Point of View
A pandora’s box opened BY soldier rigby murder
Shenali D Waduge
The cold blooded killing of an Englishman in British Army uniform in
broad day light in Woolwich, London by two black men a few days ago was
a heinous crime that shocked the public in both England and overseas,
but it has nevertheless opened a Pandora’s box related to accountability
for crimes committed by people in British Army uniform on black and
Muslim people in Africa and Middle East over a considerable length of
time, and the role of the criminal justice system in Britain, British
colonies and the international criminal court in failing to bring to
book perpetrators of such crimes in British Army uniform.
The killing of Drummer Rigby by Michael Adebolajo, 28, and Michael
Adebowale, 22 is generally seen as an act of terrorism. Michael
Adebolajo says on tape that the killing was to avenge the killings of
Muslims.
Righteous indignation
Is righteous indignation an admissible defense in a criminal court?
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Drummer Lee
Rigby |
The purpose of this article is not about arguing whether it was
morally right and legally permissible to avenge a killing by another
killing but for the world to realize that we are now stepping into a
very volatile future because of the double standards that are taking
root in the international legal system ever since colonial expansionism
in the world led to racism, unlawful demarcation of territory of native
lands, planned and systematic plunder of lands, destruction of native
environments, divisions and dissent created in a policy called “divide
and rule”, transporting natives and colonizing them in different parts
of the world, the scores of murder, inhumane treatment, massacres by
foreign men in uniform upon natives who were merely trying to protect
their ancestral lands, and lack of investigation of such conduct and
lack of commitment on the part of the international community to raise
accountability issues concerning these massive crimes against humanity.
Drummer Rigby's was an unfortunate death because he was in uniform.
Elsewhere men in uniform have blood on their hands for scores of
civilian deaths. The world may like to recall a series of civilian
killings - 1999 Bombing of Aleksinac, Grdelica train bombing, targeting
civilians walking in a column, NATO cluster bomb on a hospital in Serbia
by NATO, the countless bombing raids on Iraq, the unlawful Atom Bombs
used in the Nagasaki and Hiroshima bombing that killed 140,000 civilians
are just a handful of notorious crimes against humanity that have been
committed and the perpetrators continue to remain unindicted and without
expression of any remorse.
A key word is “remorse” because there is no remorse by these same
perpetrators and whether it was during colonial times or post-colonial;
the manner in which they selfishly target Third World nations on
concocted charges or by creating false flag events to facilitate their
invasion and intervention and then engage in the same acts of crimes
that are allegedly being committed by the people in the home (invaded)
country. The natives in Africa and other parts of the world during
colonial times did not have proper arms or ammunition to fight back –
they were forced to sacrifice their lives in an unequal armed contest.
The memory of such lop sided armed conflict in the past leading to
oppression of third world people by the whites is now driving people
like Michael Adebolajo and Michael Michael Adebowale to take the law
unto their own hands as we see another similar copy cat incident of an
uniformed soldier in Paris being stabbed. France was a major colonial
power in Africa.
It would not be possible to accept the West claiming victim status
because it is their planned and staged atrocities that are bringing
calamities thereby contributing to the killing of innocents.
Today people are well read and in spite of them being bombarded with
a barrage of distorted news and twisted commentary favouring the stand
of Western countries by the pro-Western media both locally and
internationally and have got their citizens mesmerized into believing
all that their governments do and say is correct there is a large and
increasing coterie of observant and independent people that are now
uniting on the side of righteousness to say “enough is enough” – the
playing field must be made level.
Slave trade
Michael Adebolajo may well be a descendant of one of the generations
of Nigerians who were originally enslaved and then taken all over the
world and forced to work on British plantations as black slaves. If
these past crimes have been pushed into the background in an
unprecedented move to make up for the crimes done by helping these now
poor Third World nations to rise up from what their nations became – but
it is the exact opposite of what should be happening that is now making
people stand up and be counted.
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The wife of murdered British soldier
Drummer Lee Rigby; Rebecca Rigby stands at the site of his
death in Woolwich, East London on May 26. AFP |
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This video grab image taken from
footage obtained from The Sun Newspaper shows one of the men
involved in the attack and murder. AFP |
The murder of Drummer Rigby is something far more than the present
euphoria associated with anti-Muslim sentiment. What we need to extract
from the murder is the fact that no longer can we continue to have a
biased world wherein killing of a white becomes defined as “terrorism”
while whites commit killings on civilians elsewhere round the world
wholesale and with impunity. It happened during colonial times and it is
still happening now in a world that is supposed to be civilized and
doing civilized things under the umbrella of terminologies that
supposedly promotes human rights, transparency, democracy and the very
tenacious term now being thrown freely called “reconciliation”.
There is no time bar on reconciliation nor human rights violations
such as crimes against humanity which demands that for reconciliation to
be seriously addressed it needs to cover ALL atrocities and by this
definition reconciliation cannot omit the crimes against humanity that
all the colonial rulers unleashed on the people of the nations they
conquered and governed.
We are likely to see more “eye for an eye” avenging type incidents if
the West does not come down from its high pedestal of bullying and arm
twisting Third World people. But so long as there are people like Gen.
James Cartwright and Sen. Lindsey Graham who believe that the US has the
right to kill its “enemies” even when they are “asleep”, there is likely
to be more tension.
Not many in the US or UK were shocked and aggrieved when scores of
Iraqi civilians ended up victims of US sanctions, children died due to
lack of food and as long as there are people like Madeleine Albright who
says “it was worth it” the hatred that the West is daily generating will
not fade. We at times wonder whether the hate is actually intentional –
Michael Adebolajo was approached by MI5 to do a “job” on their behalf.
We now question what exactly that job was meant to be.
Scramble for Africa
Africa was divided into 50 nations in 1884-85 at the Berlin
Conference. The Berlin Conference regulated European colonization and
trade in Africa during the New Imperialism period, and its outcome, the
General Act of the Berlin Conference, can be seen as the formalization
of the Scramble for Africa.
The conference ushered in a period of heightened colonial activity by
European powers, while simultaneously eliminating most existing forms of
African autonomy and self-governance.
Africa is in a state of ruin and relative poverty because of what the
West did and what the West is continuing to do. But there are
magnanimous gestures – Brazil has written off US$ 900m of African debt.
We do not justify the killing of Drummer Rigby – he was a soldier killed
by a civilian. Elsewhere through colonial history hundreds of thousands
of soldiers have killed innocent civilians during colonial rule and it
continues to happen even at present. Not a single British soldier who
committed crimes during colonial rule was ever put on the dock,
convicted and punished like what happened to Nazi war criminals at
Nuremberg, and even now the scale of justice for crimes that
Anglo–American troops in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Okinawa commit never get
the same level of coverage that non-Whites get.
This is a perversion of justice. It is also tantamount to racism and
cover – up of crimes committed. Such conduct is no longer acceptable to
the unfolding new world order that is emerging under Asian stewardship.
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