In 1950, the Empire had a problem. [148] They are a beastly people with a beastly religion. People were castrated with pliers then sodomized by guards. Pitched under the white hot African sun and crawling with flies, the camps were overcrowded, underequipped, and lethally prone to disease outbreaks. Eyes were gouged out and ears cut off and skin lacerated with coiled barbed wire. it was a racist policy that harmed nearly a million people, all so the British could cut off supplies to a handful of rebels. Random executions were not-uncommon and the use of torture was widespread. The history of the British Empire is characterised by similar waves of resistance and repression. The big myth of the British Empire is that it nobly withdrew from its colonies when it realized the days of Imperialism were over. Outside the barbed wire walls, another half a million Chinese were meanwhile being deported, sent into exile, or forced from their homes. Armed Afrikaners on the veldt near Ladysmith during the … In short. The British Foreign Office demanded 141 Turks be tried for crimes against British soldiers, and 17 for the crimes against Armenians during World War I. You can find our Community Guidelines in full here. Morris M. is Listverse's official news human, trawling the depths of the media so you don't have to. The most insightful comments on all subjects will be published daily in dedicated articles. Specific orders were given to exterminate every living thing within its walls, from animals to rebels to children. To this day, the British Empire has struggled with the notion of righting past wrongs. During the Second Boer War (1899-1902), the British rounded up around a sixth of the Boer population - mainly women and children - and detained them in camps, which were overcrowded and prone to outbreaks of disease, with scant food rations. In Irish, it is known as An Gorta Mór — the Irish Famine. Reasoning that their forces stood no chance against a hidden army that could call upon the peasants for supplies, the British hit upon an ingenious solution. In the 1950s, the people of Kenya decided they wanted their nation back. Under slogans like “labor and freedom” and other variations on ” Arbeit macht frei,” inmates were worked to death as slave labor filling in mass graves. Independent Premium Comments can be posted by members of our membership scheme, Independent Premium. Of the 107,000 people interned in the camps, 27,927 Boers died, along with an unknown number of black Africans. Houses were ransacked, villages burnt, and half a million people killed. Start your Independent Premium subscription today. Teaching atrocities the British empire committed is critical for students to grow up informed and educated. It was a tricky task, one that had the potential to cause massive displacement and ethnic violence even if handled carefully. The famine was their own fault for breeding like rabbits.”, This list was first published on 19 January, 2016. Terrified of being caught on the wrong side, Hindus in modern Pakistan and Muslims in modern India upped sticks and ran. First the RAF conducted nighttime bombing raids on civilian targets. Few British people understand how fundamental this trade was to the British empire, and the extent to which the history of empire is the history of Britain. They then kept right on using the torture centers for another full year. The soldiers, under the orders of Brigadier Reginald Dyer, kept firing until they ran out of ammunition, killing between 379 and 1,000 protesters and injuring another 1,100 within 10 minutes. He avoids Facebook and Twitter like the plague. At 4.30pm, troops blocked the exits to the Garden and opened fire on the crowd. Locals who had been detained could expect to have their genitals crushed by guards’ hands, or to be forced to sit naked on a metal pole; their weight forcing it into their anus. War Crimes Atrocities against enemy combatants or conventional crimes committed by military units (see War crimes of the Wehrmacht), and include: Invasion of Poland : During the period of 1 September – 25 October 1939 German forces in their military actions engaged in executions of Polish POWs, bombing hospitals, murdering civilians, shooting refugees, and executing wounded soldiers. What happened in these camps will turn your stomach. Fed up with their imperial overlords, the Iraqis turned to revolution, only for the British to unleash wave after wave of atrocities against them. Aside from covering most of the globe, it was responsible for some of the greatest advances in engineering, art, and medicine that the world will ever know. 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