{"id":138623,"date":"2014-09-01T14:08:03","date_gmt":"2014-09-01T14:08:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=138623"},"modified":"2014-09-01T14:08:03","modified_gmt":"2014-09-01T14:08:03","slug":"heres-british-government-hiding","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/breaking-news\/heres-british-government-hiding\/","title":{"rendered":"Here\u2019s What the British Government Has Been Hiding from You"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"color: #555555;\"><em><span class=\"author\">Katie Engelhart<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"color: #555555;\">In 2013,\u00a0<em style=\"font-weight: inherit;\">The Guardian<\/em>\u00a0<a style=\"font-weight: bold; color: #000000;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/politics\/2013\/oct\/18\/foreign-office-historic-files-secret-archive\" target=\"_blank\">revealed<\/a>\u00a0that Britain\u2019s Foreign &amp; Commonwealth Office (FCO) had illegally withheld 1.2 million (<a style=\"font-weight: bold; color: #000000;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/politics\/2014\/may\/11\/foreign-office-archive-illegally-held-files\" target=\"_blank\">later revised<\/a>\u00a0to 600,000) historic documents from the public, in flagrant breach of the\u00a0<a style=\"font-weight: bold; color: #000000;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.gov.uk\/government\/publications\/twenty-year-rule-on-public-records\">UK Public Records Act<\/a>. The documents \u2014 which include the desk diary of Soviet spy Donald Maclean; case files from Nazi persecution compensation claims; and masses of material removed from Hong Kong \u2014 were being held at\u00a0<a style=\"font-weight: bold; color: #000000;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.hmgcc.gov.uk\/about-us.aspx\">Hanslope Park<\/a>,\u00a0a secretive, high-security compound in Buckinghamshire that the FCO shares with intelligence agencies MI5 and MI6.<\/p>\n<p style=\"color: #555555;\">The whole document saga began in 2009, when a group of elderly Kenyans brought\u00a0<a style=\"font-weight: bold; color: #000000;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.macleans.ca\/news\/world\/empire-on-trial\/\" target=\"_blank\">a historic lawsuit<\/a>\u00a0against the FCO, claiming damages for abuse they suffered under British colonial authorities (which, in the case of these particular plaintiffs,\u00a0<a style=\"font-weight: bold; color: #000000;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.leighday.co.uk\/International-and-group-claims\/Kenya\/The-Mau-Mau-claims\/The-Mau-Mau-claimants\" target=\"_blank\">included rape and castration<\/a>). At the time, FCO officials denied having any relevant documents that might shed light on the crimes. Only two years later, in 2011, did the FCO\u00a0<a style=\"font-weight: bold; color: #000000;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.independent.co.uk\/news\/uk\/home-news\/cabinet-hushed-up-torture-of-mau-mau-rebels-2264955.html\" target=\"_blank\">admit it was unlawfully holding 1,500 Kenya files<\/a>\u00a0at Hanslope Park.<\/p>\n<p style=\"color: #555555;\">Later, it confessed to possessing 20,000 undisclosed files from 37 former British colonies. The documents include incriminating evidence of murder and torture by British colonial authorities. (An embarrassed British government began releasing the so-called \u201cMigrated Archives\u201d to Britain\u2019s National Archives in 2012.)<\/p>\n<p style=\"color: #555555;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.vice.com\/en_uk\/read\/katie-engelhart-britains-secrets-mandy-banton-321?\" target=\"_blank\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Katie Engelhart In 2013,\u00a0The Guardian\u00a0revealed\u00a0that Britain\u2019s Foreign &amp; Commonwealth Office (FCO) had illegally withheld 1.2 million (later revised\u00a0to 600,000) historic documents from the public, in flagrant breach of the\u00a0UK Public Records Act. The documents \u2014 which include the desk diary of Soviet spy Donald Maclean; case files from Nazi persecution compensation claims; and masses of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":138624,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[487,1615],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-138623","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-breaking-news","8":"category-uk-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138623","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=138623"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138623\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/138624"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=138623"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=138623"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=138623"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}