In the words of the political analysts Bethwell Ogot and Tiyambe Zeleza:
"Kenya (in 1978) was still a dependent export economy, heavily penetrated by foreign capital from all the major capitalist countries, so that she was more firmly and broadly integrated into the world capitalist system than at independence."[xiii]
The fruits of post independent Kenya were shared between the Kenyan ruling class and foreign interests. The men in bowler hats had finally won.
In recent times, Britain's sordid record as a gross
violator of human rights dates back to 1948 when she declared emergency in Malaya
and began a particularly vicious war against the poor and marginalised Chinese
labour force. A Colonial Office report in 1950 disclosed that Malaya's rubber
and tin mining industries were the biggest earners for primarily British
businesses.
As the conditions in the mines owned by British capital was appalling, the
Chinese workers struck and demanded better wages and living conditions. The
strikes caused financial losses to the British interests and brought about
draconian measures being imposed on the trade unions. To counter the insurgency
force of the Malay Chinese of around 3000-6000 Britain conducted 4,500
airstrikes in the first five years of the war. Close to 709,000 lb of bombs were
dropped on the insurgent encampments. 500-lb fragmentation bombs (forerunner of
the notorious cluster bomb) were also used in the unequal conflict between the
British Military and the insurgents.
Defoliants supplied by the Chemical giant ICA were widely used to destroy
crops. Systematic torture was used in interrogation procedures by the British
forces to elicit information about the whereabouts of the insurgents.
Decapitation of dead guerillas served as means of identification especially
when the bodies were rotting in the jungles. Displaying dead bodies of the guerillas
in public was another barbaric method to instill fear in the Chinese squatters.
As the Scotsman newspaper quaintly observed it was good practice as "simple-minded Chinese are told and come to believe that the communist leaders
are invulnerable."
The insurgency was crushed but that did not prevent the notorious Sir Gerald
Templer, the High Commissioner of Colonial Malaya, to fatuously observe "the
answer lies not in pouring more troops into the jungle, but in winning the
hearts and minds of the people."
The hearts and minds of the Malay Chinese were won by putting into effect the
infamous Briggs Plan. This resettlement programme forcibly evicted the Chinese
squatters from their villages and located in a new village surrounded by barbed
wires with searchlights round the periphery to keep an eye on the movements of
the squatters at night. The resettlement camp was nothing but a concentration
camp. The resettlement camp was source of cheap labour for the rubber estates.
The brutal campaign ended on a self-congratulatory note for the British
commercial interests. After all, the Chinese workers learnt the spiritual joy
of hard work in rubber estates and their vagrant minds disciplined for their
own good. However, the true nature of the repression surfaced when a lord
blurted out 'What we should do without Malaya, and its earnings in tin and
rubber, I do not know.'[xiv]
The
British perfidy in giving carte blanche to the Indonesian generals to murder
close to one million Indonesians is a closely guarded secret and this terrible
secret is rarely mentioned in the media. On the basis of declassified documents
available, the British policy in Indonesia is shown in its truest colours:
rapacious, brutal and morally bankrupt.
In 1965 Britain and USA gave support to the Army to oust the Indonesian Leader
Sukarno. General Suharto who carried out the coup was a corrupt and murderous
thug. The real target of the coup was the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI).
Both the British and American policy experts were worried that the economic
resources in Indonesia would be primarily used for the benefit of the
Indonesian people and not western interests.
The threat of independent development alarmed the British and American
Planners. The army proceeded to hunt down the members of the PKI with the
diabolical cruelty unparalleled in modern history. In the reign of terror that
followed, the army would pick up any man or women suspected of being members of
PKI and shoot them in cold blood. Even elderly persons were not spared.
In one incident a village execution squad picked up a woman of 78 and executed
her.
The Officials of the State Department (US) nodded approvingly when the
slaughter went on and gave their blessings to the Generals by providing them
with small arms. The British were not far behind and supported Suharto to the
hilt. The British Intelligence (M16) ran a propaganda campaign to smear the
reputation of Sukarno and the PKI. The operation was conducted from a base in
Singapore known as Phoenix Park.
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