New light has been shed on the British government’s willful blindness to the atrocities carried out by the Zimbabwean government in Matabeleland in the 1980s. The new information comes from previously unpublished official communication between the British and American governments. Hazel Cameron sets out how Margaret Thatcher’s government chose not to intervene because doing so was seen as being against Britain’s interests.
Thousands of Myanmar’s Rohingya people are being driven from their homes, rounded up into camps, and forced to flee across the border into Bangladesh or take their chances with people smugglers. And more frighteningly still, the world has seen this pattern of events many times before in the run-up to mass killing. Alicia de la Cour Venning explains why it’s time to call the crisis what it is: a genocide.
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Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe’s clampdown on dissent in Matabeleland claimed up to 20 000 lives.
EPA/Aaron Ufumeli/ Pool
Hazel Cameron, University of St Andrews
The effects of President Mugabe's post-independence security clampdown that led to the murder of between 10 000 and 20 000 Zimbabweans, known as the Matabeleland massacre, continue to be felt.
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Politics + Society
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Alicia de la Cour Venning, Queen Mary University of London
Genocide doesn't begin with mass murder. It's a long, insidious process that can be stopped before it's too late.
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Azadeh Dastyari, Monash University
Like Australia and the US before it, Europe is now flirting with the idea of processing centres for refugees in transit countries.
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Hervé Borrion, UCL; Kartikeya Tripathi, UCL
Terrorists are changing their tactics, so security services must too.
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Science + Technology
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Julien Benoit, University of the Witwatersrand
The belief that ancient Egyptians needed help from supernatural beings to built the Giza pyramids relies, unavoidably, on racism and colonial attitudes.
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Environment + Energy
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Fulvio Amato, Spanish National Research Council; Teresa Moreno, Spanish Scientific Research Council CSIC
Subways seem like the perfect solution to improve air quality in cities. But what about air quality underground?
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Arts + Culture
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Leshu Torchin, University of St Andrews
First They Killed My Father works hard to achieve authenticity in a genre that is as old as cinema itself.
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