NOVANEWS
FROM LAURA STUART:
I read this book when I was about 19. I had grown up so very English and in the belief that the British were the bastions of justice and fair play. I had been subject to the concept of genocide by having to sit through shocking films about holocaust victims being shot in front of the graves they had to dig themselves but that wasn’t us the British who did that, we were civilised people.
When I was 18 I went to live in Austria. The only English books I could find were in a corner of a bookshop in Vienna, a place I lived a good hour away from. The selection of books was tiny but needs must so one day I bought the book named “The Victims of Yalta”.
It really blew any illusions apart that I had about the British being those who brought the concept of justice to the people of the world. I could not believe what I was reading, that a few decades ago and only a few hours drive away from where I live, these white Russians were handed over to certain death.
Since my conversion to Islam and the reality that water boarding, extra ordinary rendition, Guantanamo bay and extra judicial murder which can happen to anyone if they are Muslim regardless of nationality or skin colour I have realised that the notion of everyone receiving justice in the so called advance west, is a complete myth.
Why is this shameful chapter of British complicity in genocide not widely known or taught? I remember once years ago seeing a picture of Prince Charles sitting at the foot of a tree reading a book and that book was the very book that I had read. I would definitely given a penny for his thoughts.
|
|
