Former Colonial Powers have no moral right to speak on Accountability without atoning for their colonial crimes
Posted on November 23rd, 2017
Shenali D Waduge
Today, proudly promoting themselves as the international community, the Western nations who have become first world nations as a result of the plunder & murder of the third world are preaching accountability. No country with soiled hands has a right to speak without atoning for their crimes & apologizing for them first. What moral right do they have when none of their crimes have been allowed to be taken to any court (locally or globally)? When none of the present day crimes nears the level of crimes committed by all European Christian/Catholic countries as a policy, none of these nations has any moral right to be pointing fingers accusing other nations of crimes they committed without any qualms. The West suffers collective amnesia or convenient amnesia for their crimes.
Today, the West is promoting multiculturalism, multi-faith and many other liberal nomenclatures all of which have a bigger insidious motive and revolves round their overall aim to dislodge the history, heritage of non-Christian religions except Islam, making it easier for them to use the puppet UN & its associate bodies to introduce systems that are all planned to create a neocolonial system where these nations will become serfs of Western domination. The mentality of criminality originating from colonial rule prevailed even after 2 major world wars & the supposed formation of the UN. Post 1945 it is now clear that most of the conflicts that took place globally were all a result of problems created during colonial rule or using the local traitors they had nurtured to plant further troubles for which the West funded & armed both sides to ensure these conflicts continued unabated allowing them to re-enter as peace champions. Shrouding their ulterior motives using humanitarian charities, peace builders & conflict resolutionists, the West is doing what it knows best – create & thrive on people’s misery and destroy people, property & environment.
The West has no right to speak on GENOCIDE
European colonial invaders ordered by the Church used Doctrine of Discovery, Tera Nullius (Nobody’s Land) giving them right to take over any land/territory that was not-Christian. It gave these European rulers the right to dispossess Natives of their land & commit gruesome murders and acts of genocide, depopulation destruction of historical heritage sites, religious worship & en masse convert natives to their faiths or murder those that refused.
The aborigines lived in Australia over 50,000 years before Europeans arrived in 1788 but Terra Nullius confiscated their lands & set out to ‘civilize the uncivilized inhabitants’ which later became infamously known as the ‘white man’s burden’. Court cases in 1977, 1979 & 1982 challenged Terra Nullius but naturally the cases were rejected. Using the same term Norway occupied & claimed parts of Eastern Greenland in 1931.
Not only was land confiscated but native production was replaced with crops grown to be sent overseas to feed the white races. Artificial borders were created using just a pen and every nation in Africa all came about from these artificial demarcations. Many of the present day border disputes are as a result of these artificial borders.
King Leopald II of Belgium is said to have killed 10million Africans in the Congo & the West is silent about accountability!
According to Ward Churchill 2.5 million indigenous peoples who had lived in the region which now comprises Brazil, less than 10 per cent survived to the 1600s. Over eighty indigenous tribes were destroyed between 1900 and 1957 by the Portuguese in Brazil. Even World Bank has come under flak for relocating indigenous people & causing environmental destruction/deforestation.
The ancient empires of Incas, Mayas & Aztecs have all been virtually eliminated from history because of these European countries & their greed & thirst for blood.
How many even know the extent of the murders committed by the Church during the Inquisitions & most of these murderers have been declared Saints!
Given that the new UN Secretary General is from Portugal the onus is on him to do right by the victims of the Portuguese. The Portuguese were the first to establish a colony in Africa in 1415 and was the last to leave Africa too.
The Dutch must have forgotten the 4,000 Indonesians killed over Christmas in 1946 with the direct knowledge of the Hague (in all 150,000 Indonesians were killed) – but the Hague is going after Serbia & African leaders only – WHY?!
Uva-Wellassa massacre in 1818 resulted in Governor Brownrigg ordering the murder of 10,000 Sinhalese including babies & burning the entire area.
The West has no right to speak on Cultural Genocide
The doctrine of discovery was used to confiscate land of indigenous people, murder them, depopulate them, infect them with diseases, ruin their crops & livelihoods in what was known as the Scorched Earth Policy.
The West is brandishing and boasting about cultural genocide with Treaties & what not but cultural genocide began by them & specifically targeting the elimination of non-Christian cultures. We cannot forget these crimes.
Civilization meant setting up missionary schools introducing textbooks that would promote western values and make natives look down on their history & heroes and replace with western ones. The quest continues still.
West is speaking about multiculturalism today but they indulged in forced assimilation whereby natives had no other choice but to give up their culture, traditions and customs & adopt western values & become ‘civilized’. Children were plucked from parents put for adoption and all records erased and these countries are preaching child rights today! The Europeans not only infected the Native people with physical and psychological diseases, but also forced them to accept intellectual, cultural and religious inferiority (Czerny, Swift and Clarke, 1994).
Canada loves to issue diplomatic demarches on human rights but little gets said about Canada denying rights to indigenous Canadians even upto 1960! The real land owners of Canada were not allowed to run businesses, borrow money, own property while aboriginal children were ceased from parents, put into state custody and subjected to forced labor in the residential ‘schools’ which closed only in 1996 after over 150,000 children were subject of much torture even brain experiments!
Today, the West has state and NGOs lobbying activists with plenty of slogans and placards, shedding crocodile tears on human rights but none of them want to champion the cause of demanding apology & reparation from their own nations for the crimes committed simply saying ‘oh that happened centuries ago’! Is there any point in using the UN as an instrument to peddle western hegemony and drafting all types of fancy Conventions & Treaties, defining what genocide and war crimes are when these very nations have not accounted for the terms they insist other countries ratify?
Many non-Christian sacred sites have been purposely destroyed and on top of them Churches & Cathedrals have been built. In Sri Lanka there is no Buddhist place of worship along the coastal areas because colonials ensured all these magnificent structures were destroyed erasing whatever traces of the national heritage and history the natives were fighting to protect.
The Kelaniya Raja Maha Vihara is just one of the thousands of Buddhist sites that the 3 colonial rulers destroyed with cruel intent in Sri Lanka. None of these countries have any moral right to speak on religious freedom as even presently after just one incident half of all mosques in the UK were attacked!
The West has no right to speak on Human Rights
It was the West that divided & discriminated people. They declared indigenous people as non-human simply because they were non-Christians.
When Christopher Columbus arrived in 1492 the Americas had a 100m indigenous people. How many were killed no one has bothered to count! Present day western authors are counting on the dead of those that are strategically important to them and framing bogus figures to advance their agenda. Sri Lanka’s LTTE is an excellent case in point.
The West speaks of rights & freedoms but were they not responsible for subordinating natives, creating harsh social conditions, introducing poverty & elitism, dividing people as black, whites, browns & yellow, creating ethnic & racial profiling of people, Let’s not forget the manner colonial British treated the Boers in South Africa where the world’s first concentration camps emerged, the apartheid periods & the horrific discrimination against Blacks in America, UK and Europe. Blacks had to stand in different queues, drink water from different taps, sit on one side of the bus and the white race was not shy about putting posters that openly & proudly displayed their racism and all this continues still yet these countries are championing efforts against racism and that is hilarious.
In 1884 following the Berlin Conference the White Nations took a pen & divided Africa among themselves to plunder. Riches of Africa were stolen by these nations making Africans poor & handing power to local greedy stooges who would be willing to allow them to fleece Africa even after independence.
Britain’s response to quelling a rebellion in Kenya was to round up 1.5 million people and place them in concentration camps.
Speaking as if they are saints the British write about internment camps!
On April 13, 1919, thousands of peaceful protesters defied a government order and demonstrated against British rule in Amritsar, India. These unarmed civilians were shot dead.
What else is said when Colonial British rule for railways in 1843 was “Dogs and Indians are not allowed.”!
Britain’s hero Churchill is said to be responsible for the Bengal Famine in 1943 refusing to send supplies & claimed 4m lives (not that long ago)
Human rights boasting Britain is said to have killed 150million people during their colonial rule!
Even the UN has done nothing beyond denouncing the Discovery Doctrine as ‘shameful’ & root of all discrimination & marginalization faced by indigenous people today.
The West has no right to speak on Truth & Reconciliation
Let it be said that every land the European invaders took over, dominated, administered & plundered and thereafter gave ‘independence’ to is morally questionable. All laws they made was after declaring Terra Nullius – a term non-existent until it was coined by the very invaders.
These illegal European occupiers created laws that natives were forced to adhere to. Illegal invaders mean illegal laws & every system created since their occupation has to be legally questioned. Moreso because every international law existent today has been drafted by them not incorporating any of the laws & systems that the civilizations before the Europeans came into the scene were following and had a history far greater, longer and prouder than what the Europeans had.
Therefore, where is the Truth about these ground realities? If at all a Truth Commission must take stock of all the illegalities committed by these European invaders upon the indigenous people of the Americas, Africa, Asia & Australasia.
How can these countries who have not come clean on their crimes covering over 500 years of illegalities, murder & plunder be allowed to preach like virgin Marys?
Shenali D Waduge
November 23rd, 2017 at 4:51 pm
Shenali the crimes of West are over to some extent when it comes our the problems faced by the Sinhalese today and in the recent past and the future.
The cause of our problem are not the dogs of the West but the Sacred Indian Cows.
They are the cause of our Genocide. India and Indians are killing us, starving us. The Indians in our land the Tamils and other Indians are doing well and the food they consume are much cheaper compared to our food. They run our economy and the politics. They are influencing the West behind the Scene.
India has wiped out the Natives of Andaman and Nicobar Island within two generations, that is less than 40 years.
Our numbers are declining while Indians are skyrocketing.
But unfortunately our leaders do not see it.
November 24th, 2017 at 1:16 pm
Dear Shenali,
Thank you very much for this article.
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FACTS: America, INDIA & Sri Lanka, are all previously Colonised countries.
Most of the troubles with INDIA is because INDIA does not want to be re-colonised, using Lanka and earlier breakaway Tamil Nadu.
The troubles with INDIA started when Sri Lanka’s JRJ govt went ultra pro-west during the Cold War times.
Prior to the Cold War times, the Colonists of Lanka brought some one and a half Million Tamil low caste folk to Lanka as cheap labor to work in the plantations sector, thus upsetting the ethnic balance in the country, plus giving false hopes of a separate state to the Tamil leaders & Tamil people of Lanka.
Colonisation of Lanka & the Cold War brought in almost all the major problems to the mass of the citizens of Lanka.
Lankans must make sure that these problems or worse do not happen again, brought into Lanka from the outside world and the circumstances outside.
November 26th, 2017 at 4:04 pm
Fran Diaz
I must correct you about JRJ.He never cared about the West or it’s values but himself.When he worked as Minister of State under Dudley he harassed my American friend where with his guidance I made the first electric weaving machine in the country where MRS SWRD showed a great appreciation when we exhibited one of the mechines at the exhibition at the race course. We worked hard to get the UNP into power and some even frightened the voter with Chinese spy scare, but they were Chinese from Damatgoda.They came to power using us and once in power they played their dirty games.
We put up3 factories,onein Mahagama,one in Moratuwa and when we installed one in Jaffna, hell broke lose on us.They didn’t want a Sinhalese in Jaffna.
We wanted to go further with our ambitions by using the wasted chlorine from Paranathan into a fungicide that was use in the tea industry. We had lot of obstacles from the likes of JR where he was forcing us to put one or two of his useless relatives in the new venture and we flatly refused.JR was offended said our good friend one Uplali Wijewardena,who was a no-nonsense man and I liked his style.Only person who was considerate was Phlip Gunawardana who was in the UNP government.As far I knew he hated my innocent American friend,one Mr Challoner Chute.JR got together with the Tamil assistant Immigration commissioners arrested my friend and deported him.We tried to demonstrate out side Dudley’s office to save my friend being deported but was threatened and chased us out by one Bradman Weerakoon who we found decades later having a personal friendships with the terrorist Pullidevan.You see the Patton of our third grade politicians where they will hold hand with any one to make money. When we met Dudley at a function at the London HC he was shocked to hear about our fate that made me leave the country. We Sinhalese are our own enemies. I have a full house sorry for any errors.Must go.
November 28th, 2017 at 10:59 am
Nimal,
I do not know how this business venture of your with your friend misfired – politics is a strange animal, as we can see in day to day activities in Lanka and elsewhere.
All I know is that JRJ was pro-West. He went for the Free Market style for Economics, with high respect for private property & enterprise.
It was because JRJ was pro-West that INDIA acted to push the 13-A on Lanka, as well as train the LTTE in Tamil Nadu.
What is happening to Democracy in Lanka ?
Lanka is a place for infighting of foreign countries using local Agnets.
Lanka is vulnerable because of the location near INDIA, entry into SE Asia, plus important Ports.