10 January 1949 On 10 January 1949, Emergency regulation 17D authorised the British High Commissioner for Malaya to use mass detentions and deportations, including even entire villages, towns or rural districts, where elements among the population were suspected of supporting the communist insurgents, who were fighting to end British rule.1 Â It was immediately acknowledged even…
10 January 1900 On 10 January 1900, Major General Horatio Herbert Kitchener arrived in Cape Town as the new Chief in Staff of an army of some 200,000 men. The task he had been given was to crush attempts by the descendants of Dutch settlers to form their own Boer homeland in South Africa, independent…
HUNDREDS OF GREEK CYPRIOTS DETAINED WITHOUT TRIAL [ 22 July 1958 ] At 1 am on 22 July 1958, Operation Matchbox commenced. The British Army’s orders were to detain anyone suspected of having any affiliation with the Greek Cypriot EOKA movement, an organisation which demanded the end of rule from London and for the island…
GENERAL’S REQUEST TO DEPORT BOER WOMEN TO REMOTE ISLAND IMPRACTICAL [ 20 July 1901 ] On 20 July 1901, the British Secretary of State for War, St. John Brodrick, wrote to General Horatio Kitchener, the Chief of Staff of British forces in South Africa, commenting on the general’s suggestion for the permanent banishment of the…
AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINES NOT LEGALLY ENTITLED TO THE RIGHT OF A FAIR TRIAL [ 8 July 1805 ] On 8 July 1805, Judge Advocate Richard Atkins, the senior judge in Britain’s Australian colony of New South Wales, gave his legal opinion on what should be done with two Aboriginal prisoners, Mosquito and Bulldog, captured after an…
BRITISH TROOPS USE PRICELESS ANTIQUE BOOKS AS TOILET PAPER [ 19 June 1842 ] Today in 1842, a British army of 10,000 men, under the command of Major General Hugh Gough, seized Shanghai. His Redcoats looted shops, destroyed all the public buildings and used the books from Shanghai’s libraries variously as toilet paper or as…
BRITAIN REACTS TO ANTI-GERMAN RIOTS BY DETAINING GERMAN CIVILIANS [ 13 May 1915 ] During the First World War, the British government deliberately played on widespread anti-German and anti-Austrian sentiments. On 13 May 1915, Prime Minister Herbert Asquith, aching to receive accolades from a xenophobic press, informed parliament that all German and Austrian civilians living…
