19 May 2003 On 19th May 2003, Indonesia deployed Hawk-200 fighter jets, supplied and made by the U.K., to front its assault on the Free Aceh Movement. The Guardian’s John Aglionby observed that ‘ the Hawks were used primarily to scare and intimidate people on the ground by flying low over targets already attacked with rockets…
13 December 1945 On 13 December 1935, Indian troops led by British officers, acting under the orders of Major General Douglas Hawthorn, burned down the town of Bekassi on the Indonesian island of Java. As the Illustrated London News explained, ‘all the inhabitants had fled so the punitive expedition burnt the town’1 Approximately one thousand timber homes…
10 November 1945 On 10 November 1945, 24,000 British troops began a large scale assault on the Indonesian city of Surabaya, where nationalist forces, equipped with weapons they had seized from Japanese troops, were determined to defend their newly acquired independence. Several days earlier, a British brigadier, Aubortin Mallaby, had been killed in the city,…
27 April 1962 On 27 April 1962, Prime Minister Harold Macmillan arrived in Washington for two days of talks. He was met by a sun tanned President Kennedy, who’s own plane, according to the New York Times, had brought him back from Palm Beach a few minutes earlier.1 The private discussion that followed might shock those…
WOMEN ACQUITTED OF DAMAGING AIRCRAFT ON THE GROUNDS OF PREVENTING A GREATER CRIME. [ 30 July 1996 ] On 30 July 1996, four women were acquitted by a Liverpool court of causing £1.5 million damage to Hawk ground attack aircraft which were to be sold to Indonesia, then under the dictatorial grip of General Suharto,…
