Making sense of murder

This is a hard and harrowing episode – but we believe it is an important one.

In 1906, thousands of Moro people were killed by the American army in the hills and forests of the Philippines.

This is the restored photograph taken at the top of Bud Dajo on March 7th 1906. It shows American soldiers standing over a trench full of dead men, women and children. This image was reproduced on postcards and was proudly displayed by participants

And 55 years later – as the ‘60s dawned – hundreds of north Africans were killed on the streets of a major capital city.

This wasn’t Cairo or Tripoli, Khartoum or Tunis. No, this was the City of Light. This happened in Paris – and it happened in many of our lifetimes.

Reading ‘We drown Algerians here’ this graffiti appeared briefly on the banks of the Seine in October 1961

This photograph shows Algerian protesters cowering on the streets of Paris on the night of October 17th 1961

Have you heard of the Bud Dajo massacre? Or even Paris 1961?

We hadn’t. And so this episode asks one very simple question: why?

Why haven’t we heard of these atrocities and how can these things be forgotten?

Join Oswin and Carla and our very special guest the historian Kim Wagner, as we discuss war, empire, death, memory, guilt and restitution. Click here to listen.