Britain awards compensation for colonial crimes :
Sri Lanka must now submit its claims
Shenali D Waduge
After
63 years of consistent denial despite overwhelming and incontrovertible
evidence of British war crimes and crimes against humanity in British
colonies, the wheels of justice have finally turned against Britain
which has now agreed to pay £20m to 5,228 Mau Mau torture victims for
crimes against humanity committed during colonial rule under the British
Empire.
Though the amount payable i.e. $5,891 per claimant in a country i.e.
Kenya, where the average national income per capita is $821, is
minuscule given the scale of suffering endured by Kenyans through
torture and was brought about via an out of court settlement, it
nevertheless provides a sound moral precedent for future claims against
Britain.
British High Commissioner to Kenya Dr. Christian Turner
poses for a photograph alongside Gitu wa Kahengeri (R), the
Secretary General of the Mau Mau War Veterens Association
following a press conference at the Hilton Hotel in Nairobi,
Kenya on June 6. The British government announced an
out-of-court
settlement with Kenyan Mau Mau veterans. Britain has agreed
to compensate Kenyans tortured during the Mau Mau uprising
against colonial rule in the 1950s, Foreign Secretary
William Hague said. AFP |
The pain of the Mau Mau rebels cannot be any worse to the pain
suffered by 50 plus nations in Asia, Africa and Latin America. If the
Allies and Jews closed ranks to seek compensation from Germany and Japan
for World War 2, the residents of former British colonies have hundreds
of years of pain and suffering to complain about that needs to be
addressed and dealt with by appropriate compensation and apology.
International Truth and Reconciliation Commission on Western
Colonial Crimes
It is also an appropriate time for the International community led by
the Afro – Asian and Latin American block of nations that suffered most
under brutal western colonial occupation beginning with the ill fated
sea voyage led by Christopher Columbus in 1492 to America, and followed
thereafter by a period of European exploration, conquest, and
colonization that lasted for several centuries, to spearhead a global
campaign calling for the establishment of an International Truth and
Reconciliation Commission charged with powers to collect evidence from
all round the world of western colonial crimes, document it on a country
by country basis, and recommend the tender of both apologies and
suitable compensation wherever relevant by the perpetrators to the
people and countries affected by rapacious colonialism.
The authoritative panel of such Commission must comprise outstanding
jurists and scholars with impeccable scholarly and human credentials.
India’s Claims for Reparations
India has claims that cover hunger and starvation as tools that
killed 30 million Indians (Bengal famine (1943 – 1944), massacres on
unarmed protestors e.g. Jallianwala Bagh massacre (also known as the
Amritsar massacre) in India (1919), while the Boer Genocide in South
Africa killed close to 30,000 Afrikaaner women and children in British
concentration camps, the Tasmanian genocide that reduced black
aborigines from 5,000 to just 75 where British were ordered to kill
every black in sight.
British crimes against humanity in Sri Lanka
In Sri Lanka we have our own gruesome stories of British crimes where
Sinhalese Buddhists protecting their lands were massacred from village
to village, paddy fields and cattle killed, a British officer wrote
"Much care was taken to sweep the country bare of everything, for the
purpose of denying the inhabitants the means of subsistence." 10,000
Sinhalese died in the 1817 Uva Rebellion.
There is also the rebellion of 1848 where large numbers of Sinhalese
were also slain. We cannot also forget the thousands of innocent
elephants that were killed for pure fun (hobby) by the British troops
stationed in Sri Lanka. Hunter, Samuel Baker even wrote a book on it The
Rifle and Hound in Ceylon.
A Kenya Mau Mau war veteran reacts during a press
confernence in Nairobi, Kenya on June 6. AFP |
The time has now come for Sri Lanka and other former colonies to be
compensated for British crimes against humanity, Mass Murder and
Genocide. The lists of these crimes are not confined to killings alone
and it is now up to the Government of Sri Lanka led by the Ministry of
External Affairs to document our claims on behalf of all our ancestors.
Asian region
In case many have forgotten or have become mesmerized by liberal
slogans, Sri Lanka is an Asian country, it belongs to the Asian region,
its culture and religion belongs to the Indian civilization and it is
that ethos that can never be eliminated or become part of any bargaining
tool.
All those who wish to copycat Western norms, Western thinking and
behaviours are welcome to do so in a Western climate - not in Sri Lanka.
Sri Lanka must remain culturally Asian in ethos. We will take all the
good that can be used to improve systems but we do not need to turn our
back on a rich Buddhist civilization that was far superior to that of
the West and existed far before Western civilization was even born.
There are many among the former colonies who continue to function
like old ‘colonial servants’ unable to carve out their own niche and
create their own destiny using the foundation that our ancient
civilization had built. What the colonial rulers did was to destroy the
memories of our grand past and replace the heroes of our ancient
civilization with heroes and heroines of the West only.
Why would we still want to hero worship people who do not belong to
our DNA? Why would media purposely black out all Asian news to only
project news of the West and why would a handful of politicians also
function to what suits the West? The answer lies in the remunerations
and rewards that come with promoting Western ideals and culture.
However our officials cannot and should not be functioning to the
tune of various forms of manipulative behaviour and it is time that we
take stock of the situation and realize that our history is something we
need to take pride in, our heroes drawn from our people we need to know
about, our inventions and discoveries need to be revisited.
It is not for nothing that Sri Lanka was once known as the granary of
the East, that our ambassadors were warmly welcomed with red carpets in
far - away places like Rome and Xi'an (China). Sri Lanka was once a
highly respected nation in the then existing pre-colonial world order.
We need to bring back the former legacies and create our own national
destiny.
Scintillating start from Ranawiruwo
The Ranawiruwo gave us a scintillating start by eliminating the main
obstacle that stopped Sri Lanka from progress. The other obstacles lie
amongst us, in people who wish to remain eternal colonial servants and
ever ready to barter away key assets of Sri Lanka, awaiting the country
to be recolonized – in fact helping that recolonization to take place.
It is with the Buddhist block vote that the President stands leader
and it is left to him to ensure that the traditional culture and ethos
of Sri Lanka remains intact and he must take bold decisions to ensure
people following different NGO created Chinthana are not policy
arbiters.
The same can be said of the situations in countries of Latin America,
Asia and Africa - who also need to break away from the colonial
mentality.
We are now at a stage where there is a precedent created in
compensating the Mau Mau rebels – it is now time for Sri Lanka to join
the nations of Africa, Latin America and other Asian nations to make our
claims for reparations. We cannot turn our back on our freedom fighters
who sacrificed their lives at Uva (1818) and Matale (1848) among others,
for our country’s freedom and erase them from our collective memory. The
fight for justice must continue until Britain engages in a catharsis and
then tender an apology and reparations.
Moral courage
The Ministry of External Affairs must take the lead in this endeavour.
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