By Mark Curtis Declassified UK, 2 May 2020 The UK government’s failure to provide protective equipment to all health staff treating coronavirus victims prompts questions whether ministers are legally culpable for failing to prevent deaths. But UK ministers routinely act with impunity and every prime minister since 1945 has been complicit in deaths abroad. At […]
Topic: Nigeria
by Mark Curtis Declassified UK, 29 April 2020 On the 50-year anniversary of the end of the Biafran war, the world’s worst humanitarian crisis in the late 1960s, declassified British files show that Harold Wilson’s government secretly armed and backed Nigeria’s aggression against the secessionist region. The then Labour government secretly provided large quantities of […]
By Phil Miller and Mark Curtis Declassified UK, 31 December 2019 The British government rejected Nelson Mandela’s personal appeal to impose oil sanctions on Nigeria after its military regime executed nine environmental activists in 1995 as it wanted to protect oil company Shell’s commercial interests, newly declassified files reveal. The British files, released under the […]
Documents ‘US embassy cables: Shell seeks to share Nigeria intelligence’ (US Embassy, Nigeria, 19 September 2008) Articles Biafra war, 1967-70 Mark Curtis, Nigeria’s war over Biafra, 1967-70 (Extract from Unpeople, 2004) ‘British secret files on Nigeria’s first bloody coup, path to Biafra’, Part 2, (Daily Trust, 7 August 2016) ‘Britain Exposes Crimes Committed By Gowon […]
by Mark Curtis Published in Middle East Eye, 3 May 2019 Eight years on from Nato’s war in Libya in 2011, as the country enters a new phase in its conflict, I have taken stock of the number of countries to which terrorism has spread as a direct product of that war. The number is at […]
Report for Global Justice Now (December 2017) The UK government’s Conflict, Stability and Security Fund (CSSF) raises all kinds of questions about the future of UK aid, the nature of the UK’s relations with states abusing human rights and the government’s openness with the public. Established in 2015, the CSSF is a £1 billion annual […]
By Mark Curtis An edited extract from Unpeople: Britain’s Secret Human Rights Abuses In the mainstream, the official view is that British governments provide enduring support to the United Nations. The opposite is true: it is clear from the historical record that the UN has traditionally been seen as a major threat. Britain’s ambassador to […]
By Mark Curtis Reviewing British arms exports for the ten-year period under New Labour, the figures speak for themselves: – The UK has exported £45 billion worth of arms around the world since 1997. – Over £110m of military equipment has gone to Israel, throughout a period of offensive operations in the occupied territories and […]
Nigeria’s war over Biafra, 1967-70 By Mark Curtis An edited extract from Unpeople: Britain’s Secret Human Right Abuses The formerly secret files on the Nigerian civil war in the late 1960s show very clear British complicity in the Nigerian government’s aggression against the region of Biafra, where an independence movement was struggling to secede from […]
Britain complicit in the deaths of ten million people since 1945. Those are Unpeople – those whose lives are seen as expendable in the pursuit of Britain’s economic and political goals. Historian Mark Curtis pieces together the Blair government’s “public deception campaign” on Iraq and reveals government plans to increase “information operations” directed towards the […]