Unpeople: Britain's Secret Human Rights Abuses

by Mark Curtis

  The files indicate that these 'presentational' issues were much more important to British officials than the suffering of the Biafrans. British officials ruled out threatening to cut off, or reduce, arms exports to force the FMG to change policies. The issue that most concerned the government at the time was that it would be forced to withdraw or reduce its support for Gowon in the face of public pressure.

  By mid-1968 British officials had still had no talks with Ojukwu and other Biafran leaders; offers from the latter had been refused. So supportive was Wilson of the FMG that he even asked the Nigerians in advance whether they would have 'any difficulties' if a British official met a Biafran representative. Chief Enahoro replied that this would be acceptable provided the contacts were 'strictly private and had no formal character'.32

  In early August FMG forces had retaken the whole of the south-eastern and Rivers states and the easterners were now confined to a small enclave, blockaded from the outside world. Commonwealth minister Lord Shepherd minuted Harold Wilson saying, that 14 months since Biafran secession:

  Our support for the FMG finds us in the position in which we are on comparatively good terms with the side which is in an overwhelmingly advantageous position . . . It is important, therefore, that we should not be manoeuvred by pressure of opinion inspired by Ojukwu's publicity, into abandoning at this late stage all the advantages which our policy so far seemed likely to bring us.33

  The same month, the Red Cross estimated 2–3 million people 'in dire need' and a similar number were facing shortages of food and medical aid.34

  Wilson did not succumb to public pressure. The following month he told Gowon that:

  The British government for their part have steadfastly maintained their policy of support for Federal Nigeria and have resisted all suggestions in parliament and in the press for a change in that policy, particularly in regard to arms supplies.35

  The Foreign Office argued that 'the whole of our investments in Nigeria and particularly our oil interests in the south east and the mid-west will be at risk if we change our policy of support for the federal government'.36

  In November, Lord Brockway and his committee for peace in Nigeria met Wilson and urged him to halt arms sales and to press for a ceasefire, estimating that there could be 2 million deaths from starvation and disease by the end of the year.37 Wilson not only rebuffed this plea; the files reveal that two days later he agreed to supply Nigeria with aircraft for the first time in a covert deal.

  The Nigerians had been pressing Britain to supply several jet aircraft, specifically to attack the runways used by Biafran forces (which also needed to be used to deliver humanitarian aid). Wilson said that Britain could not supply these directly but there were such aircraft in South Yemen and Sudan previously supplied by Britain. The Nigerians, he said, should procure the aircraft from them which 'would not directly involve the British government'. The company to deal with in those two countries was Airwork Limited, which was later to be used by the British government to conceal its involvement in its dirty war in Yemen. The British government also agreed to put the Nigerians in touch with 'suitable pilots'.38

  British arms supplies were stepped up again in November. Foreign Secretary Michael Stewart said the Nigerians could have 5 million more rounds of ammunition, 40,000 more mortar bombs and 2,000 rifles. 'You may tell Gowon', Stewart instructed High Commissioner Hunt in Lagos, 'that we are certainly ready to consider a further application' to supply similar arms in the future as well. He concluded: 'if there is anything else for ground warfare which you . . . think they need and which would help speed up the end of the fighting, please let us know and we will consider urgently whether we can supply it'."

  Other supplies agreed in November following meetings with the Nigerians included six Saladins and 20,000 rounds of ammunition for them, and additional monthly supplies of ammunition, amounting to a total of 15 million rounds on top of those already agreed. It was recognised by the Defence minister that 'the scale of the UK supply of small arms ammunition to Nigeria in recent months has been and will continue to be on a vast scale'. The recent deal meant that Britain was supplying 36 million rounds of ammunition in the last few months alone. Britain's 'willingness to supply very large quantities of ammunition', Lord Shepherd noted, 'meant drawing on the British army's own supplies'.40

  At the same time the Foreign Office was instructing its missions around the world to lie about the extent of this arms supply. It sent a 'guidance' memo to various diplomatic posts on 22 November saying that 'we wish to discourage suggestions' that the Nigerians, in their recent meetings with British officials, were seeking 'to negotiate a massive arms deal'. Rather, 'our policy of supplying in reasonable quantities arms of the kind traditionally supplied' to Nigeria 'will be maintained but no change in the recent pattern of supplies is to be expected '.41 So deep is the culture of lying at the Foreign Office, it appears that policy is to keep its own officials in the dark.

  By the end of 1968 Britain had sold Nigeria £9 million worth of arms, £6 million of which was spent on small arms.42 A quarter of Nigeria's supplies (by value) had come from the Soviet Union, also taking advantage of the war for its own benefit and trying no doubt to secure an opening into Nigeria provided by this opportunity. British officials consistently justified their arms supply by saying that if they stopped, the Russians would fill the gap. It was Britain's oil interests, however, that was the dominating factor in Whitehall planners' reasoning.

  By the last two months of 1968, with hundreds of thousands now dead, the fighting had reached a stalemate. The FMG had taken all Biafran territory apart from a small enclave consisting of 3 million people in an area the size of Kent. Biafrans were now dependent on two airstrips for outside supplies which were limited by both Gowon's and Ojukwu's refusals to allow sufficient numbers of aircraft to land. Humanitarian agencies were continuing calls for a ceasefire as suffering, especially starvation, had reached crisis proportions.

  'We shall continue to maintain our present policy, despite these heavy pressures on us', Wilson told Gowon in November. Foreign Secretary Stewart instructed Lord Shepherd, on a visit to Lagos, to tell Gowon of the extraordinary steps Britain was taking to support him. Gowon should realise, Stewart said, that opposition to British policy 'cuts right across the normal political or party divisions in the country and is especially strong in the various churches'. He added that 'similar feeling is also expressed within the Cabinet itself'43 – such was the thin base on which British support for the FMG was being provided. (One wonders about similar memos being written by Tony Blair to George Bush in 2003.)

  The Wilson government was keen to present itself as engaged in the search for peace – the files show that officials knew they would not otherwise have been able to justify their support for the FMG. British government activity in peace negotiations invariably sought to avoid the involvement of the United Nations. The intention was to maintain a united Nigeria and to achieve a solution on FMG terms only.

  In public, British statements consistently blamed only the Biafrans, not the FMG, for obstructing peace negotiations and the delivery of humanitarian aid. There were numerous proposals and counter-proposals made by both sides on the issue of night or day flights, and river or land routes into Biafra. The FMG feared that the Biafrans would use the cover of humanitarian aid supplies to slip in arms deliveries; while the Biafrans believed the FMG would poison the supplies. Meanwhile, millions of people suffered without aid. There is no doubt that Ojukwu and the Biafran leadership were partly responsible for this failure, yet so were the FMG. Starvation of the Biafrans was no mere byproduct of the war; it was a deliberate part of the FMG's war policy.44

  Several memos by British officials that reached Wilson and other ministers painted a more accurate picture than the one pushed in public. These said that it was as least as much the FMG that were to blame as the Biafrans.45 Yet this never upset British policy to side unequivocally with Gowon's FMG.

  In March 1969 Wilson g
ave a public interview and lied that 'we continue to supply on a limited scale arms – not bombs, not aircraft – to the government of Nigeria because we have always been their suppliers'. Not only did this conceal the agreements made late the previous year; on the very same day as this interview, the government approved the export of 19 million rounds of ammunition, 10,000 grenades and 39,000 mortar bombs – bombs, that is, that Wilson had said Britain was not supplying at all, still less on a vast scale.46

  A day before the Wilson interview, a Foreign Office official had written that 'we have over the last few months agreed to supply large quantities of arms and ammunition' to Nigeria 'to assist them in finishing the war in the absence of any further [peace] negotiations'. He also noted that 'we have flown small arms ammunition to Nigeria . . . using Manston airport in Kent without attracting unfavourable press comment'.47

  It was therefore perhaps no surprise that Gowon could write to Wilson in April saying that 'of all the governments in the Western world, yours has remained the only one that has openly maintained its policy of arms supplies to my govern- ment'.48 France, Belgium and the Netherlands, among others, had all announced a halt; the US continued its policy of not supplying arms to either side.

  Two senior British RAF officers secretly visited Nigeria in August 1969 to advise the Nigerians on 'how they could better prosecute the air war'. The main British interest, the files make clear, was to provide better protection of the oil installations, but the brief for the two officers stated that this impression should not be given to the Nigerians. The officers subsequently advised the Nigerians on a variety of tactics on 'neutralisation of the rebel airstrips'. It was understood that destruction of the airstrips would put them out of use for daylight humanitariancelief flights. It is not clear whether such advice was put into action.49

  In December 1969, just before the final push that crushed the Biafrans, Foreign Secretary Michael Stewart was calling for stepping up military assistance, including the supply of more armoured cars – which, he wrote, 'have undoubtedly been the most effective weapons in the ground war and have spearheaded all the major federal advances'.50

  Biafran resistance ended by mid-January 1970. Wilson then sent another message to Gowon saying that 'your army has won a decisive victory' and has achieved 'your great aim of preserving the unity and integrity of Nigeria':

  As you know I and my colleagues have believed all along that you were right and we have never wavered in our support for you, your government and your policy, despite the violent attacks which have been made on us at times in parliament and in the press as well as overseas.51

  The Deputy High Commissioner in Lagos added:

  There is genuine gratitude (as indeed there should be) for what Britain has done and is still doing for this country, and in particular for Her Majesty's Government's courage in literally sticking to their guns over Biafra.52

  The toll of the war was counted in a report for the British High Commission at the end of the month. It referred to a relief agency report estimating 1.5–2 million people were being fed with food relief supplies, around 700,000 of whom were refugees in camps dependent entirely on food aid.53 Three million refugees were crowded into a 2,500 square kilometre enclave in which not only food but medicine, housing and clothing were in short supply. The Biafran economy was shattered, cities were in ruins and schools, hospitals and transport facilities destroyed.

  11

  INDONESIANS: TOOLS

  OF COVERT ACTION

  Few people have suffered as much from Britain's backing for repressive regimes as those living in the islands of Indonesia. From the 1940s until today, these Unpeople have been killed in their hundreds of thousands by governments in Jakarta which have been given support from London.

  This chapter looks at two episodes, one current, one from the late 1950s. The current episode concerns Britain's strong backing for Jakarta's attempts to crush separatists; the past episode concerns British covert support for separatists against Jakarta. London may have switched sides, but its strategy has been remarkably consistent: forces are supported according to their ability to do Whitehall's bidding; the Indonesian people affected are an irrelevance.

  The war in Aceh

  The most recent episode in London's long backing for Indonesian aggression began in 2003. While British ministers were expounding the importance of upholding the highest moral values when it came to dealing with the Saddam regime, their allies in Jakarta were indulging in atrocities in Aceh province.

  The 4 million people in Aceh, on the northern tip of the island of Sumatra, have a long history of resistance to rule from Jakarta. For 30 years they thwarted Dutch military efforts to 'pacify' and colonise the region. After Indonesian independence in 1949, Aceh was granted special region status that was meant to give the Acehnese control over education, religion and some local laws; this autonomy, however, failed to be implemented.

  Long-held resentment against rule from distant Jakarta exploded in the mid-1970s after huge natural-gas reserves were discovered. Jakarta allowed these resources to be extracted with few revenues returning to benefit the Acehnese themselves. In 1976 the Free Aceh Movement (GAM) was founded to fight for independence and open resistance to Jakarta's rule broke out.

  The response by the Indonesian regime under General Suharto, fresh from engaging in aggression in East Timor, was to designate Aceh a 'military operations zone' and indulge in a campaign of brutality and repression. This reached a peak in the years from 1989 until the fall of Suharto in 1998. During that time thousands of Acehnese were killed, tortured and 'disappeared'. The military announced the ending of the 'military operations zone' in 1998 but in 1999 and 2000 a series of further military and police operations were launched, involving several massacres in which scores of people were killed.

  In 2000 there was a 'humanitarian pause' loosely supervised by a Geneva-based human-rights centre but violence was stepped up again in May 2001 when Indonesia launched new military operations. Around 2,000 more people, the vast majority civilians, were killed. The next year saw a further 1,300 killings. Since 1976, the conflict has cost around 15,000 lives in total. GAM has gained in strength and popularity under Indonesian brutality, has operated in all parts of Aceh and has been in effective control of village and local administrations, at least until the latest Indonesian offensive which sought to crush it.1

  On 19 May 2003 Indonesian President Megawati Sukarnoputri launched full-scale military operations in Aceh against GAM. This decision unilaterally broke a six-month ceasefire and a process of dialogue between the Indonesian government and GAM. The ceasefire period had resulted in a marked decrease in civilian deaths, a return to normality in many parts of the province, and was welcomed by the Acehnese. Following the May intervention, involving over 30,000 Indonesian troops, Human Rights Watch documented an upsurge in killings by the Indonesian forces, crackdowns on NGOs and the media and destruction of 425 schools in the province. It also noted that there were plans forcibly to relocate up to 200,000 people from their homes and put them in special camps under military guard.2

  By June 2003 the Indonesian human-rights organisation Kontras reported that 40,000 people had become refugees. By August the press was reporting that well over 1,000 civilians had been killed, rising to around 3,000 by early 2004.3

  In November 2003 the Indonesian government extended the operation in Aceh for a further six months. 'The operation is proceeding at a level which is causing widespread civilian loss of life, gross violations of human rights and the destruction of Aceh's public infrastructure', the human-rights organisation Tapol noted. 'In case after case, soldiers have gone into Acehnese villages and publicly executed or beat people seemingly at random', said Human Rights Watch. 'If the aim is to instil fear in the populace, sadly it's working'.4 Thousands of refugees were reported to be fleeing their homes while those who remained were subject to shortages of food, water, sanitation and breakdowns in basic services such as health care. The Indonesian offensive no
minally ended in May 2004 with the lifting of martial law. Yet in the latter part of the year fighting was continuing and 'the majority of the population continues to live in fear, with widespread reports of killings, torture and disappearances', according to Human Rights Watch.s

  British arms have been used by Indonesia in its offensive; London has refused to cut off supplies. The Blair government ignored evidence that the Indonesians were preparing to use British-supplied Scorpion tanks in Aceh by failing to deliver any advance warning to Jakarta; 36 of these tanks were subsequently deployed and used in Aceh from June. By the end of 2003 Saracen armoured vehicles supplied by Britain were also being used.

  On the first day of the military campaign Hawk aircraft supplied by Britain were also deployed in Aceh. The Guardian's John Aglionby reported that 'they were used primarily to scare and intimidate people on the ground by flying low over targets already attacked with rockets by other aircraft and then over terrain in advance of parachute drops by 600 paratroopers'. Reports from GAM further into the campaign said that Hawks were used to attack villages in north Aceh while other sources said they also took part in bombing raids in other parts of the province. Air-force chief of staff, Marshall Chappy Hakim, was reported by Indonesian newspapers to have said that he discussed the possibility of using Hawks with the British ambassador two months previously and no objection had been raised.6