Automatically translated from Basque, translation may contain errors. More information here. Elhuyarren itzultzaile automatikoaren logoa

Elizabeth II dies without apology for the crimes of the empire

  • He learns that his father died by surprise when he was on vacation with his husband in Kenya. February 1952. Elizabeth Windsor, the eldest daughter of King George VI, quickly returned to London and Elizabeth II became the queen. He left in the African country, within a few months, the rebellion against the British colonial authority, named Mau Mau, and responded to the uprising with a racist campaign of execution, torture and murder.

12 September 2022 - 11:56

According to Iñigo Sáenz de Ugarte in his article Elizabeth II of the Journal and the indelible stain of colonialism, during the first years in which Elizabeth II was learning to be a queen, the “detainees as animals” were treated. As in South Africa at the beginning of the century with Boer Wars, they organized concentration camps throughout the country and considered the Kikuyu people, the majority of Kenya, as protector of the uprising. At the age of two, 70,000 were arrested, and when the authorities decided to surround the towns and neighborhoods as if they were jails, the numbers multiplied. In total, more than one million Kenyans were imprisoned in this way and thousands of people starved and ill, according to some estimates, 420,000 people.

“This young man was hanged in 1957 for his struggle for the freedom of Cyprus, occupied by the British. His name was Evagoras Pallikaridis. Queen Elizabeth II denies forgiveness. The queen was 31. Evagoras 19”, recalls Alberto Lavín to the death of his queen on social networks. When most global media and authorities have decided to praise women’s reputation, social media is once again the main reminder of other messages and data. Pallikaridisen is just one example. Palestine, Yemen, dozens of colonies in Northern Ireland, Africa and Asia -- for seven decades, British imperialism has directly or indirectly killed millions of people, as reflected in the many works of Josep Fontana.

His queen lived times of decolonization and the end of the British Asian and African empire. The British authorities experienced these events as tragedies, but then, through the Commonwealth organisation, they invented bringing many of them together – during these days Jamaica and Australia have expressed their willingness to be Republicans.

According to Saenz de Ugarte, “political amnesia was not improvised about what happened.” Every time a colony gained independence, the British embassy was ordered to burn thousands of documents in order to ensure that they did not pollute the good name of the British. In the case of Kenya, a selection of 1,500 documents was sent to London and kept secret by Foreign Office. Journalists and historians were also denied the existence of these documents until the Government reported what they had kept in 2010. Later studies revealed that they used the worst forms of repression, including the widespread use of torture.

The line of the British governments has always been to deny the oppression and violence suffered by these peoples, to praise the progress and good administration of the abandonment of the empires. But the past is hard, indelible, and as Carlos, recently proclaimed king, said in Barbados, “slavery is a painful reality that will forever pollute British history.”

The Aboriginal Australians have also reminded the recently deceased queen. "He was not a mere spectator of the influences of colonialism, he was an architect. Those who say that Grandma was a sympathetic forget that her job was to oversee the actions that for decades had destroyed the lives of indigenous peoples. She was the person who maintained colonial power, the shoe that crushes us."

Queen and her husband, in Australia, with Aboriginal people.

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