‘I cannot mourn’: Former colonies conflicted over the queen

NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — Upon taking the throne in 1952, Queen Elizabeth II inherited millions of subjects around the world, many of them unwilling. Today, in the British Empire’s former colonies, her death brings complicated feelings, including anger.

Beyond official condolences praising the queen’s longevity and service, there is some bitterness about the past in Africa, Asia, the Caribbean and elsewhere. Talk has turned to the legacies of colonialism, from slavery to corporal punishment in African schools to looted artifacts held in British institutions. For many, the queen came to represent all of that during her seven decades on the throne.

In Kenya, where decades ago a young Elizabeth learned of her father’s death and her enormous new role as queen, a lawyer named Alice Mugo shared online a photograph of a fading document from 1956. It was issued four years into the queen’s reign, and well into Britain’s harsh response to the Mau Mau rebellion against colonial rule.

“Movement permit,” the document says. While over 100,000 Kenyans were rounded up in camps under grim conditions, others, like Mugo’s grandmother, were forced to request British permission to go from place to place.

“Most of our grandparents were oppressed,” Mugo tweeted in the hours after the queen’s death Thursday. “I cannot mourn.”

Guarded by members of the Lancashire Fusiliers, police and loyal Kikuyu spearmen, suspected members of the Mau Mau are questioned about the murder of two Europeans near Gilgil, Kenya, on Jan. 8, 1953. (AP Photo, File)

Some of the many Kikuyu tribesmen who were detained as Mau Mau suspects after the forced evacuation of Kikuyus accused of squatting on European farms in the Thomson’s Falls area, Kenya, wait to be transported on Nov. 30, 1952. The enclosure is surrounded by barbed wire. The tall structure seen in center background is one of the portable gallows brought from Nairobi for hangings. (AP Photo, File)

Members of the Lancashire Fusiliers, King’s African Rifles, Kenya Police and Kenya Police Reserve and Government Officers, force the evacuation of Kikuyu men, women and children who are accused of squatting on European farms in the Thomson’s Falls area of Kenya on Nov. 30, 1952. Goods and chattel are being loaded into one of the 40 lorries that will take them to the Kikuyu reserve. (AP Photo, File)

A member of the Mau Mau, wrapped in the blanket in which he was sleeping, is held at gun point during a roundup at 2:30 a.m., by the Fifth Battalion King’s African Rifles in the Nyeri district of Kenya on Nov. 13, 1952. Several prisoners were taken, including teachers at the Jomo Kenyatta sponsored Mungari School, where they are accused of spreading Mau Mau doctrines to the pupils. The man in this picture was arrested for being in the possession of subversive literature. (AP Photo, File)

But Kenya’s outgoing president, Uhuru Kenyatta, whose father, Jomo Kenyatta, was imprisoned during the queen’s rule before becoming the country’s first president in 1964, overlooked past troubles, as did other African heads of state. “The most iconic figure of the 20th and 21st centuries,” Uhuru Kenyatta called her.

Anger came from ordinary people. Some called for apologies for past abuses like slavery, others for something more tangible.

“This commonwealth of nations, that wealth belongs to England. That wealth is something never shared in,” said Bert Samuels, a member of the National Council on Reparations in Jamaica.

Elizabeth’s reign saw the hard-won independence of African countries from Ghana to Zimbabwe, along with a string of Caribbean islands and nations along the edge of the Arabian Peninsula.

Some historians see her as a monarch who helped oversee the mostly peaceful transition from empire to the Commonwealth, a voluntary association of 56 nations with historic and linguistic ties. But she was also the symbol of a nation that often rode roughshod over people it subjugated.

There were few signs of public grief or even interest in her death across the Middle East, where many still hold Britain responsible for colonial actions that drew much of the region’s borders and laid the groundwork for many of its modern conflicts. On Saturday, Gaza’s Hamas rulers called on King Charles III to “correct” British mandate decisions that they said oppressed Palestinians.

In ethnically divided Cyprus, many Greek Cypriots remembered the four-year guerrilla campaign waged in the late 1950s against colonial rule and the queen’s perceived indifference over the plight of nine people whom British authorities executed by hanging.

With hands raised, Agustinds Efstathios, 22, climbs the mountainside from his EOKA hideout on March 3, 1957, under the gun of a British soldier of the Duke of Wellington regiment after he surrendered with three others when the cave they were hiding in was surrounded by British troops. A fifth man, Gregoris Pieri Afxentios, second-in-command to EOKA leader Georgios Grivas, refused to surrender and fought until he was killed by a blast in the cave hidden in a deep valley of the Trodos mountains of Cyprus, a mile from the Isolated monastery of Macheras. (AP Photo, File)

Greek Cypriot youths, some with bandaged heads, stand outside a hospital in Famagusta, Cyprus, on Oct. 4, 1958. They said their injuries were received in the intensive round up operations conducted by security forces the day after EOKA terrorists shot dead one British woman and injured another as they left a shop on Hermes Street in Famagusta. (AP Photo, File)

British security troops of the Wiltshire regiment, stationed at Agyrta camp in Kyrenia Mountains of Cyprus, search villagers in Ayios Nicolaos on Dec. 28, 1958, during Christmas patrol against the EOKA, the Greek underground movement. (AP Photo, File)

Yiannis Spanos, president of the Association of National Organization of Cypriot Fighters, said the queen was “held by many as bearing responsibility” for the island’s tragedies.

Now, with her passing, there are new efforts to address the colonial past, or hide it.

India is renewing its efforts under Prime Minister Narendra Modi to remove colonial names and symbols. The country has long moved on, even overtaking the British economy in size.

“I do not think we have any place for kings and queens in today’s world, because we are the world’s largest democratic country,” said Dhiren Singh, a 57-year-old entrepreneur in New Delhi.

There was some sympathy for the Elizabeth and the circumstances she was born under and then thrust into.

In Kenya’s capital, Nairobi, resident Max Kahindi remembered the Mau Mau rebellion “with a lot of bitterness” and recalled how some elders were detained or killed. But he said the queen was “a very young lady” then, and he believes someone else likely was running British affairs.

“We cannot blame the queen for all the sufferings that we had at that particular time,” Kahindi said.

Timothy Kalyegira, a political analyst in Uganda, said there is a lingering “spiritual connection” in some African countries, from the colonial experience to the Commonwealth. “It is a moment of pain, a moment of nostalgia,” he said.

Huge portraits of Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II and Ghana’s President Kwame Nkrumah are displayed in Accra, Nov. 9, 1961, as the city prepares for the arrival of the British monarch on a state visit to Ghana. The queen and her husband, Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, arrived in Accra by plane from London later that that day. (AP Photo, File)

The queen’s dignified persona and age, and the centrality of the English language in global affairs, are powerful enough to temper some criticisms, Kalyegira added: “She’s seen more as the mother of the world.”

Mixed views were also found in the Caribbean, where some countries are removing the British monarch as their head of state.

“You have contradictory consciousness,” said Maziki Thame, a senior lecturer in development studies at the University of the West Indies in Jamaica, whose prime minister announced during this year’s visit of Prince William, who is now heir to the throne, and Kate that the island intended to become fully independent.

The younger generation of royals seem to have greater sensitivity to colonialism’s implications, Thame said — during the visit, William expressed his “profound sorrow” for slavery.

Robert Mugabe takes the oath of allegiance to Zimbabwe in a solemn moment at the Zimbabwe independence celebration in Highfields on April 18, 1980. Attending the ceremony, from left, are Britain’s Prince Charles, Zimbabwe’s President Canaan Banan and British Governor Lord Soames. (AP Photo/Louise Gubb, File)

Nadeen Spence, an activist, said appreciation for Elizabeth among older Jamaicans isn’t surprising since she was presented by the British as “this benevolent queen who has always looked out for us,” but young people aren’t awed by the royal family.

“The only thing I noted about the queen’s passing is that she died and never apologized for slavery,” Spence said. “She should’ve apologized.”

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Jawaharlal Nehru salutes the flag as he becomes independent India’s first prime minister on Aug. 15, 1947, during the Independence Day ceremony at Red Fort, New Delhi, India. “At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom,” Nehru famously spoke, words that were heard over live radio by millions of Indians. Then he promised: “To the nations and peoples of the world, we send greetings and pledge ourselves to cooperate with them in furthering peace, freedom and democracy.” (AP Photo/File)

The British army dynamites stone houses in an Arab town in northern Mandatory Palestine in reprisal for rebel activities, Jan. 9, 1939. (AP Photo/James A. Mills, File)

British outposts in Acre district operate machine guns against Arab rebels in Acre, Mandatory Palestine, on Jan. 9, 1939. (AP Photo/James A. Mills, File)

The Duchess of Kent, seated center on dais, reads a message from the Queen of England in the Parliament House at Accra, Ghana, on March 6, 1957. Ghana, the British colony known as the Gold Coast, is the first black African nation to gain independence from colonial rule. Seated at right is the Governor General Sir Charles Noble Arden-Clarke and at far right is Lady Arden-Clarke. (AP Photo).

Thousands of flag-waving youngsters cheer as Queen Elizabeth II and the her husband Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, ride through the Kaduna racecourse in Northern Nigeria on Feb. 2, 1956. (AP Photo, File)

Jamaican school children greet Queen Elizabeth II at the National Heroes Monument in Kingston, Jamaica, on Feb. 14, 1983, during the second day of the queen’s visit to the former British colony. (AP Photo/Kathy Willens, File)

Guerrillas who fought a war for seven years rejoice as they leave the stadium in Zimbabwe’s capital Salisbury (present-day Harare), following independence celebrations marking the birth of the state of Zimbabwe on April 18, 1980. (AP Photo/Matt Franjola, File)