14 JULY
SUSPECT INSURGENT HUNG DESPITE EVIDENCE HIS CONFESSION WAS EXTRACTED UNDER TORTURE
U249601 – CC BY-SA 4.0 – via Wikimedia Commons.
[ 14 July 1953 ]
Today in 1953, Kenyan national Ngungire Njora, aged twenty two, was among five young men hung at Nairobi prison. He had been a suspect in the killing of two British settlers and was sentenced to death by a colonial court, despite the sentencing judge admitting that he had grave concerns regarding the obvious signs of physical violence on the prisoner’s body which were strongly suggestive of torture. They were so severe that they were still obvious at his trial three months after his alleged confession.1
UGANDAN DICTATOR IDI AMIN GUEST OF HONOUR AT BUCKINGHAM PALACE
[ 14 July 1971 ]
On 14 July 1971, Ugandan dictator Idi Amin was the guest of honour at a state banquet with the Queen at Buckingham Palace. Newspaper coverage was mostly favourable.
BRITAIN BLOCKS CALLS FOR A CEASEFIRE AS ISRAEL INVADES LEBANON
Koldo – CC BY-SA 2.0 – via Wikimedia Commons..
[ 14 July 2006 ]
On 14 July 2006, British diplomats at the UN Security Council voted to block international calls for an immediate ceasefire as Israel continued its assault on Lebanon. Russia, China and France had all made it clear that they considered Israel’s military response to Hezbollah’s capture of two Israeli soldiers disproportionate. The thirty four day conflict, which started on 12 July, was to cost the lives of over one thousand Lebanese civilians and make approximately one million homeless.
Commenting on the alleged justification for the mass slaughter and destruction, the philosopher and historian Noam Chomsky remarked that ‘the US and Israel, and the West generally, have little objection to capture of soldiers, or even to the far more severe crime of kidnapping civilians. That had been Israeli practice in Lebanon for many years, and no one ever suggested that Israel should therefore be invaded and largely destroyed.’2
FOOTNOTES
- David Anderson, Histories of the Hanged: Britain’s Dirty War in Kenya and the End of Empire, Phoenix, London, 2006, pp. 108-109.
- Noam Chomsky, ‘On the US-Israeli Invasion of Lebanon,’ Al-Adab, 19 August 2006, accessed online at url https://chomsky.info/20060819/
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