What are some mind-blowing things we are not taught in our history books?

Hana O’Hara, university student/chronically broke

Answered Apr 25

Here are some random ones:

 Allied soldiers — including Canadians — raped thousands of German women after Second
World War, in Japan as well. The same is said to be the case in Vietnam.

 58,067 days to the end of natural gas.

 Nearly 1/2 of the world's population — more than 3 billion people — live on less than $2.50
a day. More than 1.3 billion live in extreme poverty — less than $1.25 a day. 1 billion
children worldwide are living in poverty. According to UNICEF, 22,000 children die each
day due to poverty.

 During WW2, many nations simply refused to allow Jews entry to their countries. Including
Canada and the U.S. In response to Nazi determination and concerted action to remove Jews
from Europe—by any means necessary—the non-Axis world closed many possibilities for
emigration to other countries. Jews were mass deported after WW1 to Germany as well, one
of the factors that played into the fearmongering that took place.

 Gandhi was also a puritan and a misogynist who helped ensure that India remains one of the
most sexually repressed nations on earth – and, by and large, a dreadful place to be born
female. George Orwell, in his 1949 essay Reflections on Gandhi, said that "saints should
always be judged guilty until they are proved innocent". Gandhi believed Indian women
 who were raped lost their value as human beings. He argued that fathers could be justified in
killing daughters who had been sexually assaulted for the sake of family and community
honour. The legacy lingers in every present-day Indian press report of a rape victim who
commits suicide out of "shame". Gandhi also waged a war against contraceptives, labelling
Indian women who used them as whores. Gandhi took to sleeping with naked young
women, including his own great-niece, in order to "test" his commitment to celibacy. The
habit caused shock and outrage among his supporters. God knows how his wife felt.

 Since the 1998 invasion of the Congo 5.4 million congolese have perished so the west could
access their country's mineral wealth.

 From 1885 to 1908, Belgian King Leopold II took control of the Congo. He turned the
nation into a moneymaking machine by farming ivory and rubber and building a fortune on
the labor of the people who lived there. Things quickly got out of control. Leopold’s harsh
policies to keep people working turned into a brutal reign of mutilations and terror that led
to the deaths of an estimated 10 million people in a few short years. Leopald is often
reffered to as “The Forgotten Hitler”. When King Leopold got the legal right to take control
of the Congo, he started bleeding it dry for profits. Stanley had reported temples of ivory,
and people had found caches of rubber there. So Leopold was determined to make it
profitable. He turned two-thirds of the country into his own private land. The people there
were forced to work for him. Rubber profits boomed. By the 1890s, King Leopold was
selling more rubber than he could harvest. For the people in the Congo, this meant that their
quotas went up and meeting the rubber tax became nearly impossible. And that was a
problem—because failure to meet your quota could be punishable by death.

African soldiers were enlisted to enforce these rules, but that left a risk for the Belgians. These
soldiers might spare their victims or waste their ammunition on something else. So the Belgians set
up a law: Every time a worker was killed, the African soldiers had to chop off and deliver his
hand.
The horrors of the Congo Free State had a purpose—they were meant to scare people into working.
The Belgians didn’t just want to slaughter Africans wholesale. They wanted to make the Africans
work without paying them for it. The Belgians used psychological terror as a way to motivate the
Congolese. In some places, this meant doing some horrible things to the workers’ families.

Women were often kidnapped from villages that didn’t provide enough rubber. They were held
hostage until the chief could meet his quota. Even then, though, the women often stayed prisoners.
When the quota was met, the men of the village had to buy back their wives by giving up some of
their livestock.

There was no limit to how horrible this could get. After being sent to raid a town for not meeting its
quota, one African soldier reported that his European commander had ordered him to make an
example of the town. “He ordered us to cut off the heads of the men and hang them on the village
palisades, also their sexual members,” the soldier said, “and to hang the women and children on the
palisade in the form of a cross.” The most disgusting part of this was the fact that King Leopold II
didn’t enter the Congo as an invading army; he went in as a charity. He founded a group that was
originally called the International African Association. They were a humanitarian organization that
promised to make life better in Africa, and they received donations from around the world.

 During the first week of June, Sikhs around the world commemorate a recent historical
event: Operation Bluestar of 1984, a government-sanctioned military operation that resulted
in countless casualties and the destruction of one of the most historically significant
gurduaras, the Darbar Sahib of Amritsar (i.e., The Golden Temple).

Sikhs constitute one of the many persecuted minority communities in India, and their commitment
to standing for justice has made them a regular target of oppression for centuries.
Approximately one decade prior to the massacre of 1984, Sikh leaders of Punjab drafted the
Anandpur Sahib Resolution, a document that called for a social revolution within India, demanding
rights for oppressed minorities such as women, lower castes and impoverished communities. The
resolution also demanded increased state autonomy, guarantees of constitutional rights and equality
of citizens regardless of caste, religion or gender.

In the face of government resistance, the Sikhs raised the banner of the Dharam Yudh Morcha,
threatening to protest peacefully until the federal government acknowledged the Anandpur Sahib
Resolution and implemented change. They made their voices heard through campaigns that blocked
off streets (rasta roko), railways (rail roko), canals (nahar roko) and work (kam roko). These
protests threatened the economic and social stability of the country, and this played a major role in
the Government’s decision to attack the core of the Sikh community. The government employed
popular media to project Sikhs as being anti-national and secessionist, and used this as a pretense
for the military operation in the theo-political capital of the Sikh tradition.

On June 1, 1984, the Indian Government launched Operation Bluestar, a full-scale assault on dozens
of gurduaras around the Sikh homeland of Punjab. While coordinating attacks on these centers for
worship and learning, the Government focused its attention on the most venerated and historically
significant of gurduaras — the Darbar Sahib.

The invasion of the Indian Army was by no means a spontaneous reaction to the threat posed by
protesting Punjabis; rather, the Indian Military prepared and simulated this operation for several
months prior to its execution. The army’s assault included the deployment of tear gas, army tanks
and 70,000 troops. Observers have widely speculated that the timing of the attack was also carefully
selected to coincide with the first few days of June, a moment during which Sikhs around the globe
commemorate the martyrdom of their fifth Guru, Guru Arjan. Guru Arjan is celebrated for many
reasons, including his role as the architect of Darbar Sahib, and Sikhs flock to this site in Amritsar
every June to honor his contributions.

As in years past, on June 1, 1984, Sikhs were filling the complex to pay their respects when Indian
military forces arrived and placed them under siege. A deliberate and calculated massacre ensued,
perpetrated by a government against its own citizens. Anthropologist Joyce Pettigrew explains the
purpose of the invasion: “The Army went into Darbar Sahib not to eliminate a political figure or a
political movement but to suppress the culture of a people, to attack their heart, to strike a blow at
their spirit and self-confidence.”

S.M. Sikri, former Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of India, elaborates by describing Operation
Bluestar as a “massive, deliberate and planned onslaught to the life, property and honor of a
comparatively small, but easily identifiable minority community.”

Eyewitnesses tell a story different than that of the Indian government published in the “White Paper
on the Punjab Agitation.” Devinder Singh Duggal was responsible for overseeing the Sikh
Reference Library and recalled that the Army fired on the complex for several hours starting around
12:30 p.m. on June 1. The next day passed relatively peacefully as the military lifted the curfew and
allowed large numbers of Sikhs to enter the complex. After filtering innocent civilians into the
complex, the Army again sealed the exits to Darbar Sahib, cordoned off the borders of Amritsar, and
imposed a strict curfew.

At approximately 4 a.m. on June 4, the Army assault re-commenced and continued unabated for
more than 48 hours. Survivors vividly recall seeing piles of dead women and children on the ground
as an armored carrier and eight tanks entered the complex in the early morning of June 6. Army
officers announced from inside the tanks: “Please come out. God’s blessings are with you. We will
help you reach home absolutely safe and sound.” Survivors testify that those who came out in the
open were shot down at sight.

Brahma Challeney of the Associated Press of America reported that a large number of innocent
Sikhs were brutally murdered — some officers used the Sikhs’ turbans to tie their hands behind
their backs, while other officers made rounds among the captives and executed each at point-blank
range. The Indian Government has denied these statements, but eyewitness testimonies and post-
mortem reports have invariably corroborated these accounts.

In order to conceal the extent of its assaults and grave human rights violations, the Indian
government broadened its exile of all media outlets by barring access to organizations offering
humanitarian aid. Social interest groups such as the Red Cross, Amnesty International, Human
Rights Watch and the United Nations Human Rights Reporters were denied entry into Punjab, and
as a result were extremely limited in their abilities to evaluate and respond to the atrocities of
Operation Bluestar.

The number of civilians murdered in Operation Bluestar remains unknown. While the most
conservative estimates place the number of casualties around 675, independent and reputable
sources estimate a minimum of 10,000 casualties. Joyce Pettigrew reports that a senior police
officer in Punjab assessed the number of casualties as closer to 20,000.

The Committee on Human Rights openly criticized the unjust attack against innocent Sikhs,
particularly when there were no allegations against them:

The most disturbing thing about the entire operation was that a whole mass of men, women, and
children were ordered to be killed merely on the suspicion that some terrorists were operating from
the Golden Temple [i.e., Darbar Sahib] and other Gurdwaras. Thus such a major military attack
resulting in the massacre of largely innocent people was undertaken on mere suspicion which had
been created by the statements of police and the government themselves.
The violation of human rights in 1984 is not just a Sikh issue — it is an issue of minority rights in
India. Countless minority groups have been targeted and oppressed in the 65 years since the
independence of India, and the continued denial of justice perpetuates the marginalization of these
groups. Until there is accountability for these human rights violations, minority communities will
continue to feel isolated and aliened.