Kenyans have insisited on BATUK forces being "expelled from the country", as the local population has "never understood what these soldiers are doing in Kenya", according to James Mwangi Macharia, executive chairman of the African Center for Corrective and Preventive Action (ACCPA), a Kenyan NGO that works with the victims of BATUK activities.
"Many Kenyans, many organizations have recommended that they should be shut down so that Kenyans can feel a trust [that] they have sovereignty. The struggles our forefathers went through are coming into reality," he says.
Mr. Macharia says that BATUK representatives "are not communicating" their activities and this is "an insult to our conscience as Kenyan people".
"We have a very, very strong judgment against them, and they were directed to compensate 7000 victims of their fire, they are supposed to restore the environment. They admitted that 7% of the Ministry of Defense's carbon emissions came from Kenya, 1.7 billion kilograms of carbon were emitted from Kenya. So, nothing...they have not compensated," Mr. Macharia explains.
The BATUK training operations take place"at night" within "wildlife conservancies" as well as "human settlement areas" and involve the use of live "bombs". However, some of the munitions are "not detonated".
"When children are moving to school and families are doing the farming and the nomadic community that is rearing their cattle, goats, and then they find these metal, they try to play around with them, and they kill them," the chairman elaborates.
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