The absurdity of praising the dead was once again demonstrated for the late Queen Elizabeth II. Social media was literally set on fire with mourning, condolences, and praises for the Queen. Nigerian-born Professor Uju Anya has been under fire for tweeting: “I heard the chief monarch of a thieving raping genocidal empire is finally dying. May her pain be excruciating.”
The evils done by the British government in her colonies supervised directly or indirectly by the Queen cannot be erased by the death of the Queen. A look at some of the atrocities committed by Britain during colonial rule marked the era as the worst period of colonialism. The examples among many serve as a defence for Anya’s tweets.
1. The Transatlantic Slave Trade was Britain’s biggest industry between 1640 and 1807. Britain captured and transported 3.1 million Africans to the Americas. Africans were transported in the most abominable manner. They were chained and packed like sardines. They lacked the headroom to sit up. Their oxygen level was almost nil “so low below decks that often candles could not be lit. As a consequence, 15-25% of Africans died en route.
2. The Opium Wars and the Opium Trade in China in the 18th century were initiated by Britain whereby Britain illegally transported opium to China. It resulted in the widespread addiction of the Chinese to opium with devastating social and economic disruption. In 1839, the Chines government seized and destroyed around 1,400 tons of opium at the Port of Canton. This led to the First Opium War between Britain and China.
3. Britain’s attempt to extend its influence into the Boer-controlled Transvaal and Orange Free State in South Africa led to the 1899-1902 war between Britain and white Dutch settlers – the Boers. The Boers were shipped to concentration camps. Some 107,000 Boers entered the camps, and 28,000 of them died alongside an unquantified number of black Africans.
4. Britain partitioned India along religious lines. Ten million Hindus in Pakistan and Muslims in India were uprooted as violence ensued. One million people lost their lives in the religious conflicts. Between 12 and 29 million Indians died of starvation while it was under the control of the British Empire, as millions of tons of wheat were exported to Britain as famine raged in India. Talking about Bengal famine in 1943, Churchill said: “I hate Indians. They are a beastly people with a beastly religion. The famine was their own fault for breeding like rabbits.”
5. In Nigeria, Britain administered the country not as a nation but as a business enterprise. Britain regarded and treated Nigerian people, not as people with the right to exist and function as a community or even nation. They were imagined as corporate money-making entities whose bodies were enslaved and lands plundered. British Amalgamation of the southern and northern protectorates in 1914 lumped and jumbled more than 240 ethnic language-speaking people together as one people and one country. This created a problem of unification till today. The Queen funded massacre of three million Igbos during the Nigerian Civil War 1967-1970.
There’s blood in the Queen’s crown. Death cannot absolve her or dilute her sins against humanity. Britain’s dark past will forever haunt whoever becomes the Queen or King of England.
Anya’s tweets were in order and justified.
This story first appeared in Sahara Reporters
