government for forced displacement from their homes and farmland.
It happened under British colonial rule during the first half of the 20th century when Kenyans were cleared from their land holdings to make way for enormous tea plantations.
During colonial rule the fertile land was seized by the British and rapidly taken over while the locals were kicked out and left with no homes. This caused a lot of trauma that left many people and their children with no way of life.
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Some of the locals were tortured, maimed, and raped during the violent takeover of their fields and have not been compensated ever since.
Most of them have lived in poverty ever since, while multinational tea companies like Unilever and Finlay’s profit from their land.
The tea plantations cover up to a hundred thousand hectares which were grabbed by the settlers even before the 20th century.
This injustice has never been made right and generations after are still suffering the effects.
Source: Al Jazeera