by Mark Curtis, Declassified UK, 23 October 2024 Since the 1960s, Labour and Conservative governments have supported or acquiesced in several cases of genocide across Africa, the Middle East and Asia. Many people in Britain I speak to struggle to understand how their government can acquiesce in, still less support, Israel’s genocide of Palestinians in […]
Topic: Nigeria
by Mark Curtis, Declassified UK, 19 July 2023 The Foreign Office is largely captured by global climate polluter BP. From Iran to Azerbaijan, Iraq to Nigeria, Russia to Venezuela, the UK prioritises the corporation’s profits over a decent foreign policy. Declassified recently revealed that BP has pumped Iraqi oil worth £15bn since the UK and US militaries invaded […]
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 […]
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 […]