21Operation Legacy
There are a lot of crimes that the British Empire committed against the indigenous population of their colonies, but one that isn’t a piece of common knowledge is Operation Legacy. As the empire was receding and decolonization was in full swing, the Home Office knew full well of the crimes that the empire had committed. They, therefore, undertook a huge operation to destroy incriminating documents, rather than have it fall into the hands of their ex-colonies.
22Agent Orange
While a grad student, botanist Arthur Galston discovered the use of an acid to encourage the flowering of soybeans, noting that high levels had a defoliant effect. The military later developed this acid into Agent Orange. In 1966 and 1967, soldiers testing Agent Orange in Canada were told the chemical was completely safe and sprayed it on each other to cool off. One of the main usages of Agent Orange in Vietnam was to destroy crops in friendly territory to force people to move to cities. US military sprayed more than 19 million gallons of Agent Orange in Vietnam during the Vietnam war to eliminate forest and crops, which caused serious health issues like tumors, birth defects, and cancer among returning U.S. servicemen, their families, and the Vietnamese population. As many as 1 million Vietnamese people are now disabled or have health problems as a result of the use of Agent Orange by the USA. Agent orange is still legal in warfare, due to a loophole.
23South Sulawesi Campaign
During the South Sulawesi campaign of 1946-1947, which saw action between the Royal Netherlands East Indies Army and the Indonesian infiltrations, the conflict led to the brutal execution of civilians of the island at the hands of the Dutch. Estimates of the death toll range from 3,100 civilians to as much as 40,000.
