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Article

28 Sep 2018

Author:
Maggie Fick, Reuters

Kenyan workers say they warned Unilever before attacks in post-2007 vote violence

A group of Kenyan tea plantation workers have written to the chief executive of Unilever saying they had warned the firm’s local managers they would be caught up in ethnic violence after a disputed election in 2007, before being hunted and attacked.  The survivors...want their case for compensation heard in Britain and are seeking permission to appeal to Britain’s Supreme Court.  Unilever has said the scale and intensity of the violence that broke out after Kenya’s disputed vote and which killed an estimated 1,200 nationwide was not foreseeable.  A spokesman for the Anglo-Dutch company said he could not comment on the letter as court proceedings were pending...A group of current and former Kenyan employees told Unilever CEO Paul Polman in their letter that they raised their fears with local managers before violence broke out near the company’s tea plantation...Without commenting on the letter, the Unilever spokesman said: “Unilever wholeheartedly rejects any allegation that the violence was foreseeable or that the company should ever try to take over state responsibility by retaining the kind of armed military force necessary to intervene in such situations.”...

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