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From Our Own Correspondent: Kenya and the Netherlands

Kenya and the Netherlands

BBC World Service - From Our Own Correspondent, Kenya and the Netherlands

Lasting scars of the Mau Mau insurgency in Nairobi; changing drug policies in Maastricht.

Owen Bennett Jones presents dispatches from Gabriel Gatehouse, hearing from survivors  of the Mau Mau era in Nairobi; and Manuela Saragosa, seeing the effects of changing drug policy in Maastricht.

Insight, wit and analysis from BBC correspondents and journalists around the world, presented by Owen Bennett Jones. In this edition:


A tangled tale 

For some time, our correspondent Gabriel Gatehouse has been following the allegations about the British torture and internment of pro-independence fighters and activists in Kenya some 60 years ago. The United Kingdom is still coming to terms with what it did: earlier this month a judge in London decided that three Kenyan torture victims could take legal action against the UK government. 

But there’s another, more subtle, aspect to this history lesson. Kenya’s first generation of post-colonial rulers were also somewhat embarrassed by the torture victims. So it was not only in London but also in Nairobi that politicians, adjusting to independence, manipulated perceptions of the past.


Dutch tolerance wears thin - so what next?

For decades now the war on drugs has been global, violent and unrelenting. Hundreds of thousands of people have been imprisoned, maimed and killed. Some politicians say it’s a war that can’t be won, and decriminalisation (or at least more relaxed approach to some drugs) is the answer. But what has happened in places where that has been tried?  

The Netherlands has been a byword for tolerance of cannabis for decades, with "drug tourists" blowing in from across Europe to sample the wares of its 'coffeeshops'. But not everyone's happy about that - and a local backlash is under way. Manuela Saragosa visits Maastricht and Sittard to learn more about the current approach.

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