20 OCTOBER
BRITISH OFFICER ORDERS REPRISAL EXECUTIONS IN ARAB VILLAGE
[ 20 October 1938 ]
Captain Orde windgate is remembered for his heroic role in leading raiding operations behind the Japanese lines during the Second World War. A few years earlier, on 20 October 1938, Windgate is said to have ordered the extra-judicial execution of ten men in the Palestinian village of Hittin, following a terror attack on the town of Tiberias in which 19 Jewish civilians had been killed
BRITISH GOVERNOR OF KENYA DECLARES A STATE OF EMERGENCY
[ 20 October 1952 ]
Today in 1952, Kenya’s governor, Evelyn Baring, signed a state of emergency. In the early hours of the following morning, in an operation code-named Jock Scott, 106 Kenyan civil rights leaders and individuals suspected of being overly sympathetic to an anti-British rebellion, known as the Mau Mau uprising, were arrested.
BRITAIN ENDS THE RIGHT OF SUSPECTS TO REMAIN SILENT.
[ 20 October 1988 ]
On 20 October 1988, Britain ended the right of suspects to remain silent as part of its campaign against the IRA. This affected both their right to remain silent during interrogation by police and also when questioned in court. As an editorial in the Guardian noted the following day ‘the right is important because it prevents undue pressure being applied by the police to suspects’ but civil rights concerns were overruled in the interest of asserting state power.1
FOOTNOTE
- Editorial, ‘New Law will erode right to silence,’ The Guardian, 21 October, 1988, accessed on the Guardian online archive at url https://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/2013/oct/21/right-to-silence-civil-rights
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