WHAT WAS ITS RELEVANCE TO SARAWAK?
The Atlantic Charter was created by the UK and USA and was a pivotal policy statement issued during World War II on 14 August 1941 which defined the Allied goals for the post-war world.
"The Charter stated the ideal goals of the war: no territorial aggrandizement; no territorial changes made against the wishes of the people (self-determination); restoration of self-government to those deprived of it; reduction of trade restrictions; global cooperation to secure better economic and social conditions for all; freedom from fear and want; freedom of the seas; and abandonment of the use of force, as well as disarmament of aggressor nations.
Adherents of the Atlantic Charter signed the Declaration by United Nations on 1 January 1942, which became the basis for the modern United Nations.
The Atlantic Charter set goals for the postwar world and inspired many of the international agreements that followed the war. The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), the postwar independence of European colonies, and much more are derived from the Atlantic Charter.
The leaders of the United Kingdom and the United States drafted the work and all the Allies of World War II later confirmed it." Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_Charter
The Charter was signed a month before the Brooke Sarawak Government promulgated the new Sarawak Constitution on 24 Sept 1941 and a year and 3 months from the Japanese invasion of Sarawak on 16 Dec 1941.
The Preamble of the Constitution had nine Cardinal Points on the eventual devolution of power to the people in an independent Sarawak.
When the UK proposed to annex Sarawak as a British colony after WW2, Sarawak nationalists led by Anthony Brooke opposed this plan. This anti-colonial resistance led to the assassination of the second British governor Duncan Stewart in Dec 1949 by a Sarawak nationalist Rosli Dhobi.
They raised the objection that Britain was acting in contravention of the principles of the Atlantic Charter 1941 which Britain had drafted and signed with the USA on 14 Aug 1941. The following principles had been violated:
"no territorial aggrandizement; no territorial changes made against the wishes of the people (self-determination);"
In 1942 the Brooke Government rejected the British proposal for the union with Malaya. But in 1946 Vyner Brooke the third Sarawak Rajah succumbed to British pressure to "cede" Sarawak as a British crown colony.
However, this annexation was made subject to 2 special conditions:
(a) that Sarawak independence is restored and
(b) that Sarawak was not to become part of the Malayan Union.
In 1963 the UK violated yet another Atlantic Charter principle being the principle of "restoration of self-government to those deprived of it..." when it purported to decolonize Sarawak with its Malaysia Plan by transferring Sarawak with Sabah to the Malayan Federation without granting independence first
By proposing to incorporate Sarawak into the Malayan federation the British breached both the undertaking given in 1946 simply by avoiding to restore its independence which would have allowed the people to freely decide on the Malaysia question. This again aroused the people's resistance which became a guerilla war of independence from 1962 to 1987.
Thus the formation of Malaysia was founded on a series of fraudulent promises the UK had made to Sarawak in bad faith.
Britain had made a grand Atlantic Charter but failed to uphold it by ignoring the principles it wrote down with the USA. Its violation of the Charter and then the UN Charter which adopted the Atlantic Charter principles was a major travesty of justice and caused sufferings to Sarawakians and Sabahans as well as many people in the world*.
* A recent case is the wrongful British decolonization of the Chagos Island.
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