New research reveals that dozens of senior UK defence, foreign office and intelligence officials find employment with oil, gas and mining corporations once they leave public office, rubber-stamped by a Whitehall committee which pays little attention to potential conflicts of interest. Such private profiting from energy companies is likely to restrict Britain from taking stronger action to address climate change.
Declassified UK’s analysis of the written outputs of three of Sky News’ principal foreign affairs journalists has found that the media outlet acts largely to amplify the views of the British Ministry of Defence and Foreign Office, while rarely offering critical, independent analysis.
James Duddridge, Britain’s minister for Africa, earned tens of thousands of pounds as an adviser to a London-based finance house whose advisory board is chaired by an ally of Uganda’s authoritarian ruler, Yoweri Museveni. He also did not declare shareholdings in African companies to Parliament’s register of interests.
As US prosecutors lodge an appeal in their resolve to jail Julian Assange for espionage, a former British Cabinet minister has delivered a stinging attack on Britain’s extradition treaty with the US.
The UK government has effectively endorsed evidently unfair elections in Uganda, where both the opposition and media were subjected to violence and intimidation, to help Yoweri Museveni, a favoured authoritarian leader who has been in power for 34 years, to remain in office.
Ten years on from the Arab Spring, the UK government’s relationship with a brutal regime in Egypt goes from strength to strength, as the country witnesses its worst human rights crisis in modern history, under Abdel Fattah al-Sisi.
Former British prime minister John Major praised Oman’s dictator, Sultan Qaboos, for passing a law that gave him absolute power, describing it as ‘clearly a most imaginative and constructive step forward’. The law enacted in 1996 by the close British ally effectively banned political parties, independent media and criticism of the ruler.
There is a real danger that the British judge’s ruling in the Julian Assange extradition case will encourage other governments to charge and seek to extradite journalists in the UK and elsewhere for exposing their military operations and human rights abuses.
The UK government has established a journalism project to ‘influence’ Venezuela’s ‘media agenda’ while a Foreign Office-funded foundation is spending £750,000 on a secretive ‘democracy-promotion’ programme in the country, as Britain appears to deepen efforts to remove the Maduro government.
Ahmed Al-Batati, a Lance Corporal in the British army, staged a public protest against British arms sales to Saudi Arabia in August, concerned that “a child was dying every 10 minutes” in Yemen. In his first interview since becoming a civilian, he tells Declassified that others in the army share his view and that he took action because parliament did nothing.