ComradeOm
9th April 2011, 18:52
Once again we witness the efforts that British government makes to ensure that its name remains unsullied. This is despite the litany of crimes that British soldiers have been racking up for over a century. Now we find successive governments intervening to abort inquiries into the massacre of unarmed civilians in Malaysia:
The [British] Foreign Office intervened to stop a criminal investigation into the alleged massacre of 24 unarmed villagers by British troops, in a cover-up that puts Britain's colonial past under renewed scrutiny. Newly disclosed documents reveal that in the 1990s UK officials pressured Malaysian authorities into aborting a police inquiry into the alleged killings by Scots Guards in Malaya in 1948.
They reveal that Malaysian police officers contacted Interpol and were due to visit the UK in 1993 to interview soldiers involved in the shootings, only for the Foreign Office to pressure the country's high commissioner into halting the visit. One memorandum states that senior Foreign Office officials later met Malaysian police chiefs to discuss closing the inquiry shortly before it was aborted.
The documents, released by Malaysian sources ahead of a judicial review related to the massacre, also reveal how a Metropolitan police investigation in 1970 into the allegations was "terminated" because an incoming Conservative government did not want the darker aspects of Britain's colonial past exposed.
The plantation workers were shot in cold blood by a 16-man patrol of Scots Guards in December 1948. Many of the victims' bodies were found to have been mutilated and their village of Batang Kali was burned to the ground. No weapons were found when the village was searched during a military operation against Chinese communists in the post-second world war Malayan emergency.
The British government has refused to apologise for the incident or offer reparations, and last November it said it would not hold a public inquiry into an incident that campaigners dub "Britain's My Lai massacre". A recent letter from Treasury solicitors indicates that the government is not prepared to discuss whether the killings were lawful or not.
News of the suppressed investigations follows last week's disclosure (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/apr/07/kenyans-mau-mau-compensation-case) of government reports in the high court revealing the extent of British brutality during the Mau Mau rebellion in Kenya.
Four Kenyans who allege that rebels were sexually abused, castrated and beaten while detained under colonial rule in the 1950s will continue their claim for compensation this week.More at the Guardian (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/apr/09/malaya-massacre-villagers-coverup)
Can anyone recommend a work on the war in Malaysia? I've read about it in the context of the decline of the British Empire but it probably deserves to be studied in its own right. For those interested in the war crimes in Kenya, mentioned above, Caroline Elkin's Imperial Reckoning is a highly recommended
The [British] Foreign Office intervened to stop a criminal investigation into the alleged massacre of 24 unarmed villagers by British troops, in a cover-up that puts Britain's colonial past under renewed scrutiny. Newly disclosed documents reveal that in the 1990s UK officials pressured Malaysian authorities into aborting a police inquiry into the alleged killings by Scots Guards in Malaya in 1948.
They reveal that Malaysian police officers contacted Interpol and were due to visit the UK in 1993 to interview soldiers involved in the shootings, only for the Foreign Office to pressure the country's high commissioner into halting the visit. One memorandum states that senior Foreign Office officials later met Malaysian police chiefs to discuss closing the inquiry shortly before it was aborted.
The documents, released by Malaysian sources ahead of a judicial review related to the massacre, also reveal how a Metropolitan police investigation in 1970 into the allegations was "terminated" because an incoming Conservative government did not want the darker aspects of Britain's colonial past exposed.
The plantation workers were shot in cold blood by a 16-man patrol of Scots Guards in December 1948. Many of the victims' bodies were found to have been mutilated and their village of Batang Kali was burned to the ground. No weapons were found when the village was searched during a military operation against Chinese communists in the post-second world war Malayan emergency.
The British government has refused to apologise for the incident or offer reparations, and last November it said it would not hold a public inquiry into an incident that campaigners dub "Britain's My Lai massacre". A recent letter from Treasury solicitors indicates that the government is not prepared to discuss whether the killings were lawful or not.
News of the suppressed investigations follows last week's disclosure (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/apr/07/kenyans-mau-mau-compensation-case) of government reports in the high court revealing the extent of British brutality during the Mau Mau rebellion in Kenya.
Four Kenyans who allege that rebels were sexually abused, castrated and beaten while detained under colonial rule in the 1950s will continue their claim for compensation this week.More at the Guardian (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/apr/09/malaya-massacre-villagers-coverup)
Can anyone recommend a work on the war in Malaysia? I've read about it in the context of the decline of the British Empire but it probably deserves to be studied in its own right. For those interested in the war crimes in Kenya, mentioned above, Caroline Elkin's Imperial Reckoning is a highly recommended