Slavery In Ancient Rome To 1984 Pogrom: Here's A List Of 12 Most Controversial Moments In History

Issues & controversies in history place humans at the centre of the great debates and conflicts in India and around the world. There's a presence of controversial parts in a broad range of topics, from slavery, empire, and revolution to race, gender, economy, and disease.

Let us explore some of these issues as the key players saw them, or, in some cases, as historians have interpreted them. Here's a list of the top 12 controversies in history.

1. Israel-Palestine conflict

The Israeli每Palestinian conflict is one of the world's most enduring conflicts, with the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip reaching 54 years of conflict. Various attempts have been made to resolve the conflict as part of the Israeli每Palestinian peace process.

Public declarations of claims to a Jewish homeland in Palestine, including the 1897 First Zionist Congress and the 1917 Balfour Declaration, created early tension in the region.

AFP

At the time, the region had a small minority Jewish population, although this was growing via significant Jewish immigration. Following the implementation of the Mandate for Palestine, which included a binding obligation on the British government for the "establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people" the tension grew into sectarian conflict between Jews and Arabs.

Attempts to solve the early conflict culminated in the 1947 United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine and the 1947每1949 Palestine war, marking the start of the wider Arab每Israeli conflict. The current Israeli-Palestinian status quo began following Israeli military occupation of the Palestinian territories in the 1967 Six-Day War.

2. Slavery in Ancient Rome

In the gap of a few decades, three major slave wars threatened the Roman Republic. The greed of land speculators, tax collectors and slave owners unleashed bloodshed as tens of thousands of escaped slaves went to battle against Rome＊s armies.

The podcast covers the servile wars and features political intrigues, fire-breathing Syrian prophets, cannibalism, love-struck aristocrats arming their slaves, and heroic mass suicides.

File

It also talks of mass crucifixions, Dionysian orgies, a master course in guerrilla warfare, walls built with corpses, the most brutal punishment in military history, pirates, and overambitious Romans losing their heads.

3. Origin of COVID-19

Many scientists believe that SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes COVID-19, spread from animals to humans〞known as zoonotic transmission〞in late 2019. Some researchers have said the virus originated in bats, like similar coronaviruses. But there are several possibilities: a naturally emerging virus that infected people outside of a laboratory; a naturally emerging virus that was studied inside a lab and leaked; or a virus that was produced as a result of experimentation in a lab.

There is no definitive evidence yet for any one of these hypotheses. ※If there is any consensus, it＊s that this is a very complicated issue,§ says CFR＊s Yanzhong Huang. ※There needs to be further work done to find a conclusive answer.§

AFP

In the first weeks of the pandemic, much focus was placed on a so-called wet market in Wuhan as a possible place of origin, but researchers in China soon quashed the idea after discovering earlier cases of the virus with no connection to the market.

Several widely shared letters by small groups of scientists from different countries pushed strongly in the direction of a natural origin, calling suggestions that COVID-19 emerged in a lab a conspiracy theory. Following an early 2021 mission to China, a World Health Organization (WHO) delegation called a lab leak ※extremely unlikely.§

4. 2003 invasion of Iraq

The 2003 invasion of Iraq[a] was the first stage of the Iraq War. The invasion phase began on 19 March 2003 (air) and 20 March 2003 (ground) and lasted just over one month, including 26 days of major combat operations, in which a combined force of troops from the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia and Poland invaded Iraq.

This early stage of the war formally ended on 1 May 2003 when U.S. President George W. Bush declared the "end of major combat operations", after which the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) was established as the first of several successive transitional governments leading up to the first Iraqi parliamentary election in January 2005. U.S. military forces later remained in Iraq until the withdrawal in 2011.

File

5. 1953 Iranian coup

The 1953 Iranian coup d'谷tat, known in Iran as the 28 Mordad coup d'谷tat, was the overthrow of the democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh in favour of strengthening the monarchical rule of the Shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi on 19 August 1953.

It was orchestrated by the United States (under the name TPAJAX Project or "Operation Ajax") and the United Kingdom (under the name "Operation Boot"). The clergy also played a considerable role.

6. Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki

The United States detonated two nuclear weapons over the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on 6 and 9 August 1945, respectively. The two bombings killed between 129,000 and 226,000 people, most of whom were civilians, and remain the only use of nuclear weapons in armed conflict. In the final year of World War II, the Allies prepared for a costly invasion of the Japanese mainland.

This undertaking was preceded by a conventional and firebombing campaign that devastated 67 Japanese cities. The war in Europe concluded when Germany surrendered on 8 May 1945, and the Allies turned their full attention to the Pacific War.

Japan Government

An estimated 90,000 to 140,000 people in Hiroshima (up to 39 per cent of the population) and 60,000 to 80,000 people in Nagasaki (up to 32 per cent of the population) died in 1945, though the number which died immediately as a result of exposure to the blast, heat, or due to radiation, is unknown.

A meta-analysis from 2016 found that radiation exposure increases cancer risk, but also that the average lifespan of survivors was reduced by only a few months compared to those not exposed to radiation. Many babies are till date born with birth defects and reports show radiation even now, affects normal brain development in humans in the affected region.

7. Bhopal gas tragedy

The Bhopal disaster, also referred to as the Bhopal gas tragedy, was a gas leak incident on the night of 2每3 December 1984 at the Union Carbide India Limited pesticide plant in Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh, India. It is considered among the world's worst industrial disasters.

About 45 tons of the dangerous gas methyl isocyanate escaped from an insecticide plant that was owned by the Indian subsidiary of the American firm Union Carbide Corporation. The gas drifted over the densely populated neighbourhoods around the plant, killing thousands of people immediately and creating a panic as tens of thousands of others attempted to flee Bhopal.

BBC

The final death toll was estimated to be between 15,000 and 20,000. Some half a million survivors suffered respiratory problems, eye irritation or blindness, and other maladies resulting from exposure to the toxic gas; many were awarded compensation of a few hundred dollars. Investigations later established that substandard operating and safety procedures at the understaffed plant had led to the catastrophe.

8. 1984 Sikh massacre

The 1984 anti-Sikh riots, also known as the 1984 Sikh Massacre, was a series of organised pogroms against Sikhs in India following the assassination of Indira Gandhi by her Sikh bodyguards. The ruling Indian National Congress was complicit with the mob, as to the organisation of the riots.

Outlook

The assassination of Indira Gandhi was in retaliation to her order to the Indian Army to attack the Harmandir Sahib complex in Amritsar, Punjab, in June 1984. Sikhs worldwide had criticized the army action and saw it as an assault on their religion and identity. Following the assassination, at least 8,000 Sikhs were killed, many were burnt alive. Many were rendered homeless, their houses and shops were looted and burnt.

9. Amarnath land transfer controversy

On 26 May 2008, the government of India and the State Government of Jammu and Kashmir reached an agreement to transfer 99 acres (0.40 km2) of forest land to the Shri Amarnathji Shrine Board (SASB) in the main Kashmir valley to set up temporary shelters and facilities for Hindu pilgrims.

This caused a controversy, with demonstrations from the Kashmir valley against the land transfer and protests from the Jammu region supporting it. The largest demonstration saw more than 500,000 protesters at a single rally, among the largest in Kashmir's history.

10. India's migrant crisis

Migrant workers across India took hazardous journeys back to their villages during the Covid-19 lockdown announced in March, despite all forms of transportation being suspended and inter-state borders being sealed.

Representative

The central feature of the migrant workers＊ crisis during lockdown was their inability to access wages in the urban work sectors that employed them. And, the system's inability to get them back to their homes as they took arduous hundreds-of-kilometres trek by foot.

The critical importance of wages to the lives of migrant workers and their families was evident during this period 每 without wages, they were unable to meet basic needs such as food, water, shelter or healthcare in the cities where they worked, or send remittances to their rural households that rely on their income from migration.

11. George Floyd killing

On May 25, 2020, Minneapolis police officers arrested George Floyd, a 46-year-old black man, after a convenience store employee called 911 and told the police that Floyd had bought cigarettes with a counterfeit $20 bill. Seventeen minutes after the first squad car arrived at the scene, Floyd was unconscious and pinned beneath three police officers, showing no signs of life.

File

By combining videos from bystanders and security cameras, reviewing official documents and consulting experts, many publications reconstructed in detail the minutes leading to Floyd＊s death. Videos showed officers taking a series of actions that violated the policies of the Minneapolis Police Department and turned fatal, leaving Floyd unable to breathe, even as he and onlookers called out for help.

Following this, Black Lives Matter protests peaked on June 6, when half a million people turned out in nearly 550 places across the United States. That was a single day in more than a month of protests that continued to the day.

12. Taliban takeover

Only days after the U.S. military withdrew from Afghanistan, the Taliban took control of major cities and installed themselves in the presidential palace in Kabul. With the capital in their hands, the hardline Islamist militant group completed their takeover of Afghanistan in a quick offensive that saw provinces and warlords give up without a fight.

AFP

Despite the US and NATO pouring hundreds of billions of dollars to build up the Afghan security force, the Taliban seized nearly all of Afghanistan in just over a week. Uncertainty prevails, with many Afghans desperate to leave the country.