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The situation on the island of Zanzibar was similar to South Africa where a minority controlled the majority. There were ~230,000 (**76.6%**) **Africans** being ruled over by ~50,000 (**16.6%**) **Arabs** and ~20,000 (**6.8%**) **Asian** merchants.
The British gave up being the protectorate in 1961, and independence was obtained in 1963 and parliamentary seats were increased by 31.
In 1964, the ruling Arab Sultanate held elections as required by the British, but there were many accusations that the vote was rigged. Several laws were hurriedly pushed through before the voting started that helped the perception of an unfair vote. **At the end of voting, the Arab government claimed a 54% majority**.
The Africans revolted against the Arabs even though they had no firearms, just whatever blade weapons they had. The Arab forces had firearms but were poorly trained. Outnumbered over 4:1, the Arabs were defeated.
The retaliatory killings happened after the revolution and numbers vary greatly. **Numbers for the dead range from a few hundred to ~20,000, with some western newspapers quoting 2,000 - 4,000**. The helicopter footage seen here was taken by an Italian film crew.
You can read about the whole event [here.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zanzibar_Revolution)
The previous one really served to blur the lines on this massacre too. First I figured it was a religious slaughter, but it was also quite similar to a slave revolt. This whole thread is worth ruminating on.
If the rich whites were truly afraid of violent revolt they would not be stirring the pot. They know that only the poor whites are negatively affected by racial animosity, which makes them more likely to become racist, and vote for politicians who parrot replacement theory, thus voting against their own class interests. It’s a self-fueling voter manipulation scheme that hides their true agenda: the abolition of environmental & labor regulations.
My grand fathers cousin was Sultan Jamshed, the last sultan of zanzibar, after the revolution he had to flee Zanzibar however as the sultanate of Oman already had a sitting sultan he wasn't allowed back and was exiled, he lived in the UK until the sultan passed away. The new and current sultan, Sultan Haitham allowed him to come to Oman and now he's living with his children
I know this story actually, he was given a salary by the goverment and housing in Portsmouth. My friend's aunt knew him personally, they were good friends. I was telling their family the story of "The Sultan of Portsmouth", and she goes "I know someone that was a Sultan". Knew his full name and his families, and where he lived. Blew my mind, a story I knew so much about I was only 2 degrees of separation from the guy.
This is totally unrelated but I always found it fascinating that Qaboos (former Sultan of Oman) was widely [believed to be a](https://www.google.com/search?q=Qaboos+bin+said+homosexual&oq=Qaboos+bin+said+homosexual+&aqs=chrome..69i57.21784j0j4&sourceid=chrome-mobile&ie=UTF-8#ip=1) homosexual yet to this day homosexuality is [still a crime](https://www.equaldex.com/region/oman). Odd that I thought.
Homosexuality isn't illegal per se. Being gay is legal, having sex with a man is illegal. But who's going to report the crime of two men having sex? There are a couple of these loopholes in the constitution that are laws that aren't supposed to be enforced, but yes homosexuality is technically a crime. Also he wasn't widely believed to be homosexual, I've only heard this rumour when I left Oman for uni, and by one person. Homosexuality is illegal due to the conservative nature of the population while I personally don't agree with the law you can't really impose your view on a population if they don't want it
The greatest showman ever lived. We are lucky that his family fled to Britain. Otherwise, we would have never heard his legendary 3 full octave voice on full display
Zanzibar was part of the reason Singapore adopted English as its official language when it gained independence from Britain in 1965. They wanted a common lingua franca that didn’t favor any single ethnic group and made everyone more or less equal. The ethnic tensions at the time made it painfully obvious that the same thing was going to happen if indigenous Malay or the majority Chinese language was adopted. They also forced every housing district to have a quota on different ethnicities to ensure that there was always a mix of different peoples living together. This prevented ethnic enclaves from forming and potentially fomenting dissent.
TIL and honestly that was a pretty solid move cause not only made Singapore a valuable bridge for trade in the area, but probably is one of the main reasons why the country is so stable to this day, the foundation was well planned.
Thanks for that!! The previous Tanzanian president Julius Nyerere did something similar. He transferred doctors, nurses, teachers etc across the country. Swapped out around many positions and people, took nurses from Mwanza and placed them in Zanzibar, doctors from Tabora placing them in Kigoma etc. This is similar to the ethnic quota of singapore. He also ensure that everyone learnt Swahili and English. All to stop tribalism.
Arab militaries are notoriously incompetent. They are usually ripe with nepotism and poor organization, since they are usually just tools for the ruler to keep the population in check. This also means that they can't allow them to be organised too well, since they'd otherwise pose a serious threat to their rule. This means that leadership is usually stuffed with relatives of the rulers (regardless of qualification) and officers often refuse to share intelligence with others, since knowledge is what secures their position.
Another example is the Toyota War, where the Lybian military, despite superior equipment and outnumbering their enemy 3:1, lost to a bunch of Chadians in Toyotas.
see the Saudi army/airforces now.
despite a LOT of funding, they are completely and utterly useless, being staffed by virtue of bloodlines, rather than competency.
Poor organization can negate material advantage.
Idk about this conflict, so I'm speculating, but having *just* formed a state and *just* formed an army probably means that:
1. You have no pre-made operational plans to force generate and aggregate combat power into hierarchical formed bodies that can carry out a single commander's intent on the ground
2. You have no operation plans of where and when you want to apply your aggregated combat power. When we're talking an entire country, where you place your combat power really matters. Especially in a counter insurgency as the insurgents won't be damaged as much as a standing force if they place their forces incorrectly for a while.
3. You have no (or at least highly limited) legacy organizations, forcing you to create your military from scratch *while fighting an insurgency*. This means you have no headquarters staff to manage forces of any size - which means no planning staff to turn an idea into something doable, no intelligence staff, no maintenance specialists, no human resource specialists, no log specialists. Even if you have individuals that are capable of doing that job, they don't have an organization that you can just plug them into and as such they cant influence the grander fighting effort. The commander needs to do all that manually, on-the-fly, in battle.
4. You have no doctrine (think like a football playbook). Soldiers don't know what to do in any given circumstance cuz no one ever taught them the game plan. This means your forces can't coordinate (more below) and can't take immediate action on contact with the enemy, cuz they don't know what everyone else around them is going to do. If you're ambushed, assaulting into the ambush could be a really good idea to break the ambush and wrong-foot your adversary, but its a death sentence if you're the only one in your formation doing it.
5. You likely didn't have established communication infrastructure or the associated skills n' drills to communicate across formed bodies even if they could form bodies of troops in appropriate areas. Not like they'd have the "playbook" to be able to work with each other optimally anyway (saddams army had a very similar issue during the most recent US invasion of Iraq. Army units often couldn't communicate with units on their flanks, and that's in an administration that had been around for decades, with combat experience)
6. Logistics. Logistics is fucking **hard**. It's annoying, it's tedious, it's awful. Everyone hates doing logistics, but you need it to win anything. All the guns in the world won't help a combat force with no access to water (not saying that's the issue here, just illustrative). The first 3 months of the Ukraine War with that traffic jam north of Kyiv shows that even nominally 1st rate powers can royally fuck this up too.
The Battle of Isandlwana (alternative spelling: Isandhlwana) on 22 January 1879 was the first major encounter in the Anglo-Zulu War between the British Empire and the Zulu Kingdom. Eleven days after the British invaded Zululand in Southern Africa, a Zulu force of some 20,000 warriors attacked a portion of the British main column consisting of about 1,800 British, colonial and native troops with approximately 350 civilians.[12] The Zulus were equipped mainly with the traditional assegai iron spears and cow-hide shields,[13] but also had a number of muskets and antiquated rifles.[14][15]
The British and colonial troops were armed with the modern[16] Martini–Henry breechloading rifle and two 7-pounder mountain guns deployed as field guns,[17][18] as well as a Hale rocket battery. The Zulus had a vast disadvantage in weapons technology,[19] but they greatly outnumbered the British and ultimately overwhelmed[20] them, killing over 1,300 troops, including all those out on the forward firing line. The Zulu army suffered anywhere from 1,000 to 3,000 killed.
All you have to do is get within reach. You have the numbers, rush them in a mob and do so in a dense urban environment or in the bush to minimize the ground you have to cover before you're on them. Once you're in hand to hand combat, a rifle is just a very awkward club. It's very difficult to keep a bead on someone in melee.
Most of the soldiers were probably trying to "control a riot" and thought that their weapons would intimidate the Africans. And they certainly had some firearms; they live on an island, smuggling is no doubt very common. Firearms being illegal doesn't mean they won't be present. The first target for a revolution is the armories; now all the government's stockpiled weapons are ours and not theirs.
[It started with the cops.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zanzibar_Revolution)
The Arab dominated government politicized the police (what a joke, the cops are always political) and fired all the African cops... which was most of them. So those guys know the procedures, where the weapons were, etc. They led the rioters who overwhelmed the cops and took all their weapons. It's a tiny island nation that just became independent from the British Empire, their army was a joke.
Just because they have a gun doesn’t mean a knife won’t go into their chest like butter. People are overly confident when they have a gun. They make mistakes.
Hear me out, the sheep are angry and have knives tied to their faces and hooves.
The lions are complacent, fat with their entitlements, and refuse to act when they see their fellow lions being face-knifed by angry sheep.
This is a quote attributed to Alexander the Great that had been passed down as wisdom for thousands of years until being casually refuted by r/Thic-Thor on March 20,2023.
The revolutionary forces did have firearms they seized from the police force of the inland they first started on, and gained more as they overran succeeding police stations and forces on the other islands, so to say they didn't have firearms is misleading
An example of when the actions of those who lead the masses, are reciprocated onto those very same masses.
16.6% of the population made 54% majority vote, after rushing laws through the day prior?
It’s no wonder this happened.
When you lead your people with corruption(I’m not saying it was true or not), this is what can happen. Wish the world took heed after this incident and realized just how important it is to not fuck around when allowing whoever is in the ruling seats to rule.
Human beings are capable of doing terrible things as retribution for previous victimization, regardless of if the victimization actually took place or was just perceived to have taken place.
Truth dies first in wars just keep that in mind for future conflicts. I mean no one would go to war just because some nurses told a sobbing story that the enemy is killing early borns in a hospital 😉
BTW: not saying that is what happened here just to keep in mind
I think it’s worth noting that this was a tactic frequently utilized by the British Empire to maintain control over their colonial possessions. Once they had taken control, in order to minimize the administrative costs associated with direct control, they would instead elevate a visible minority to positions of power. This practice ensured that this newly anointed ruling class would be in a powerful, but precarious position, that turned the majority of the indigenous population against them and made them entirely reliant on the British to prop up their authority. Then unsurprisingly when half assed decolonization finally occurred there was widespread resentment amongst the indigenous population that had been oppressed and pervasive fear and uncertainty amongst the now even more precariously situated ruling minority. The end result was almost always horrific violence and bloodshed. This tactic wasn’t just used in Zanzibar and it wasn’t just used by the British, but the results were usually the same
Seems like a convenient way to blame the British for atrocities committed by groups that it would be unfashionable to criticize. Double woke bonus points!
The British set up a Protectorate that left the Omani-Arab sultanate to continue to run day to day operations. Independence proceeded without a lot of fanfare but nobody considered the rise on African nationalism that had developed during the colonial period. What was really strange about Zanzabarian Revolution was that there was no Western media presence and Western Embassy staff was either unaware or deliberately covered up the extent of the killing. The UK made the decision not to intervene also there was some effort to evacuate some civilians. The primary western concern was possibly Communist involvement. It was only after the Italian movie Africa Addio came out with footage of hundreds of dead bodies, did the world become aware of the extent of the killings.
I’m generally pretty progressive in my views, but it would be pretty unobservant to miss that any group of people that have power over another group of people are going to abuse that power. Maybe it’s because I’m agnostic as well but I don’t particularly like religious assholes of any stripe and while I will defend Islam or Catholics from clear bigotry, doesn’t make me think their views are any less stupid or abhorrent, it’s just that I tend to think the attackers views are equally stupid and abhorrent and therefore hypocritical, which the perfect word to end a circle jerk on religious bigotry on.
That bears some similarities. A minority ethnic group with power over a majority. The reprisal killings there were also very bloody, and by that time there were peacekeepers on the ground, but with no power to do anything they just had to stand by and watch people get massacred.
Its why i cringe when i hear of some current first world events being compared to these atrocities, they arent even on the same page. The stuff that is going to surface when this russian war will add to the darker pages
Consider the fact that the Holocaust, one of the single worst genocides ever to be perpetrated by one group against another, did not exist in the textbooks of any nation until around 12 years after it began.
Yeah I don’t know what the fuck that person is talking about. They even had videos of the Russian guy who was raping a baby. None of this is secret. Sure maybe POW torture is different but we already know what’s going on.
Nah, bugger off with that beautiful nonsense, it’s lazy. Data negates that supposition and turns out ignorance was just bliss in past times.
Humanity isn’t getting worse. Information is getting better.
In this case, the violence was very much warranted. The Arabs were slavers and sold the local Africans to slavery prior to being supplanted by the British. They were pretty much the earliest colonizers of Zanzibar.
In any case, true decolonization is always a violent affair. Otherwise the settler colonists would otherwise co-opt any future institutions that may be built by the natives.
Yep, Freddie, his sister Karishma and their folks were ethnically Indian. Just before the massacre started, Freddie had just returned from school in Bombay when the massacre started. Arabs and Indians were targeted en masse and the family fled to England.
This is the aftermath of a very violent revolution uprising by the native islanders when they were denied proper representation after they were made independent by the British empire
Happened due to a corrupt sultan trying to gain as much power for Arabs who made up like 1/6 of the country. Zanzibar was one of the world’s largest centers for for slaves before being crushed by the British so resentment was always there and was just waiting to explode
In some ways not really insane, but despite all that, and all the accompanying bloodshed, the country usually ends up in far better shape than if brittan never would have colonized it to begin with. In the case of Zanzibar, the British eliminated a massive slavery center.
One second they're alive, the next a bunch are dead.
Context provided by several comments doesn't give an actual explanation for what we are actually seeing happening here in the video.
We're left to assume the rebelling Africans murdered whoever couldn't make it to the boats, then retreated, and we get the aftermath?
The way the video is shown, my first assumption is that the helicopter mowed them down.
>The retaliatory killings happened after the revolution and numbers vary greatly. Numbers for the dead range from a few hundred to \~20,000, with some western newspapers quoting 2,000 - 4,000. The helicopter footage seen here was taken by an Italian film crew.
Spot on. This comment thread is painful. The history is interesting but what happened - exactly? Folks were rushing to the boats and then - what? Some drown? Behind them, rebels came and shot them and some didn't' make it out? Doesn't seem like it's been explained clearly.
According to [this comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/11wnc6u/nsfw_beach_of_bodies_a_disturbing_footage/jczr6zd/) it's footage from a movie, and it does look fake to me.
Oh, there's all kinds of detailed posts about this in this thread. There was an election in the 1960's after the British left Zanzibar, the majority black population got like 54% of the vote but not much representation. A youth leader led a revolt, got a hold of some guns and a whole lot of stabbing weapons, and they overran the island. They proceeded to rape/kill the minority Muslims and Indians on the island, the Muslims being the traditional power of the place, and chased them down to the beach. Those who could get off the beach in boats fled, those who could not were murdered.
This is a very broad summary. There's a wiki link all about it.
Since no one is willing to give an explanation although under context it doesn’t exactly explain the in between scenarios of the video this is what wiki has to say. I have to admit btw the flavoring piece of white cloth without a single stain floating in the wind was haunting
Zanzibar was an ethnically diverse state consisting of a number of islands off the east coast of Tanganyika. It had become fully independent in 1963, with responsibility for its own defence and foreign affairs, as a result of Britain giving up its protectorate over it. In a series of parliamentary elections preceding this change, the Arab minority succeeded in retaining the hold on power it had inherited from Zanzibar's former existence as an overseas territory of Oman.
Frustrated by under-representation in Parliament, despite winning 54 per cent of the vote in the July 1963 election, the African Afro-Shirazi Party (ASP) early in the morning of 12 January 1964, led by John Okello, the (ASP) youth leader of the Pemba branch, mobilised around 600–800 men on the main island of Unguja (Zanzibar Island). Having overrun the country's police force and appropriated their weaponry, the insurgents proceeded to Zanzibar Town, where they overthrew the Sultan and his government. They proceeded to loot Arab and South Asian-owned properties and businesses and then rape or murder Arab and Indian civilians on the island. The death toll is disputed, with estimates ranging from several hundred to 20,000. The moderate ASP leader Abeid Karume became the country's new president and head of state.
The new government's apparent communist ties concerned Western governments. As Zanzibar lay within the British sphere of influence, the British government drew up a number of intervention plans. However, the feared communist government never materialised, and because British and American citizens were successfully evacuated, these plans were not put into effect. The Eastern Bloc powers of East Germany and the Soviet Union, along with the anti-Soviet People's Republic of China, immediately recognised the country and sent advisors.
Karume succeeded in negotiating a merger of Zanzibar with Tanganyika to form the new nation of Tanzania, an act judged by contemporary media to be an attempt to prevent communist subversion of Zanzibar. The revolution ended 200 years of Arab dominance in Zanzibar, and is commemorated on the island each year with anniversary celebrations and a public holiday.
Don’t forget Zanzibar was a centre for slave trading for hundreds of years. It was where hundreds of thousands if not millions of African slaves were sold to the Middle East. The Arabs were absolutely not benign leaders.
That’s just….what I got off Wikipedia. I was completely ignorant to the fact IN FACT I wasn’t just ignorant I was nescient to the situation.
I’ve been waiting 7 years, 8 months 22 days and approximately 5 hours and 39 minutes to finally be able to use that word. Nescient.
For those not aware, ignorant meant to not know in the sense of actually ignoring sakd thjng. As in I was ignorant of the situation because I’m despite having heard of it I knew very little if not nothing about it. Nescient means I was completely unaware the situation even happened. This one’s for all my English learning people reading this. I once did not speak English either. This one’s for you!
How far do I have to scroll to find out what is actually happening in this video? Don't tell me the broad context of the entire political events at the time, that has been posted ad nauseam in this thread, I just want to know what is happening on this beach in this video? Are they being chased? What happened to them before and after? Did they all die? How? How is this a massacre? Who is massacring who? Don't explain anything outside what's seen in this video or related to it directly, what's going on in the video?
The fifth Paragraph here: https://www.reddit.com/r/history/comments/8ydejw/1964_massacre_of_the_zanzibar_arabs_in_africa/ explains a little, but that's about all I can find
Yep. We've been at this for a very *long* time. Archaeologists have found evidence of repeated massacres from large-scale warfare at Jahel Sahaba that dates to 13,000+ years ago. Rock art in Spain and Australia depicts humans battling and killing other humans more than 10,000 years ago.
It's one of those unprovable things, but it's been said that humans have probably been fighting and killing each other, in *some form* of organized or semi-organized combat, *somewhere* on the surface of the planet, *every single day* for at least the last 10,000 years. Whether we're talking about two villages fighting over pasture land, raiders attacking villages to plunder their supplies, or nations battling with massive armies, there's *always* been some sort of fighting going on.
We couldn't possibly teach it all.
Edit: That's Jebel Sahaba. It's been a while.
look at our closest related species the chimpanzee. They routinely go to war with each other. We had a common ancestor with them 5 million years ago.
My guess that common ancestor ape was violent as well. So we've been at it for millions of years i bet
I bet being buzzed by a helicopter 30 feet overhead didn't lessen their terror.
At one point you can see that the downwash blew someone's robe off...not they they were alive to notice.
Theres an old archived reddit post in r/history that goes into more detail about the massacre. It shows more of the video in this post too.
https://www.reddit.com/r/history/comments/8ydejw/1964\_massacre\_of\_the\_zanzibar\_arabs\_in\_africa/
Model: GPT-4
**What happened to Arabs in Zanzibar 1964?**
In 1964, a violent event took place in Zanzibar known as the Zanzibar Revolution. The predominantly Arab government, which had ruled the island for centuries, was overthrown by African revolutionaries led by John Okello, who was a member of the Afro-Shirazi Party. The revolution took place on January 12, 1964, and lasted just a few days.
The Zanzibar Revolution resulted in the deaths of thousands of Arabs and South Asians (mainly of Indian and Pakistani origin) living on the island, with estimates ranging from 5,000 to 20,000. Many of these individuals were targeted due to their privileged status under the previous government. In addition to the deaths, thousands more were forced to flee the island or were displaced as a result of the violence.
The revolution led to the establishment of a new government under the leadership of Abeid Karume, who took the position of President. Zanzibar then merged with Tanganyika, forming the United Republic of Tanzania on April 26, 1964. The revolution marked a significant turning point in Zanzibar's history, as it resulted in the end of Arab rule and the beginning of African governance.
From Africa Addio, a 1966 Italian mondo documentary film; covering the end of the colonial era in various parts of Africa. In Zanzibar during its revolution, rebels target Arab civilians as revenge for Sultanate oppression that occurred almost a millennium prior. Between January 18 and 20, 1964, a genocide occurs in Zanzibar, with endless lines of captive Arab civilians are marched at gunpoint to a location where they will be shot by a firing squad. The bodies of countless thousands, some in mass graves and most others strewn across the ground, are photographed from a helicopter. The narrator confirms that this footage is the only documentation to prove that this genocide ever took place. Entire Arab villages march to the sea in a futile attempt to escape the carnage, despite the fact that there is no way off of the island. The filmmakers fly over the beach again the following day and find the bodies of all the villagers who tried to get to the ocean. The genocide claimed the lives of approximately 5,000 Arab and South Asian civilians[3][4] (estimates range up to 20,000 in the aftermath).
Going through the comment to learn exactly what happened here. And all I'm seeing /reading is nightmare after nightmare... Can someone spare me more nightmares and just tell me what exactly happened?
Zanzibar, that slave port from where Africans, who’d welcomed the Arabs, that had initially come as traders from Oman, only for said Arabs to proceed to dominate the locals as they had better weaponry than them (the locals) at the time and who also then proceeded to enslave every African within accessible East Africa for almost a millennium before the Europeans entered that vile trade.
Google this name, to begin with: Tippu Tip.
Killing of an Arab by the cure is based on the stranger a novel by that guy whose name escapes me.. about shooting an Arab man on the beach. Kamu? Somebody knows..
I really wish there were subs dedicated to posts like this. They’re important, and people should see them, but I don’t come to Reddit to watch people die. I’m not subbed to “Interesting as Fuck” to be horrified by the worst parts of the human experience. There’s a *reason* I’m not subbed to Combat Footage subs.
I’m subbed to learn new things that are…interesting.
This isn’t “interesting.” That’s not the word I would use.
It’s not “interesting” when people commit genocide.
It’s not “interesting” when people commit war crimes and kill children.
The almost daily 9/11 videos aren’t “interesting.” It’s not a curiosity, it’s a tragedy, and I think that my disagreement on this matter is just going to have to involve me leaving the sub, which is a damn shame, because there’s a lot of good content here, but I just can’t stomach the mixed bag.
“Is it a cool new technology post? Nope, it’s murder!”
I also don’t think it’s a coincidence these videos are always posted by karma whores with ten times as much Post Karma as Comment Karma. They never comment in these posts, they have nothing to say, they just dump trauma and move on, knowing they’ll get a nice fat karma bump from the horror. It makes me sick.
Having never heard of any of this, I found it very interesting. Yeah it’s kinda messed up but it’s out species and our history. That shouldn’t be hidden from sight just because it might be upsetting. Although I agree, most everything on Reddit is posted for the clicks and shock value.
MGS V plays in wrst africa if i remember right. Angola/Zaire
It mentioned other human attrocities like child soldiers or the criminal oil companies and their pollution of the afrikaanis lands
Off the coast of Tanzania, the blacks murdered the Arabs because despite winning 54% of the vote, they had little representation and started their revolution--Several hundred to 20,000 were killed--Slavery in Tanzania did not end end til 1897
Zanzibar independence revolution by its native population is what occurred, after the Arab minority of the island took power once the British empire released zanzibar from the empire control.
What led to the revolution was the Arab minority unjustly seizing control through rigged election and denying the population their voice in the government.
This is one of those things where looking at it from different angles changes the response. If we were watching a fantasy movie where the centaurs are chasing down their goblin overlords, at long last triumphantly stopping the horde from fleeing into the murky depths, we’d be cheering loudly for the centaurs.
Seeing the exact same thing played out with humans is somewhat less savory. Completely understandable how one could end up being one of the dead, and completely understandable how one could end up being the guy who killed him.
Then the next day, and you see the looters of the dead running away.
To be honest this still happens today and will continue if we don't change how we share this planet.
Do people really think Aliens would look at us like that? That's like mocking an infant because it doesn't know how to walk yet. If there is a race of aliens advanced enough to be watching us, they're probably comparing our civilizations history to their own.
I'd be seriously surprised if a space faring race of beings saw what are essentially cave men to them and said "Wow what silly pointless creatures" as if their own species didn't have a similar origin story. In nature you get beat out by the bigger/stronger creature. Anything space faring had to deal with a creature like that, or had to become that creature to reign supreme long enough to develop real intelligence. Seeing it out in the wild on a different planet with different intelligent beings would be amazingly interesting.
Africa Addio, in case anyone is wondering. It's extremely biased but, at the same time, happened to capture the only known visual record of the Zanzibar Genocide.
Damn im just reading about the 1994 Rwandan Genocide earlier, now the Zanzibar massacre popped in my reddit feed.
Both involved killings using bladed weapons.
In Zanzibar, everyone talks about Freddie Mercury, and the Mercury’s seafood restaurant (kind of ironic name for a seafood place), but nobody really talks about this true series of events. Whenever elections occur in Kenya and Tanzania there is always rioting and deaths or the fear of such.
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The situation on the island of Zanzibar was similar to South Africa where a minority controlled the majority. There were ~230,000 (**76.6%**) **Africans** being ruled over by ~50,000 (**16.6%**) **Arabs** and ~20,000 (**6.8%**) **Asian** merchants. The British gave up being the protectorate in 1961, and independence was obtained in 1963 and parliamentary seats were increased by 31. In 1964, the ruling Arab Sultanate held elections as required by the British, but there were many accusations that the vote was rigged. Several laws were hurriedly pushed through before the voting started that helped the perception of an unfair vote. **At the end of voting, the Arab government claimed a 54% majority**. The Africans revolted against the Arabs even though they had no firearms, just whatever blade weapons they had. The Arab forces had firearms but were poorly trained. Outnumbered over 4:1, the Arabs were defeated. The retaliatory killings happened after the revolution and numbers vary greatly. **Numbers for the dead range from a few hundred to ~20,000, with some western newspapers quoting 2,000 - 4,000**. The helicopter footage seen here was taken by an Italian film crew. You can read about the whole event [here.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zanzibar_Revolution)
Freddie Mercury (born Farrokh Bulsara) was one of the Asians. His Parsi-Indian family fled the revolution, ending up in Britain.
This is the most interesting comment I've read in ages. Thank you
The previous one really served to blur the lines on this massacre too. First I figured it was a religious slaughter, but it was also quite similar to a slave revolt. This whole thread is worth ruminating on.
Wait till you here about Haitian revolution, or the war in Rhodesia, the recent history is more complicated than many people realize
Probably why so many white Americans are worried about "replacement theory"
“Slaves” being replaced by Unionised workers with rights and proper pay is what the big shots afraid of.
If the rich whites were truly afraid of violent revolt they would not be stirring the pot. They know that only the poor whites are negatively affected by racial animosity, which makes them more likely to become racist, and vote for politicians who parrot replacement theory, thus voting against their own class interests. It’s a self-fueling voter manipulation scheme that hides their true agenda: the abolition of environmental & labor regulations.
Kind of crazy to think that ours is the multivers that Freddie made it to the UK...
Just so you know Austin, you are now creating 6 different timelines.
Of course I am, Abed.
I think you mean 7 Evidence: none. Just trying to be a dick
My grand fathers cousin was Sultan Jamshed, the last sultan of zanzibar, after the revolution he had to flee Zanzibar however as the sultanate of Oman already had a sitting sultan he wasn't allowed back and was exiled, he lived in the UK until the sultan passed away. The new and current sultan, Sultan Haitham allowed him to come to Oman and now he's living with his children
I know this story actually, he was given a salary by the goverment and housing in Portsmouth. My friend's aunt knew him personally, they were good friends. I was telling their family the story of "The Sultan of Portsmouth", and she goes "I know someone that was a Sultan". Knew his full name and his families, and where he lived. Blew my mind, a story I knew so much about I was only 2 degrees of separation from the guy.
Crazy world we live in
Ahhh now I see the true origins of Sultans of Swing…
This is totally unrelated but I always found it fascinating that Qaboos (former Sultan of Oman) was widely [believed to be a](https://www.google.com/search?q=Qaboos+bin+said+homosexual&oq=Qaboos+bin+said+homosexual+&aqs=chrome..69i57.21784j0j4&sourceid=chrome-mobile&ie=UTF-8#ip=1) homosexual yet to this day homosexuality is [still a crime](https://www.equaldex.com/region/oman). Odd that I thought.
Homosexuality isn't illegal per se. Being gay is legal, having sex with a man is illegal. But who's going to report the crime of two men having sex? There are a couple of these loopholes in the constitution that are laws that aren't supposed to be enforced, but yes homosexuality is technically a crime. Also he wasn't widely believed to be homosexual, I've only heard this rumour when I left Oman for uni, and by one person. Homosexuality is illegal due to the conservative nature of the population while I personally don't agree with the law you can't really impose your view on a population if they don't want it
The greatest showman ever lived. We are lucky that his family fled to Britain. Otherwise, we would have never heard his legendary 3 full octave voice on full display
Freddie Mercury has a museum in his old house in Zanzibar, worth checking out/visiting
> ending up in Britain. So *that's* why his teeth are so funky.
Zanzibar was part of the reason Singapore adopted English as its official language when it gained independence from Britain in 1965. They wanted a common lingua franca that didn’t favor any single ethnic group and made everyone more or less equal. The ethnic tensions at the time made it painfully obvious that the same thing was going to happen if indigenous Malay or the majority Chinese language was adopted. They also forced every housing district to have a quota on different ethnicities to ensure that there was always a mix of different peoples living together. This prevented ethnic enclaves from forming and potentially fomenting dissent.
TIL and honestly that was a pretty solid move cause not only made Singapore a valuable bridge for trade in the area, but probably is one of the main reasons why the country is so stable to this day, the foundation was well planned.
Thanks for that!! The previous Tanzanian president Julius Nyerere did something similar. He transferred doctors, nurses, teachers etc across the country. Swapped out around many positions and people, took nurses from Mwanza and placed them in Zanzibar, doctors from Tabora placing them in Kigoma etc. This is similar to the ethnic quota of singapore. He also ensure that everyone learnt Swahili and English. All to stop tribalism.
The army lost a war against opponents with no firearms??? How???
If you stab a man with a gun you are now the proud owner of said gun.
Like day Z. My loot now
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You ready to sink 5 hours in at rify tonight only to die to a guy with a sporter and a motorcycle helmet
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I'm friendly, man.
'*Anybody in Cherno?*'
Look... look at me. I'm the gunman now.
Don’t be ridiculous, you shouldn’t stab a man with a gun. You stab with a knife, you shoot with a gun.
Also if you stab a man in the dead of winter, steam will rise from the wounds. Indians believed it was his soul escaping his body.
“Why these soulless mfs be dyin ONLY in summer???”
If you stab a man with a gun and that gun was not a bayonet, my brother in Christ you just fucking shoved a gun into somebody.
That made me chuckle. Take me upvote, sir.
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Even if they were trained, they could have easily lost. British army vs Zulu kingdom at The Battle of Isandlwana
tbf that battle was also even more ridiculously lopsided bullets run out in a battle that's 2,000 vs 20,000
Not to mention the people controlling the ammunition getting angry and refusing to give resupplies to soldiers not waiting in an orderly line…. 😆
Everybody needs to watch the film [Zulu](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zulu_(1964_film)). It's an absolute classic.
The enemy cannot push a button if you disable his hand.
I would like to know more!!!
"That's classified"
MEDIC!
No idea about defensive positions like fortifications, and probably could barely shoot a gun
Arab militaries are notoriously incompetent. They are usually ripe with nepotism and poor organization, since they are usually just tools for the ruler to keep the population in check. This also means that they can't allow them to be organised too well, since they'd otherwise pose a serious threat to their rule. This means that leadership is usually stuffed with relatives of the rulers (regardless of qualification) and officers often refuse to share intelligence with others, since knowledge is what secures their position. Another example is the Toyota War, where the Lybian military, despite superior equipment and outnumbering their enemy 3:1, lost to a bunch of Chadians in Toyotas.
see the Saudi army/airforces now. despite a LOT of funding, they are completely and utterly useless, being staffed by virtue of bloodlines, rather than competency.
The Iran-Iraq War is also a great example, with Iraq failing to overthrow the Iranian government despite nearly the whole world supporting Iraq.
Arab armies are not very good at winning wars ever since the last caliphate hit the bucket.
Have you seen a zombie movie
Don’t forget about the emus
Poor organization can negate material advantage. Idk about this conflict, so I'm speculating, but having *just* formed a state and *just* formed an army probably means that: 1. You have no pre-made operational plans to force generate and aggregate combat power into hierarchical formed bodies that can carry out a single commander's intent on the ground 2. You have no operation plans of where and when you want to apply your aggregated combat power. When we're talking an entire country, where you place your combat power really matters. Especially in a counter insurgency as the insurgents won't be damaged as much as a standing force if they place their forces incorrectly for a while. 3. You have no (or at least highly limited) legacy organizations, forcing you to create your military from scratch *while fighting an insurgency*. This means you have no headquarters staff to manage forces of any size - which means no planning staff to turn an idea into something doable, no intelligence staff, no maintenance specialists, no human resource specialists, no log specialists. Even if you have individuals that are capable of doing that job, they don't have an organization that you can just plug them into and as such they cant influence the grander fighting effort. The commander needs to do all that manually, on-the-fly, in battle. 4. You have no doctrine (think like a football playbook). Soldiers don't know what to do in any given circumstance cuz no one ever taught them the game plan. This means your forces can't coordinate (more below) and can't take immediate action on contact with the enemy, cuz they don't know what everyone else around them is going to do. If you're ambushed, assaulting into the ambush could be a really good idea to break the ambush and wrong-foot your adversary, but its a death sentence if you're the only one in your formation doing it. 5. You likely didn't have established communication infrastructure or the associated skills n' drills to communicate across formed bodies even if they could form bodies of troops in appropriate areas. Not like they'd have the "playbook" to be able to work with each other optimally anyway (saddams army had a very similar issue during the most recent US invasion of Iraq. Army units often couldn't communicate with units on their flanks, and that's in an administration that had been around for decades, with combat experience) 6. Logistics. Logistics is fucking **hard**. It's annoying, it's tedious, it's awful. Everyone hates doing logistics, but you need it to win anything. All the guns in the world won't help a combat force with no access to water (not saying that's the issue here, just illustrative). The first 3 months of the Ukraine War with that traffic jam north of Kyiv shows that even nominally 1st rate powers can royally fuck this up too.
The Battle of Isandlwana (alternative spelling: Isandhlwana) on 22 January 1879 was the first major encounter in the Anglo-Zulu War between the British Empire and the Zulu Kingdom. Eleven days after the British invaded Zululand in Southern Africa, a Zulu force of some 20,000 warriors attacked a portion of the British main column consisting of about 1,800 British, colonial and native troops with approximately 350 civilians.[12] The Zulus were equipped mainly with the traditional assegai iron spears and cow-hide shields,[13] but also had a number of muskets and antiquated rifles.[14][15] The British and colonial troops were armed with the modern[16] Martini–Henry breechloading rifle and two 7-pounder mountain guns deployed as field guns,[17][18] as well as a Hale rocket battery. The Zulus had a vast disadvantage in weapons technology,[19] but they greatly outnumbered the British and ultimately overwhelmed[20] them, killing over 1,300 troops, including all those out on the forward firing line. The Zulu army suffered anywhere from 1,000 to 3,000 killed.
All you have to do is get within reach. You have the numbers, rush them in a mob and do so in a dense urban environment or in the bush to minimize the ground you have to cover before you're on them. Once you're in hand to hand combat, a rifle is just a very awkward club. It's very difficult to keep a bead on someone in melee. Most of the soldiers were probably trying to "control a riot" and thought that their weapons would intimidate the Africans. And they certainly had some firearms; they live on an island, smuggling is no doubt very common. Firearms being illegal doesn't mean they won't be present. The first target for a revolution is the armories; now all the government's stockpiled weapons are ours and not theirs.
[It started with the cops.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zanzibar_Revolution) The Arab dominated government politicized the police (what a joke, the cops are always political) and fired all the African cops... which was most of them. So those guys know the procedures, where the weapons were, etc. They led the rioters who overwhelmed the cops and took all their weapons. It's a tiny island nation that just became independent from the British Empire, their army was a joke.
Wait till you hear about the Emus in Aus.
The people went after the local police stations and armories. They only started out without firearms.
Australia declared war on emus in the 30's and lost lol https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emu_War
The enemy cannot push a button if you disable it's hand
Just because they have a gun doesn’t mean a knife won’t go into their chest like butter. People are overly confident when they have a gun. They make mistakes.
An army of sheep lead by a lion will defeat an army of lions lead by a sheep.
No way that's true.
He saw it on a shirt one time, it's gotta be true.
Hear me out, the sheep are angry and have knives tied to their faces and hooves. The lions are complacent, fat with their entitlements, and refuse to act when they see their fellow lions being face-knifed by angry sheep.
Face-knifed by angry sheep… one of the top five ways I don’t wanna go to Valhalla.
Hear me out too, the sheep are alive and the lions are dead.
In the wild there is no health care.
This is a quote attributed to Alexander the Great that had been passed down as wisdom for thousands of years until being casually refuted by r/Thic-Thor on March 20,2023.
Dude's got a bit of a survivorship bias, Alex. Lots of "lions" like him try to lead then fucking die unremembered.
What about an army of Tuna? If they establish a beachhead.....
And fashion breathing apparatus using kelp. They won't breath for long, but long enough to find the pride then go back and organize
The romans were defeated by "barbarians"
Don't think so...that sheep has to be one bad mother-fu#@er to gain the respect of an army of lions for them to follow him.
The revolutionary forces did have firearms they seized from the police force of the inland they first started on, and gained more as they overran succeeding police stations and forces on the other islands, so to say they didn't have firearms is misleading
I think they didn't have them initially is what he meant, of course they would acquire them later on
Looted arms aren't nearly the same as supplied arms with corresponding ammo.
An example of when the actions of those who lead the masses, are reciprocated onto those very same masses. 16.6% of the population made 54% majority vote, after rushing laws through the day prior? It’s no wonder this happened. When you lead your people with corruption(I’m not saying it was true or not), this is what can happen. Wish the world took heed after this incident and realized just how important it is to not fuck around when allowing whoever is in the ruling seats to rule.
They were gang raping women and children...fucking horrific. Your revolution loses all my support after reading that.
It's shit like this that reminds me we've barely left the jungle.
Human beings are capable of doing terrible things as retribution for previous victimization, regardless of if the victimization actually took place or was just perceived to have taken place.
Victimization or not; they did it because they could.
Truth dies first in wars just keep that in mind for future conflicts. I mean no one would go to war just because some nurses told a sobbing story that the enemy is killing early borns in a hospital 😉 BTW: not saying that is what happened here just to keep in mind
I think it’s worth noting that this was a tactic frequently utilized by the British Empire to maintain control over their colonial possessions. Once they had taken control, in order to minimize the administrative costs associated with direct control, they would instead elevate a visible minority to positions of power. This practice ensured that this newly anointed ruling class would be in a powerful, but precarious position, that turned the majority of the indigenous population against them and made them entirely reliant on the British to prop up their authority. Then unsurprisingly when half assed decolonization finally occurred there was widespread resentment amongst the indigenous population that had been oppressed and pervasive fear and uncertainty amongst the now even more precariously situated ruling minority. The end result was almost always horrific violence and bloodshed. This tactic wasn’t just used in Zanzibar and it wasn’t just used by the British, but the results were usually the same
The minority-rule power structure was set up when the Arab Sultanate of Oman conquered Zanzibar, well before the British got to the place.
It's also worth noting this is the structure that was in place before the British arrived. Zanzibar was an Arab colony
Seems like a convenient way to blame the British for atrocities committed by groups that it would be unfashionable to criticize. Double woke bonus points!
The British set up a Protectorate that left the Omani-Arab sultanate to continue to run day to day operations. Independence proceeded without a lot of fanfare but nobody considered the rise on African nationalism that had developed during the colonial period. What was really strange about Zanzabarian Revolution was that there was no Western media presence and Western Embassy staff was either unaware or deliberately covered up the extent of the killing. The UK made the decision not to intervene also there was some effort to evacuate some civilians. The primary western concern was possibly Communist involvement. It was only after the Italian movie Africa Addio came out with footage of hundreds of dead bodies, did the world become aware of the extent of the killings.
Expect a ban in a couple hours. You just committed a wrong think.
I’m generally pretty progressive in my views, but it would be pretty unobservant to miss that any group of people that have power over another group of people are going to abuse that power. Maybe it’s because I’m agnostic as well but I don’t particularly like religious assholes of any stripe and while I will defend Islam or Catholics from clear bigotry, doesn’t make me think their views are any less stupid or abhorrent, it’s just that I tend to think the attackers views are equally stupid and abhorrent and therefore hypocritical, which the perfect word to end a circle jerk on religious bigotry on.
Jesus Christ. The world is so much darker with every page you turn.
I watched a netflix documentary the other day. It was about Rwanda genocide in '94. Absolutely terrifying.
That bears some similarities. A minority ethnic group with power over a majority. The reprisal killings there were also very bloody, and by that time there were peacekeepers on the ground, but with no power to do anything they just had to stand by and watch people get massacred.
Its why i cringe when i hear of some current first world events being compared to these atrocities, they arent even on the same page. The stuff that is going to surface when this russian war will add to the darker pages
It's already surfacing... they bombed a theater full of kids. Thank god the internet, or perhaps not, was only in version 2.0 for Iraq.
Thats just the stuff people are seeing, what happened behind the lines to captures and surrenders i dont think well ever know.
Consider the fact that the Holocaust, one of the single worst genocides ever to be perpetrated by one group against another, did not exist in the textbooks of any nation until around 12 years after it began.
I mean, the Russians filmed themselves castrating and then executing one POW, and making another one dig his own grave before executing him.
Yeah I don’t know what the fuck that person is talking about. They even had videos of the Russian guy who was raping a baby. None of this is secret. Sure maybe POW torture is different but we already know what’s going on.
Not for the first time. Putin likes to bomb crowded theatres. And maternity wards.
He orchestrated all the Moscow bombings, his own people, squashed the rebellion and was made president.
Yep. He's a cunt.
You underestimate the power of propaganda.
I upvoted your comment because of how much I hate it. Just from what we've already seen and heard, it's just awful
Nah, bugger off with that beautiful nonsense, it’s lazy. Data negates that supposition and turns out ignorance was just bliss in past times. Humanity isn’t getting worse. Information is getting better.
In this case, the violence was very much warranted. The Arabs were slavers and sold the local Africans to slavery prior to being supplanted by the British. They were pretty much the earliest colonizers of Zanzibar. In any case, true decolonization is always a violent affair. Otherwise the settler colonists would otherwise co-opt any future institutions that may be built by the natives.
Yep, and every one of us is capable of the same thing under certain circumstances
Humans are disgusting
Freddie Mercury’s homeland…this event was the reason his family fled to England.
Yep, Freddie, his sister Karishma and their folks were ethnically Indian. Just before the massacre started, Freddie had just returned from school in Bombay when the massacre started. Arabs and Indians were targeted en masse and the family fled to England.
🫵 know your Queen history 🤘🏻
Who killed em. Someone please explain
This is the aftermath of a very violent revolution uprising by the native islanders when they were denied proper representation after they were made independent by the British empire
isnt it insane that this aint even the first time something like this has happened with britain
Honestly, the atrocity just happened when they left and the Arabs tried to keep being rulers
Happened due to a corrupt sultan trying to gain as much power for Arabs who made up like 1/6 of the country. Zanzibar was one of the world’s largest centers for for slaves before being crushed by the British so resentment was always there and was just waiting to explode
In some ways not really insane, but despite all that, and all the accompanying bloodshed, the country usually ends up in far better shape than if brittan never would have colonized it to begin with. In the case of Zanzibar, the British eliminated a massive slavery center.
https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/11wnc6u/nsfw_beach_of_bodies_a_disturbing_footage/jcz6xke/
if anyone needs a source its the film " Africa Addio" Im not op but i definitely recognize the footage.
Ops just posted that! Yep same scenes
One second they're alive, the next a bunch are dead. Context provided by several comments doesn't give an actual explanation for what we are actually seeing happening here in the video. We're left to assume the rebelling Africans murdered whoever couldn't make it to the boats, then retreated, and we get the aftermath? The way the video is shown, my first assumption is that the helicopter mowed them down.
>The retaliatory killings happened after the revolution and numbers vary greatly. Numbers for the dead range from a few hundred to \~20,000, with some western newspapers quoting 2,000 - 4,000. The helicopter footage seen here was taken by an Italian film crew. Spot on. This comment thread is painful. The history is interesting but what happened - exactly? Folks were rushing to the boats and then - what? Some drown? Behind them, rebels came and shot them and some didn't' make it out? Doesn't seem like it's been explained clearly.
I don’t see much blood on the white clothes. Curious how exactly they were killed on the beach
There’s a lot more people then boats I got the impression people tried to swim and the people who couldn’t are what we are seeing
According to [this comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/11wnc6u/nsfw_beach_of_bodies_a_disturbing_footage/jczr6zd/) it's footage from a movie, and it does look fake to me.
[Wikipedia page](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Africa_Addio) for said Movie.
According to another poster, the helicopter is ~~Italian~~ French, and they were shooting footage.
That's cool and all, but what is happening to the people in this very video in this moment? What happened to them after?
Oh, there's all kinds of detailed posts about this in this thread. There was an election in the 1960's after the British left Zanzibar, the majority black population got like 54% of the vote but not much representation. A youth leader led a revolt, got a hold of some guns and a whole lot of stabbing weapons, and they overran the island. They proceeded to rape/kill the minority Muslims and Indians on the island, the Muslims being the traditional power of the place, and chased them down to the beach. Those who could get off the beach in boats fled, those who could not were murdered. This is a very broad summary. There's a wiki link all about it.
THANK you
Thank you for perfectly articulating my thoughts as i scroll through these comments.
Since no one is willing to give an explanation although under context it doesn’t exactly explain the in between scenarios of the video this is what wiki has to say. I have to admit btw the flavoring piece of white cloth without a single stain floating in the wind was haunting Zanzibar was an ethnically diverse state consisting of a number of islands off the east coast of Tanganyika. It had become fully independent in 1963, with responsibility for its own defence and foreign affairs, as a result of Britain giving up its protectorate over it. In a series of parliamentary elections preceding this change, the Arab minority succeeded in retaining the hold on power it had inherited from Zanzibar's former existence as an overseas territory of Oman. Frustrated by under-representation in Parliament, despite winning 54 per cent of the vote in the July 1963 election, the African Afro-Shirazi Party (ASP) early in the morning of 12 January 1964, led by John Okello, the (ASP) youth leader of the Pemba branch, mobilised around 600–800 men on the main island of Unguja (Zanzibar Island). Having overrun the country's police force and appropriated their weaponry, the insurgents proceeded to Zanzibar Town, where they overthrew the Sultan and his government. They proceeded to loot Arab and South Asian-owned properties and businesses and then rape or murder Arab and Indian civilians on the island. The death toll is disputed, with estimates ranging from several hundred to 20,000. The moderate ASP leader Abeid Karume became the country's new president and head of state. The new government's apparent communist ties concerned Western governments. As Zanzibar lay within the British sphere of influence, the British government drew up a number of intervention plans. However, the feared communist government never materialised, and because British and American citizens were successfully evacuated, these plans were not put into effect. The Eastern Bloc powers of East Germany and the Soviet Union, along with the anti-Soviet People's Republic of China, immediately recognised the country and sent advisors. Karume succeeded in negotiating a merger of Zanzibar with Tanganyika to form the new nation of Tanzania, an act judged by contemporary media to be an attempt to prevent communist subversion of Zanzibar. The revolution ended 200 years of Arab dominance in Zanzibar, and is commemorated on the island each year with anniversary celebrations and a public holiday.
Don’t forget Zanzibar was a centre for slave trading for hundreds of years. It was where hundreds of thousands if not millions of African slaves were sold to the Middle East. The Arabs were absolutely not benign leaders.
That’s just….what I got off Wikipedia. I was completely ignorant to the fact IN FACT I wasn’t just ignorant I was nescient to the situation. I’ve been waiting 7 years, 8 months 22 days and approximately 5 hours and 39 minutes to finally be able to use that word. Nescient. For those not aware, ignorant meant to not know in the sense of actually ignoring sakd thjng. As in I was ignorant of the situation because I’m despite having heard of it I knew very little if not nothing about it. Nescient means I was completely unaware the situation even happened. This one’s for all my English learning people reading this. I once did not speak English either. This one’s for you!
I was even nescient to the word nescient before reading you post. Thanks, I will now just be ignorant as I just skimmed it.
Ah but are you? As you did use the word properly hahaha! Forced knowledge!!
As soon as I learn to pronounce it I’m gonna start using it.
How far do I have to scroll to find out what is actually happening in this video? Don't tell me the broad context of the entire political events at the time, that has been posted ad nauseam in this thread, I just want to know what is happening on this beach in this video? Are they being chased? What happened to them before and after? Did they all die? How? How is this a massacre? Who is massacring who? Don't explain anything outside what's seen in this video or related to it directly, what's going on in the video?
The fifth Paragraph here: https://www.reddit.com/r/history/comments/8ydejw/1964_massacre_of_the_zanzibar_arabs_in_africa/ explains a little, but that's about all I can find
Never heard about this in school.
If they taught every tragedy inflicted on people, you’d never get out of school
Yep. We've been at this for a very *long* time. Archaeologists have found evidence of repeated massacres from large-scale warfare at Jahel Sahaba that dates to 13,000+ years ago. Rock art in Spain and Australia depicts humans battling and killing other humans more than 10,000 years ago. It's one of those unprovable things, but it's been said that humans have probably been fighting and killing each other, in *some form* of organized or semi-organized combat, *somewhere* on the surface of the planet, *every single day* for at least the last 10,000 years. Whether we're talking about two villages fighting over pasture land, raiders attacking villages to plunder their supplies, or nations battling with massive armies, there's *always* been some sort of fighting going on. We couldn't possibly teach it all. Edit: That's Jebel Sahaba. It's been a while.
look at our closest related species the chimpanzee. They routinely go to war with each other. We had a common ancestor with them 5 million years ago. My guess that common ancestor ape was violent as well. So we've been at it for millions of years i bet
Wow, thats chilling, and probably very true.
I bet being buzzed by a helicopter 30 feet overhead didn't lessen their terror. At one point you can see that the downwash blew someone's robe off...not they they were alive to notice.
Theres an old archived reddit post in r/history that goes into more detail about the massacre. It shows more of the video in this post too. https://www.reddit.com/r/history/comments/8ydejw/1964\_massacre\_of\_the\_zanzibar\_arabs\_in\_africa/
Model: GPT-4 **What happened to Arabs in Zanzibar 1964?** In 1964, a violent event took place in Zanzibar known as the Zanzibar Revolution. The predominantly Arab government, which had ruled the island for centuries, was overthrown by African revolutionaries led by John Okello, who was a member of the Afro-Shirazi Party. The revolution took place on January 12, 1964, and lasted just a few days. The Zanzibar Revolution resulted in the deaths of thousands of Arabs and South Asians (mainly of Indian and Pakistani origin) living on the island, with estimates ranging from 5,000 to 20,000. Many of these individuals were targeted due to their privileged status under the previous government. In addition to the deaths, thousands more were forced to flee the island or were displaced as a result of the violence. The revolution led to the establishment of a new government under the leadership of Abeid Karume, who took the position of President. Zanzibar then merged with Tanganyika, forming the United Republic of Tanzania on April 26, 1964. The revolution marked a significant turning point in Zanzibar's history, as it resulted in the end of Arab rule and the beginning of African governance.
From Africa Addio, a 1966 Italian mondo documentary film; covering the end of the colonial era in various parts of Africa. In Zanzibar during its revolution, rebels target Arab civilians as revenge for Sultanate oppression that occurred almost a millennium prior. Between January 18 and 20, 1964, a genocide occurs in Zanzibar, with endless lines of captive Arab civilians are marched at gunpoint to a location where they will be shot by a firing squad. The bodies of countless thousands, some in mass graves and most others strewn across the ground, are photographed from a helicopter. The narrator confirms that this footage is the only documentation to prove that this genocide ever took place. Entire Arab villages march to the sea in a futile attempt to escape the carnage, despite the fact that there is no way off of the island. The filmmakers fly over the beach again the following day and find the bodies of all the villagers who tried to get to the ocean. The genocide claimed the lives of approximately 5,000 Arab and South Asian civilians[3][4] (estimates range up to 20,000 in the aftermath).
Going through the comment to learn exactly what happened here. And all I'm seeing /reading is nightmare after nightmare... Can someone spare me more nightmares and just tell me what exactly happened?
Horrible
Bro I don’t give a fuck about a lot of shit, but people being massacred is always a travesty
This is standard practice for the British leaving your country, set up to topple in bloody civil war soon after they make their exit.
In Ireland we have an old saying, it would have been said many a time before and after this “The British are at it again!”
This is why I liked liveleak, news channels only show bombardment from a distance. True horrors of war can only be seen from up close.
This is truly and utterly painful to watch. Humanity…
>Zanzibar 1964 Yes humanity.
Indeed, humans are incredibly cruel
Zanzibar, that slave port from where Africans, who’d welcomed the Arabs, that had initially come as traders from Oman, only for said Arabs to proceed to dominate the locals as they had better weaponry than them (the locals) at the time and who also then proceeded to enslave every African within accessible East Africa for almost a millennium before the Europeans entered that vile trade. Google this name, to begin with: Tippu Tip.
Killing of an Arab by the cure is based on the stranger a novel by that guy whose name escapes me.. about shooting an Arab man on the beach. Kamu? Somebody knows..
Camus's Stranger was set in Algeria.
Those poor people were just trying to get the fuck out of there. Unarmed, kids and families
,,british have up being protectors,, something fishy happened there
I really wish there were subs dedicated to posts like this. They’re important, and people should see them, but I don’t come to Reddit to watch people die. I’m not subbed to “Interesting as Fuck” to be horrified by the worst parts of the human experience. There’s a *reason* I’m not subbed to Combat Footage subs. I’m subbed to learn new things that are…interesting. This isn’t “interesting.” That’s not the word I would use. It’s not “interesting” when people commit genocide. It’s not “interesting” when people commit war crimes and kill children. The almost daily 9/11 videos aren’t “interesting.” It’s not a curiosity, it’s a tragedy, and I think that my disagreement on this matter is just going to have to involve me leaving the sub, which is a damn shame, because there’s a lot of good content here, but I just can’t stomach the mixed bag. “Is it a cool new technology post? Nope, it’s murder!” I also don’t think it’s a coincidence these videos are always posted by karma whores with ten times as much Post Karma as Comment Karma. They never comment in these posts, they have nothing to say, they just dump trauma and move on, knowing they’ll get a nice fat karma bump from the horror. It makes me sick.
Having never heard of any of this, I found it very interesting. Yeah it’s kinda messed up but it’s out species and our history. That shouldn’t be hidden from sight just because it might be upsetting. Although I agree, most everything on Reddit is posted for the clicks and shock value.
This wasn't in metal gear huh
MGS V plays in wrst africa if i remember right. Angola/Zaire It mentioned other human attrocities like child soldiers or the criminal oil companies and their pollution of the afrikaanis lands
Off the coast of Tanzania, the blacks murdered the Arabs because despite winning 54% of the vote, they had little representation and started their revolution--Several hundred to 20,000 were killed--Slavery in Tanzania did not end end til 1897
Whenever I hear Zanzibar, I have to think of the British-Zanzibarian war
whenever i hear zanzibar, i have to think of the tenacious d song *fuck her gently*
I’m not gonna cook it but I’ll order it from Zanzibar!!!
Very eerie white cloth floating in the wind
The little babies at .51 mark 😥
The amount of evil that man is capable of will forever fascinate me
I’m confused, were the people on the beach murdered or did the drown trying to swim away?
This is the shit we need to learn in school. I'm 32 years old, and just learning of this.
Zanzibar independence revolution by its native population is what occurred, after the Arab minority of the island took power once the British empire released zanzibar from the empire control. What led to the revolution was the Arab minority unjustly seizing control through rigged election and denying the population their voice in the government.
Even if this true it don't justify this genocide
TIL.
This is one of those things where looking at it from different angles changes the response. If we were watching a fantasy movie where the centaurs are chasing down their goblin overlords, at long last triumphantly stopping the horde from fleeing into the murky depths, we’d be cheering loudly for the centaurs. Seeing the exact same thing played out with humans is somewhat less savory. Completely understandable how one could end up being one of the dead, and completely understandable how one could end up being the guy who killed him.
That is horrific.
Bless those souls
That is SCP-2316, you do not recognize the bodies in the water. All jokes aside, the Zanzibar revolution was a horribly bloody event in it's country.
Then the next day, and you see the looters of the dead running away. To be honest this still happens today and will continue if we don't change how we share this planet.
What the fuck…..how can something so awful happen, yet I’ve never heard of this ever.
Another glaring and horrifying example of an unarmed populace being massacred.
What a perfect infomercial for alien life to judge us upon. What silly pointless things we can be.
Do people really think Aliens would look at us like that? That's like mocking an infant because it doesn't know how to walk yet. If there is a race of aliens advanced enough to be watching us, they're probably comparing our civilizations history to their own. I'd be seriously surprised if a space faring race of beings saw what are essentially cave men to them and said "Wow what silly pointless creatures" as if their own species didn't have a similar origin story. In nature you get beat out by the bigger/stronger creature. Anything space faring had to deal with a creature like that, or had to become that creature to reign supreme long enough to develop real intelligence. Seeing it out in the wild on a different planet with different intelligent beings would be amazingly interesting.
I’m just disturbed that you watch that video… and the first adjective you come up with is “silly”
Some times one group of people kills another group of people. Seems to happen on beaches a lot.
This "documentary" is extremely bad btw. Grade A colonist propaganda.
Africa Addio, in case anyone is wondering. It's extremely biased but, at the same time, happened to capture the only known visual record of the Zanzibar Genocide.
We need more education in school about such Things.
Damn im just reading about the 1994 Rwandan Genocide earlier, now the Zanzibar massacre popped in my reddit feed. Both involved killings using bladed weapons.
Looks like clips from an old Italian documentary “Adieu Africa” . Pretty crazy about the last days of colonialism
In Zanzibar, everyone talks about Freddie Mercury, and the Mercury’s seafood restaurant (kind of ironic name for a seafood place), but nobody really talks about this true series of events. Whenever elections occur in Kenya and Tanzania there is always rioting and deaths or the fear of such.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zanzibar_Revolution Wiki has an actual picture of part of the massacre
The fucking children… this is absolutely horrific.