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The colonial papers, which have remarkable contemporary resonance, were hidden in British colonial files and unearthed by officials only after an outcry over the suppression of evidence concerning the torture of Mau Mau fighters in pre-independence Kenya.
The Foreign and Commonwealth Office has admitted that it destroyed many official records on the turbulent years leading to white Southern Rhodesia's unilateral declaration of independence before the creation of an independent Zimbabwe. Papers in a file entitled "Southern Rhodesia pre-independence records" no longer exist, and officials are unsure of the whereabouts of top secret files stored in a separate building – Curtis Green, between Whitehall and the Thames.