Posted on 10/18/2009 4:56:46 PM PDT by naturalman1975
NEW material calling for a posthumous pardon for three Australian soldiers court-martialled in controversial circumstances more than 100 years ago during the Boer War will be presented to Federal Parliament today. Lieutenants Harry Harbord "Breaker" Morant, Peter Handcock and George Ramsdale Witton were convicted of murdering Boer prisoners, with Morant and Handcock executed for war crimes in Pretoria, South Africa, in 1902, despite a plea for court mercy.
Witton was sentenced to life but was released two years later.
But a petition based on an examination of the case by Navy Commander James Unkles, a Victorian lawyer with 30 years experience in military matters, has found the convictions were unjust.
This material will be reviewed by the federal Standing Committee on Petitions today before going to the House of Representatives.
Commander Unkles believes the men were executed because of political rather than legal reasons.
"After doing my own investigations of the evidence, the circumstances that led to the court martial and the trials, I'm convinced that Morant, Handcock and Witton did not receive justice by the standards of British law of their day," Commander Unkles said.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.com.au ...
I'm also a great fan of his poetry - including his final work, the night before he died.
I'm surprised to see that this is being pushed under a leftist PM.But Morant was painted as a rebel so perhaps it makes sense.
Eventually the Brits will come to the question of their genocide against the Boers, and maybe even the Acadians.
(Republicanism is not universally of the left - there are conservative republicans - but virtually all leftists are republicans even if not all republicans are leftists.)
And BTW,Naturalman...It’s a Spring morning where you are.why aren’t you outside enjoying it? It’s a snowy night here.I hate winter!
Because I’m a teacher and while it is a reasonably nice day, the ‘outside’ is currently full of approximately 1000 screaming running 14-17 year old boys with balls, bats, and other devices.
One would hope.
I never let them forget those when they start the evil American crap.
Plus, if the had paid attention to the lessons on artillery deployment learned in the American civil war, they would have won the first Trans-val war.
Based on what do you “believe” he was a murderer and a war criminal? Have you studied the case history and incident? Are you Dutch?
OK...got it! Wait a minute...."other devices"? Sounds like a rough bunch of kids! ;-)
“Breaker Morant” is one of my favorite movies. Superbly acted by Edward Woodward and Bryan Brown and Jack Thompson.
(Last year we went them home without warning a couple of days early, but the media chose to misrepresent this as us suspending 250 boys and the bad publicity went world wide - CNN even did a story on it. So this year, we just have to hope they don't go too far.)
Mine too.
Morant ordered the execution of Prisoners of War in contravention of laws and rules concerning their treatment that he was aware of as an educated man who held the Queen's/King's Commission.
Even if, as is alleged, he believed Lord Kitchener had given orders that Boers caught in British khaki were to be shot, he knew such an order contravened the laws of war, and should not be obeyed.
Morant ordered the executions, in my view, out of rage and anger at what Boers had done to his close friend, Captain Hunt. It was vengeance, not justice.
I’ve watched the movie a couple of times and enjoyed it. The film obviously takes the stance that the convictions were on sketchy evidence at best but I don’t know enough about the actual facts of the case to form an opinion.
In most cases, I don’t understand the concept of posthumous pardons nor the energy wasted to re-try cases where all the main players are dead. It’s as if they don’t trust God to sort out all the fairness in the afterlife.
“It’s a new kind of war, George. It’s a new war for a new century. I suppose this is the first time the enemy hasn’t been in uniform. They’re farmers. They’re people from small towns. They shoot at us from houses and from paddocks. Some of them are women, some of them are children and some of them are missionaries.”
I thought Rule 303 applied.
When I think of republicanism with a small r, I think of Hume,
Burke, Mill, and others. Fairly small government, private property rights, separate independent branches of government, checks and balance, minimal corruption and so forth.
I don’t associate those ideas with leftists. Am I missing something?
“Are you Dutch”...............!!!!? WTF?
This particular passage is striking. That sort of poem, a ditty really, was put to song in American colonial times. Here's an example referring to a collateral ancestor of mine, Ninian Hamilton, during a pre-Revolutionary War conflct known as The Regulation:
With hat in hand, at our command
To salute us every one, Sir;
And after that, kept off his hat,
To salute old Hamilton, Sir!
In your opinion are the Dutch more closely alligned to Germans than the Anglo Saxons that their opinions are automaticically to be dismissed also?? WOW!
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