Skip to content or view mobile version

Home | Mobile | Editorial | Mission | Privacy | About | Contact | Help | Security | Support

A network of individuals, independent and alternative media activists and organisations, offering grassroots, non-corporate, non-commercial coverage of important social and political issues.

"A man of the highest principle": an interview with Craig Murray.

lenin | 17.07.2006 07:53 | Anti-militarism | Repression | Social Struggles

Craig Murray talks about the war on terror, British government complicity with torture and the growing authoritarianism of Western states.

The quote in the title is from John Pilger, whose imprimatur graces the front cover of Craig Murray's book Murder in Samarkand. As it happens, I only obtained a copy of this yesterday when I went to speak to its author at his home in Shepherd's Bush: the Central Line was down, so I took a surprisingly pleasant bus ride through Holland Park and Notting Hill to get there. One of the first things Murray explains when he gives me the book is that the title is specifically chosen so that people might mistake it for an Agatha Christie novel and buy it on that account. Back at the house, my partner thumbs through the book and says: "That's a great title - it's like an Agatha Christie novel." I'll come back to the book in a minute.

I arrived in Shepherd's Bush, dimly wondering what I would be thinking about if I were The Guardian's Emma Brockes or The Independent's Johann Hari. I should be thinking of trying to tease a quotable out of him, and perhaps peering around looking for incidental geographical or physical facts that could somehow be used to imply something about his character. Clothing, furniture, street names, anything that might be used to indicate the subject's guilt. I'm still thinking this when I enter the sitting room and scan the bookshelves and things, but my imagination fails me. Historical books. Novels. Languages. Nothing portentous here. The stock of literary cliches escapes me. And that, boys and girls, is why I run a blog, and Brockes gets paid by the Guardian Media Group. Anyway, after some banter - Murray has a diplomat's way of putting you at ease - I'm off with my questions, ones that I'm acutely aware must have been asked a few thousand times already. First of all, if you've read the accounts, you know that the Uzbek government stands accused of boiling dissidents to death, raping them with broken bottles, smashing their teeth in, pulling out their fingernails - one of the West's principal allies in the 'war on terror', which is often cast as one for liberal values, has been a dictatorship that, according to Murray, is every bit as bad as Saddam's was. This regime also happened to be one of the main suppliers of 'intelligence' to the West. I wonder was there any sense in which he expected to encounter this repression and terror when he decided to work in Uzbekistan?

"No," he replies, "I didn’t expect it to be as bad as it was. I had worked under dictatorships, for example in Nigeria and in Ghana under Rawlings. Rawlings wasn’t a nice man, he was a bastard, he killed people, but in the whole of his reign it was probably around a dozen people actually killed by him. Ibrahim Babingida in Nigeria was also a bastard, but his dictatorship was tempered by inefficiency. An effective totalitarian state was something I had never seen before, and unless you have seen one, it is very difficult to explain what it was like – the fear, no one trusts anyone, any form of social cohesion has been totally stripped away by the state. I wasn’t prepared for that."

He goes on with a slight smile: "In a way, of course, I didn’t have to be prepared because unless you lived down there in society, you wouldn’t really notice any of this. My predecessor, and I fear my successor, would spend time in the golf clubs and with businessmen and military attaches, and they would have no encounter with the terror..."

Continued:  http://leninology.blogspot.com/2006/07/man-of-highest-principle-interview.html

lenin
- e-mail: leninology@hotmail.com
- Homepage: http://leninology.blogspot.com

Upcoming Coverage
View and post events
Upcoming Events UK
24th October, London: 2015 London Anarchist Bookfair
2nd - 8th November: Wrexham, Wales, UK & Everywhere: Week of Action Against the North Wales Prison & the Prison Industrial Complex. Cymraeg: Wythnos o Weithredu yn Erbyn Carchar Gogledd Cymru

Ongoing UK
Every Tuesday 6pm-8pm, Yorkshire: Demo/vigil at NSA/NRO Menwith Hill US Spy Base More info: CAAB.

Every Tuesday, UK & worldwide: Counter Terror Tuesdays. Call the US Embassy nearest to you to protest Obama's Terror Tuesdays. More info here

Every day, London: Vigil for Julian Assange outside Ecuadorian Embassy

Parliament Sq Protest: see topic page
Ongoing Global
Rossport, Ireland: see topic page
Israel-Palestine: Israel Indymedia | Palestine Indymedia
Oaxaca: Chiapas Indymedia
Regions
All Regions
Birmingham
Cambridge
Liverpool
London
Oxford
Sheffield
South Coast
Wales
World
Other Local IMCs
Bristol/South West
Nottingham
Scotland
Social Media
You can follow @ukindymedia on indy.im and Twitter. We are working on a Twitter policy. We do not use Facebook, and advise you not to either.
Support Us
We need help paying the bills for hosting this site, please consider supporting us financially.
Other Media Projects
Schnews
Dissident Island Radio
Corporate Watch
Media Lens
VisionOnTV
Earth First! Action Update
Earth First! Action Reports
Topics
All Topics
Afghanistan
Analysis
Animal Liberation
Anti-Nuclear
Anti-militarism
Anti-racism
Bio-technology
Climate Chaos
Culture
Ecology
Education
Energy Crisis
Fracking
Free Spaces
Gender
Globalisation
Health
History
Indymedia
Iraq
Migration
Ocean Defence
Other Press
Palestine
Policing
Public sector cuts
Repression
Social Struggles
Technology
Terror War
Workers' Movements
Zapatista
Major Reports
NATO 2014
G8 2013
Workfare
2011 Census Resistance
Occupy Everywhere
August Riots
Dale Farm
J30 Strike
Flotilla to Gaza
Mayday 2010
Tar Sands
G20 London Summit
University Occupations for Gaza
Guantanamo
Indymedia Server Seizure
COP15 Climate Summit 2009
Carmel Agrexco
G8 Japan 2008
SHAC
Stop Sequani
Stop RWB
Climate Camp 2008
Oaxaca Uprising
Rossport Solidarity
Smash EDO
SOCPA
Past Major Reports
Encrypted Page
You are viewing this page using an encrypted connection. If you bookmark this page or send its address in an email you might want to use the un-encrypted address of this page.
If you recieved a warning about an untrusted root certificate please install the CAcert root certificate, for more information see the security page.

Global IMC Network


www.indymedia.org

Projects
print
radio
satellite tv
video

Africa

Europe
antwerpen
armenia
athens
austria
barcelona
belarus
belgium
belgrade
brussels
bulgaria
calabria
croatia
cyprus
emilia-romagna
estrecho / madiaq
galiza
germany
grenoble
hungary
ireland
istanbul
italy
la plana
liege
liguria
lille
linksunten
lombardia
madrid
malta
marseille
nantes
napoli
netherlands
northern england
nottingham imc
paris/île-de-france
patras
piemonte
poland
portugal
roma
romania
russia
sardegna
scotland
sverige
switzerland
torun
toscana
ukraine
united kingdom
valencia

Latin America
argentina
bolivia
chiapas
chile
chile sur
cmi brasil
cmi sucre
colombia
ecuador
mexico
peru
puerto rico
qollasuyu
rosario
santiago
tijuana
uruguay
valparaiso
venezuela

Oceania
aotearoa
brisbane
burma
darwin
jakarta
manila
melbourne
perth
qc
sydney

South Asia
india


United States
arizona
arkansas
asheville
atlanta
Austin
binghamton
boston
buffalo
chicago
cleveland
colorado
columbus
dc
hawaii
houston
hudson mohawk
kansas city
la
madison
maine
miami
michigan
milwaukee
minneapolis/st. paul
new hampshire
new jersey
new mexico
new orleans
north carolina
north texas
nyc
oklahoma
philadelphia
pittsburgh
portland
richmond
rochester
rogue valley
saint louis
san diego
san francisco
san francisco bay area
santa barbara
santa cruz, ca
sarasota
seattle
tampa bay
united states
urbana-champaign
vermont
western mass
worcester

West Asia
Armenia
Beirut
Israel
Palestine

Topics
biotech

Process
fbi/legal updates
mailing lists
process & imc docs
tech