Operation Sunrise (Nyasaland) Operation Sunrise (Nyasaland) Operation Sunrise was the name given to a police and military action conducted by the authorities in the Central African protectorate of Nyasaland (now known as Malawi) which started on the 3rd March 1959, initially to detain and intern 350 individuals who were considered a potential threat to law and order. Although it is sometimes considered to involve only the incidents of 3rd March, the Devlin Commission report is clear that it was one of two distinct operations by the security forces, reinforced from outside Nyasaland, involving the arrest and detention members of the Nyasaland African Congress,
Nyasaland Emergency 1959 to eleven deaths and seventy-two people injured. The Abrahams Commission (also known the 1946 Land Commission) was appointed by the Nyasaland government in 1946 to inquire into land issues in Nyasaland following riots and disturbances by tenants on European-owned estates in Blantyre districts in 1943 and 1945. Abrahams proposed that the Nyasaland government should purchase all unused or under-used freehold land on the estates, which would become Crown land allocated to African smallholders as Native Trust Land. Africans on the estates were to be offered the choice of remaining there as workers or tenants, or of moving to Crown land.