Racist extermination a common practice

The editors of The Guardian are to be congratulated for their courageous and outspoken editorial (May 10, 2017) condemning the genocide carried out by British General Jeffery Amherst and his racist extermination of native peoples in P.E.I., as well as the expulsion of the Acadians, in the mid-18th century.

His actions are but one example of the genocide and ethnic cleansing carried out in the interest of the British Empire.

During the 20th century the British often used genocide as a way to promote its colonial policies. Notable examples include General (later Lord) Kitchener’s creation of the first concentration camps and the incarceration of 107,000 Boers during the second Boer War (1902) when 30,000 women and children died.

There are at least 70 recorded massacres of Aboriginals in Australia between 1810-1920, carried out by settlers under British rule.

The 1919 Amritsar massacre in India saw 1,000 people shot by the British army; however, the 1943 Indian famine resulted in 12 to 29 million people starving to death while under British colonial rule. And between 1951 and 1960, an estimated 20,000-100,000 Kenyans died in British concentration camps during the Mau Mau rebellion for independence.

The history of British colonialism is a bloody one and these brutal policies were carried out in the name of King and Country.

Is this why Canadians died at Vimy Ridge?

When Mahatma Gandhi was asked what he thought of Western civilization he replied, “I think it would be a good idea.”

Richard Deaton,

Stanley Bridge