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Hundreds of outraged Kenyan women demanded Friday that the British army stop training in Kenya after a military probe in London rejected charges its troops raped local women.
A day after Britain's defence ministry found insufficient evidence for claims British soldiers raped hundreds of Kenyan women over a span of 55 years, some 300 Maasai and Samburu tribeswomen gathered here to vent anger.
"We shall never give up the fight, the battle has just began," said Mary Lenayasa, one of many women at the protest at Archer's Post, about 240 kilometers (150 miles) northeast of Nairobi, near a British training range.
"We demand that they cease training in this area immediately," said Alice Nanayara, whose sister was among those who made more than 2,000 claims of rape dismissed as lacking credibility by British investigators.
"We cannot stand seeing them here after they have violated our bodies and our rights too," she said in comments echoed by other protestors, including men. Some vowed not to leave Archer's Post until the British did.
"The (Kenyan) government should terminate training contracts with those people so that they can immediately leave our ranges," said Ben Ole Koisaba, chairman of a Maasai civil society group.
He dismissed the decision as a cover-up by the British government, which is facing numerous class-action suits over alleged abuses of Kenyans during the colonial and post-colonial eras.
"It is common knowledge, the rape is continuing even now," Koisaba said. "Those soldiers still rape our women who go out to graze the animals."
Since Kenya gained independence in 1963, the British army has maintained a permanent garrison there, known as the British Army Training Unit Kenya (BATUK), with up to 4,000 British troops training there annually.
Kenya won independence from Britain in 1963 but London has since negotiated rights to stage training military exercises on Kenyan soil.
On Thursday, the British defence ministry said there was not enough evidence to support prosecutions of any soldiers after a team of up to 20 officers investigated the more than 2,000 claims of rape.
"In terms of a criminal investigation, there is no corroborative evidence that would lead to the successful prosecution of a named individual," it said.
The investigators interviewed all 2,187 claimants, most of them Masai and Samburu women from some of the remotest areas of Kenya during the probe of the claims that the ministry said it took "extremely seriously."
They women were demanding 20 million pounds (30 million euros, 39 million dollars) in compensation from the British army for the the alleged rapes.
In another pending compensation case against Britain, veterans of Kenya's Mau Mau uprising are seeking damages for alleged torture at the hands of British colonial authorities during the 1950s.
The British Foreign Office has until February to decide whether or not to accept the claim. If it does not, the case is likely to be heard by a judge at the High Court in London late next year or in early 2008.
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AFP 151513 GMT 12 06
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