Kenya’s 1950 Kolloa massacre: Britain won’t own up to its colonial violence but communities need closure

In 1950, British forces killed at least 29 civilians in one of the deadliest, but least chronicled, episodes of colonial violence in Kenya.

Armed soldiers killed at least 29 civilian members of Dini ya Msambwa, a spiritual and anti-colonial movement in Kenya active around what is now West Pokot county in the north-western region. Survivors describe the group’s gathering on 24 April 1950 as a peaceful one. However, British colonial forces, fearing a potential uprising, violently confronted the group at the Kolloa trading centre.

It led to one of the highest number of deaths in a single day in a single place in Kenya’s colonial period.