14, 2008
Famine in British India
Astronomical Dating of Events
& Select Vignettes from Indian History
Volume I
Edited and compiled by
Kosla Vepa
Excerpts from forthcoming book titled Astronomical Dating of Events
& Select Vignettes from Indian History
Volume I
Edited and compiled by
Kosla Vepa
Figure 4 The picture of famine 1877
India is a land laced with numerous rivers and noted for its agricultural bounty, famine was a rare occurrence in India till late into the medieval era, and was usually the consequence of a major natural or manmade catastrophies. All that changed after the British conquered the territories of the sub continent . The frequency of famine was especially high in areas directly administered by the British. There were many great famines where millions died, and famine occurred with dreadful regularity after the British crown took assumed the overlordship of the subcontinent . The present picture of India as a land bedeviled with extreme poverty is a direct legacy of the massive incompetence of the British in their stewardship of the subcontinent. The British destroyed the dignity of the vast portions of the population and reduced them to a undernourished and poverty stricken populace, where almost 90% of the population was under the grim levels of poverty. The pathetic story of the inhumanity of the colonial overlord is chronicled by Davis[1] . The estimate of total killed in all the famines during British rule is approximately 50 million. When coupled with the 70 million killed during the era of Islamic domination of the subcontinent, one wonders how the Hindu survived at all.
Table Incidence of Famines in India
1770: territory ruled by the British East India Company experienced the first Bengal famine of 1770. An estimated 10 million people died.
1780-1790s: millions died of famine in Bengal, Benares, Jammu, Bombay and Madras.
1800-1825: 1 million Indians died of famine
1850-1875: 5 millions died of famine in Bengal, Orissa, Rajastan and Bihar
1875-1902: 26 million Indians died of famine (1876-1878: 10 millions)
1905-1906: famine raged in areas with the population of 3,3 million.
1906-1907: famine captured areas with the population of 13 million
1907-1908: famine captured areas populated by 49,6 million Indians.
In 1943, India experienced the second Bengal famine of 1943. Over 3 million people died.
Figure 5 The famine in India - the sufferers at Bellary, Madras Presidency. October 20, 1877.
10 million died in this famine in India. This is the same region of India where once the famed and opulent Vijayanagara Empire ruled a vast area of South India for over 200 years.
Some British citizens such as William Digby agitated for policy reforms and famine relief, but Lord Lytton, the governing British viceroy in India, opposed such changes in the belief that they would stimulate shirking by Indian workers. Reacting against calls for relief during the 1877-79 famine, Lytton replied, "Let the British public foot the bill for its 'cheap sentiment,' if it wished to save life at a cost that would bankrupt India," substantively ordering "there is to be no interference of any kind on the part of Government with the object of reducing the price of food," and instructing district officers to "discourage relief works in every possible way.... Mere distress is not a sufficient reason for opening a relief work." (quoted in Davis 2001:31, 52)
It is rare to see any censure of Lord Lytton, the Viceroy by traditional British historians like Sir Penderel Moon, but clearly his callousness towards the extinction of human life by slow starvation especially if it was Indian ,even on such a massive scale, bordered on the bestial.
The Famine Commission of 1880 observed that each province in British India, including Burma, had a surplus of foodgrains, and the annual surplus amounted to 5.16 million tons (Bhatia, 1970). At that time, annual export of rice and other grains from India was approximately one million tons. At about the same time the British devised the first ever famine scales and engaged themselves in a series of canal building and irrigation improvements. The results were that the mortality rate decreased rapidly. There was the threat of famine but after 1902 there was no major famine in India until 1943. In 1907 and in 1874 the response from the British was better: in both cases rice was imported from abroad and famine was averted.
Figure 6 The Famine of 1877 People dying of starvation. Altogether around 26 million people died between 1876 and 1906 during the ‘benign’ colonialism of the British
Figure 7 Famine in Madras province, 1877
Figure 8 The Great Uprising of 1857
This was an uncoordinated spontaneous uprising against the tyranny of the British rule in India. There is no question that the British would have been overwhelmed had there been a coordinated attack by the Indians. But that was not to be. Significant sectors of the population remained apathetic to the uprising. The result was that there was a terrible reprisal of Indian lives by the British , when they went on a rampage killing thousands of Indians. The underlying premise behind the British actions and their reprisal was ‘how dare they rebel against our rule’.
“The discovery unleashed an “all but national cry for unmitigated vengeance” (Ball 2:168); the “retributive impulses of our people,” as the historian Sir John Kaye calls them (2:170), were given even freer rein than before. One primary instrument of these impulses was the sternly pious Colonel (subsequently Brigadier General) James Neill, who already had made a name for himself for the ferocious retribution he had inflicted elsewhere upon mutineers and their suspected sympathizers. Left in command at Cawnpore as Havelock moved on to attempt the relief of Lucknow, Neill invented a form of extra punishment for condemned men thought to have been implicated in the massacre. Before being taken out to the gallows, each was forced to clean up with his own hands or to lick up a small square of dried blood from the courtyard pavement where the prisoners had been slaughtered—an appalling pollution for a high-caste Hindu, as most of the sepoys were. Neill proudly expressed his conviction that God was at work in the “strange law” that he had instituted (Ball 2:400). This was only one of the best publicized of many instances of merciless reprisals visited by British authorities, often on the flimsiest legal pretexts, upon Indian combatants and civilians in the course of the fierce campaign to restore British supremacy in India.”
An estimated 28,000 Indians were hanged or otherwise massacred by the British.
http://www.amazon.ca/Our-Bones-Are-Scattered-Massacres/dp/product-description/0805024379
“A skillful retelling of a celebrated Victorian military engagement: the rebel siege of the north Indian city of Cawnpore during the Indian Mutiny of 1857. When Indian soldiers rose up and slaughtered their own officers, the British public was stunned at their treachery. Astonishment turned to horror as rebels killed European civilians and Indian Christians who had taken refuge in North Indian cities. The slaughter of European women and children led to a far more brutal and indiscriminate British retaliation. Readers in Victorian England had an insatiable appetite for harrowing tales of the mutiny, and European survivors of these events published dozens of histories and memoirs. Journalist Ward follows them closely in his story of the shocking events at Cawnpore, where European soldiers were massacred after being guaranteed safe passage by the local ruler, Nana Sahib, and his treacherous adviser, Azimullah. After harsh imprisonment, the surviving women and children were hacked to pieces and their bodies stuffed into a well. Enraged at the discovery of what had been done, and inflamed by false accusations of rape, British soldiers forced defeated Indian rebels to lick up the blood of European victims, then executed thousands of them. Some were strapped to cannons and blown to bits. For decades after the mutiny, any publication presenting the Indian point of view was banned by the British ruler of India. Ward (whose 1985 novel, Blood Seed, dealt with the aftermath of the mutiny) recognizes the British bias of his sources and tries to read between the lines in search of an Indian point of view. But it is perhaps inevitable that the passion of his book comes from its European sources. Ward's gripping account of heroism and cruelty falls short in its attempt to be fair to Indian as well as British victims. (40 illustrations, not seen). -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. “
Figure 9 Interior of Fort Taku immediately after capture in 1860
Figure 10 Secundra Bagh after the Great Indian Uprising 1857
http://www.mssu.edu/projectsouthasia/tsa/VIN1/Streets.htm
“British public opinion seemed to concur. Many people agreed that the East India Company had made its bed and was now lying in it. Company officers were blamed for excessive conversion efforts among their Hindu and Muslim sepoys as "one cause of the outbreak."[61] Blackwood's Magazine, a respected journal with clear connections to an imperially-minded audience, suggested in addition that "our leaders were unequal to their duty" in the crisis.[62] So great was the general contempt for the perceived blunders of the East India Company that the Anglo-Indian Delhi Gazette Extra was forced to concede, "[t]he British public remain utterly impassive and indifferent, and become impatient when the subject is broached in conversation. They have made up their mind that it was entirely owing to the insolence and incompetency of the Regimental Officers, and seem rather glad that they have suffered for their supposed dereliction of duty."[63]
But when news of the Kanpur massacre began to filter into Britain by the late summer of 1857, the mood of the British public shifted abruptly away from its previous critical mode. In the wake of the murders, the Rebellion metamorphosed from a military conflict on the imperial periphery to a popular national struggle in which even ordinary Britons felt invested. The specter of British women and children being murdered by colonial men proved to be a catalyst by which ideologies of gender and race became both inseparable and central to the British ‘cause’ in India.[64]
Coverage of the event was widespread and sensational in national, provincial, and local papers all over Britain. The London Times alone carried one hundred eight stories on the massacre between August 15, 1857 and February 3, 1860. All of the largest national newspapers, regardless of political affiliation, featured intensive coverage of the murders—including Reynolds’s, Lloyd’s, and News of the World. In addition to selling newspapers, these ‘horrors’ also inspired unprecedented local action, by prompting packed meetings to pledge money for the victims of the Rebellion.[65]
The depth of public reaction to the murders was due in large part to the lurid nature of the published accounts. Though papers frequently argued that the ‘vile tortures’ practised upon British women and children should "be remembered, not told," all of them did in fact ‘tell’ of rape and torture in graphic detail.[66] Letters and telegraphs flooded the papers with accounts of women being raped in front of their children before being killed, of matted blood, gory remains of children’s limbs, and of the suffocation of living children among their dead mothers when the victims were thrown into a well.[67]
Such graphic tales of rape and murder inflamed public sentiments calling for vengeance on a massive scale.[68] The Illustrated London News voiced its indignation in tandem with most other national, provincial, and local papers when it claimed that "every British heart, from the highest to the humblest of the land, glows with honest wrath, and demands justice, prompt and unsparing, on the bloodyminded instruments of the Rebellion."[69] Leading national and provincial papers went so far as to advocate the ‘extermination’ of Muslim and Hindu rebels.[70] In India, the Delhi Gazette also proclaimed that "the paramount duty of the British Government is now retribution—a duty to the dead and living."[71]
This vengeance was imagined against perpetrators who had come to represent a potent mixture of masculine, racial, and religious depravity. Sepoys were represented in the press not as men, but as "demons" and "fiends," led by their "passions" to "faithlessness, rebellion, and crimes at which the heart sickens."[72] Their apparent thirst for innocent blood—and their reported lust for forbidden women—had unmanned them, and placed them outside the boundaries of masculine honor. Moreover, their decision to operate outside these rules of conduct absolved the British from addressing their grievances or from showing them mercy. A poem in the Anglo-Indian Delhi Gazette put it plainly when it cried, "No mercy's shown to men whose hands/ With women's blood yet reek!"[73]
That rebel sepoys would commit such unspeakable crimes against women was attributed both to racial characteristics and to religion. In India, the conflict had hardened racial hatreds among British officers long before Kanpur. Correspondence reveals widespread use of the word ‘nigger’ and other racially antagonistic language when referring to natives, and officers writing home frequently echoed the contention that "[t]he race of men in India are certainly the most abominable, degraded lot of brutes that you can imagine, they don't seem to have a single good quality."[74] In the British and Anglo-Indian media, such language received almost unqualified sanction in the wake of Kanpur. Despite the fact that a majority of high-caste Bengal army sepoys were traditionally recruited for their tall physiques and light skin, British sources depicted "gangs of black satyrs" raping and dismembering British women, and called rebel Indians "that venom race," "in heart as black as face."[75]
These ‘black’ villains were also believed to be depraved because of their religion, whether Hindu or Muslim, for in both cases religion was presumed to have encouraged the rape and murder of British women. Rumors circulated that some of the women at Kanpur were raped, kidnapped, and forced to convert to Islam.[76] High-caste Brahmins were said to be slaves to the requirements of caste, which supposedly included debased notions of masculine honor. Shortly after Kanpur, the Delhi Gazette bellowed:
We shall never again occupy a high ground in India until we have put a yoke upon the Brahmins. We have conceded too much to the insolence of caste. Not one high caste man should henceforward be entrusted with a sword.... He has been trusted with power, and how has he betrayed it? The graves of 100 English women and children—worse, the unburied bones of those poor victims—are the monuments of high bred sepoy chivalry.[77]
By their crimes at Kanpur, then, both Hindu and Muslim sepoys had given up all claims to manliness, to honor, to bravery, and to chivalry. Moreover, both their ‘race’ and their religion were increasingly called upon to explain the loss of those claims.
The effects of such narrative constructions were not merely textual—instead, they had real effects in the material world. Perhaps most importantly, they legitimated acts of appalling vengeance by British forces. At the same time, however, British control over these narratives either glossed or completely ignored the extent of British acts of brutality against Indian soldiers and civilians. As one of the conflict’s most influential historians put it in 1864, the Rebellion had been fought by "English heroes" who, in the end, "marched triumphantly to victory."[78]
More recently, a growing number of historians have acknowledged that these "English heroes" were responsible for savage acts of retribution in India. Once it was clear that the Rebellion might induce any number of Bengal army regiments to mutiny, for example, many British officers lost no time making examples of the mutineers through execution.[79] Punishment was sometimes general, involving the slaughter of whole, or nearly whole, regiments. This was the fate of the 51st and 26th regiments, who both fell victim to the "unceasing vigilance" of John Lawrence in his proactive efforts to stem the Rebellion in the Punjab.[80] Of the 26th, Lawrence noted in August 1857 that, "we have killed and drowned 500 out of the 600 men of the… regiment."[81]
In addition to military executions, the British also exacted severe reprisals on civilian populations in north-central India. The notorious actions of Colonel James Neill, called to Bengal from the Madras army to help suppress the Rebellion, bear directly on the events surrounding the Kanpur massacre. After arriving in Allahabad on June 11, 1857, Neill was responsible for thousands of murders both of sepoys and suspected rebels as well as innocent men, women, and children. Describing the actions of Neill’s troops around Allahabad, one officer wrote:
Every native that appeared in sight was shot down without question, and in the morning Colonel Neill sent out parties of regiment [?]...and burned all the villages near where the ruins of our bungalows stood, and hung every native that they could catch, on the trees that lined the road. Another party of soldiers penetrated into the native city and set fire to it, whilst volley after volley of grape and canister was poured into the fugitives as they fled from their burning houses.[82]
On June 29 1857, Neill ordered "the village of Mullagu and neighborhood to be attacked and destroyed—slaughter all the men—take no prisoners." He added, "all insurgents that fall into good hands hang at once—and shoot all you can."[83]
Significantly, Neill’s ‘bloody assizes’ around Allahabad (as they came to be known) occurred before, not after, the massacre of British women and children at Kanpur on July 15. Some scholars have speculated that the murders were ordered in retaliation for the Indian civilians whose murders Neill personally supervised.[84] Whether or not such a contention can be proven, it is nevertheless clear that Neill’s brutality could not have been justified by the Kanpur massacre as was so often contended, for his own excesses preceded the event.[85]
Yet while British atrocities preceded the massacre at Kanpur, once news of the killings spread they were used to justify retaliatory murders and punishments on an astonishing scale. Neill himself, who was with the first British force to enter the city two days after the massacre, invented macabre executions for both Hindu and Muslim sepoys that were designed to ensure both intense suffering before death and eternal damnation afterwards.[86]
British soldiers sent to India offered ample testimony to the scale of British retaliation against both military and civilian targets. Sergeant David McAusland of the 42nd Highland Regiment recalled that during his service in Bareilly during the Rebellion, "three scaffolds and six whipping posts stood outside of the town along side of the jail and there [took place] executions to the number of six every day." The judge in charge of trials had lost his wife during the conflict, and had told McAusland, "if ever I get the chance of [judging] these Black rebels I will hang a man for every hair that was in my wife’s head." McAusland responded by asking him how many men he had executed already, "he told me close on 700 well I said if you just continue you will have made good your work and turning to Sergt…Aden I said you mind what Sir Colin [Campbell] said to us at Cawnpore that every man that had a black face was our enemy and we could not do wrong in shooting him so you know how to act here."[87]
Private Alexander Robb, also of the 42nd, described the first summary hanging of an Indian civilian he witnessed during the Rebellion, adding, "that was the first man I saw dancing on nothing in India, but it was not the last, for I saw some awful sights in that line."[88] Lieutenant Robert Bruce McEwen of the 92nd Gordon Highlanders recorded, on numerous days, routinely shooting large numbers of prisoners and in taking part in actions where between 500 and 700 rebels were killed.[89] And when British forces finally attacked and re-took the city of Delhi in September, 1857, they were merciless in their treatment of soldiers and civilians alike.[90]
As these stories indicate, the history of the Rebellion—like all historical subjects—is continually in the process of being revised and re-interpreted. Scholars in the post-colonial period in particular have challenged British-centered accounts of the Rebellion, emphasizing instead the widespread nature of the conflict among Indian civilians as well as soldiers, and the scale of British retribution and violence. In recent years, historians of gender and racial theory have also contributed to the re-interpretation of the Rebellion by emphasizing the important consequences of the conflict for imperial ideologies. All of these approaches have helped to deepen our understanding of this bloody, brutal, but significant conflict. For the Rebellion was both a military mutiny and a peasant rebellion; it included murders and atrocities on both the British and the Indian sides; and it was significant not just in military terms but in ideological and historiographical terms as well.
[1] Davis, Mike.,”Late Victorian Holocausts”, Verso, 2002
Posted by Kaushal at 11:21 AM
1 comments:
Prakash said...
Namaste,
nice history here. The British committed tremendous atrocities in India after 1857, not just the 1 million Indians shot or hanged for the rebellion, but the 40 million people in India killed by British famines, as you show. This despite UK ruling only half of India-- the other half of India did not have these famines.
The British were much worse than Nazis and Soviets, with what they did in India and wiping out aboriginal peoples.
That history is finally coming out.
4:12 AM
VVVVVVVVVVVV
how terribly for those worked with british colonial administration...........are they still be be concluded, regarded as heroes??? ????????????
praised colonial administration is terribly and khianat acts...................is betraying her motherland..........................is terribly idiots!!!!!!!!!
no, anyone worked with colonial administartion, IS BETRAYING.......
IRREGARDLESS OF under any excuse...reason....explaination is null.....conclusion--they are khainati motherland, they are traitors.....they are bastards!!!!!!
ANYONE WORKED WITH BRITISH COLONIAL ADMINISTARTION IS TRAITOR.......THE CONCLUSION IS :TRAITOR!!!!!!!!!
ONLY ONE ANSWER:TRAITOR! BETRAYING MOTHERLAND!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Monday, August 29, 2011
colonial shames (16)----jutaan orang india mati kelaparan/kebuluran pada zaman kolonial British....Famine in British India...10 million died in this famine in India. This is the same region of India where once the famed and opulent Vijayanagara Empire ruled a vast area of South India for over 200 years...
colonial shames (15)------AMERICANS CELEBRATE INDEPENDENCE FROM Britain on July 4.......Americans have to killed those armies, policemen, officers worked with British Colonial.....as regarded as "Real Heroes of American"!!!!!
Are They "Rebels" or Are They "The People"? What American Colonists Would Say If Still Around
by AnselLoya July 03, 2011
British Colonialism continues to be a struggle for Turks and Caicos under British government occupation.
Today, as Americas are set to celebrate independence from Britain on July 4, we can be inspired by the changes they have made and the adversity they had to overcome to defeat colonialism. Turks and Caicos cannot change their dire political situation today under British recolonization, but they can reflect and learn from the failures and successes of the American colonists who broke free and are celebrating their independence from colonial Great Britain.
There are lessons to be gleaned from America’s struggle with the sanctimonious King George III and the English government so many years ago. George III had a reputation in Britain among his peers as being the failure of imperialism, due to his inability to successfully constrict the will of the colonists into submission, though he tried every form of intimidation to stop their demands.
The colonists in America referred to George III as a tyrant. He refused to acknowledge the demands of the colonists, who he called rebels, but publicly vowed to retaliate against them by promising to, "keep the rebels harassed, anxious, and poor, until the day when, by a natural and inevitable process, discontent and disappointment were converted into penitence and remorse.”
This is still how things are done today in Turks and Caicos. The British way is to retaliate against and harass “rebels”, otherwise known as people who are speaking out for democracy. As you will read in this story, they are harassed and retaliated against until they feel remorse wondering if it was worth voicing their demands for their collective human and democratic rights.
During the time of the struggle of the American colonists, the British security soldiers infiltrated the communities of the American rebel peers and told the people that the “rebels” were committing treason and threatened supporters with the crime of treason. The British also called on all British loyalists (Torries) to publicly and socially tear down the rebels. It was a basic form of British propaganda.
The British have found a new way to infiltrate Turks and Caicos communities looking for people to harass and quiet the “rebels”, they use the internet to harass people. For every “rebel” in Turks and Caicos that speaks against British tyranny, there is a British recruit trying to crush their spirit with accusations and lies about the “rebel's” character or reason for wanting rights or making the British abuses seem palatable. The harassment is immense and comes in many forms, including threats by the UK prosecution team who confiscates property and assets of individuals without a trial. Everyone else is silenced with that abuse as an example.
Turks and Caicos “rebels” are not asking for independence, they are asking for democracy. That is what makes their oppression worse then the American colonists, they demanded much more than Turks and Caicos Islanders are demanding. Turks and Caicos Islanders want to restore their self government, elections and democracy.
Before there was rebellion in America against the British, there was a struggle as to what the thing was that needed to be fixed. Seeking independence from Britain was unchartered waters. The main problem that colonists could put their fingers on was that they had their own self sufficiency yet were taxed by Britain on top to create revenue for Britain, they were also forced to purchase British imports or imports that generated revenue for the British. The colonists grew frustrated knowing they did not vote for British parliament to represent them, yet taxes were imposed anyway by parliament. Parliament insisted that it had the right to legislate for the colonies "in all cases whatsoever". This angered the American colonists.
The British are doing this right now in Turks and Caicos by imposing their laws without a vote. The British are insisting that they can take anything they want because they have the sovereign right. Ian Hendry from the Foreign Commonwealth Office told the people that the UK can do what it wants because it, "calls the shots”.
Even though Turks and Caicos had a (well) self sufficient government in place without any benefits from the British at all, not even welfare benefits given to the British citizens, the British still insist that they can tell Turks and Caicos citizens what to do or what they can’t do.
The UN made a ruling in June 2011 finding that British Overseas Territories have a right to sovereignty. The British do not abide by the UN ruling, they obey nobody because they have the power to call the shots simply because they say so. Erstwhile, Turks and Caicos citizens live as colonists did in America without rights to vote on British government impositions, without an elected government, without democracy and without any rights to say it’s so without enduring extreme harassment.
Most colonists in America knew that a foreign parliament legislating for them was a problem but they argued with each other about how to handle this injustice or if there was a problem at all. Thomas Paine, the author of a lengthy pamphlet circulated at the time called Common Sense, asked the colonists in his pamphlet to open their eyes to what Britain was doing. He said, “a long habit of not thinking a thing wrong gives it a superficial appearance of being right.” Paine urged the colonists to see the necessity of (what we now know are the founding fathers’) opposing views and political persuasions from Britain.
The founding fathers of America wanted to create a Constitution representing the values of the colonists. Not just any government, but a society that would grant every citizen a democratic right to create government by the people, for the people. The constitution shaped government and society on the ideals that all of its citizens would be equal and have a say in the governance of the country, an ideal that was denied to them under Britain and George III.
After a long and violent abuse of power by Britain in the American colonies, the undertaking of convincing the colonists to rise against the oppressors was not popular at first. Paine responded saying that he understood that “his sentiments are not yet sufficiently fashionable“ but the oppressive system of government and King’s palaces “are built on the ruins of the bowers.” He said the British government nor the King can meet the increasing public concerns of a public distanced so far away from where laws are made and adjudicated, so much so that the British parliament could not represent the colonists. He further argued that because the colonists had no rights to vote in parliament, it made no difference that parliament was not acquainted with the needs of the colonies, they had no say in it anyway.
The powers vested in Britain excluded the colonists yet empowered judgments without their say. That form of British government power displayed a clear lack of impartiality, and the colonists’ standing were more akin to British property.
This happens today in Turks and Caicos. The citizens are so far removed from the British legislature which are making decisions for them without their vote. It is the same struggle that American colonists fought and died to overcome.
Yet, the “rebels” sit in judgment of an artificially created opposition to keep them from believing they are right to voice the peoples' rights which are being denied. Why are the “rebels” degraded by the loyalists, the same usually nameless loyalists that should be questioned for their motives instead of the other way around. What have they to gain by denying a country's citizens their democratic rights?
As for the American colonists, we know the rest. The “rebels” were renamed with their rightful title as “the people” and defeated Britain and George III. As the citizens of the United States of America celebrate their independence from Britain, Turks and Caicos citizens should also pray to one day be “One Nation, under God, indivisible, with Liberty and Justice for all.” These are worthy values for which all countries should have or for which to aspire.
God bless Turks and Caicos Islands. Happy 4th of July to The United States of America.
by AnselLoya July 03, 2011
British Colonialism continues to be a struggle for Turks and Caicos under British government occupation.
Today, as Americas are set to celebrate independence from Britain on July 4, we can be inspired by the changes they have made and the adversity they had to overcome to defeat colonialism. Turks and Caicos cannot change their dire political situation today under British recolonization, but they can reflect and learn from the failures and successes of the American colonists who broke free and are celebrating their independence from colonial Great Britain.
There are lessons to be gleaned from America’s struggle with the sanctimonious King George III and the English government so many years ago. George III had a reputation in Britain among his peers as being the failure of imperialism, due to his inability to successfully constrict the will of the colonists into submission, though he tried every form of intimidation to stop their demands.
The colonists in America referred to George III as a tyrant. He refused to acknowledge the demands of the colonists, who he called rebels, but publicly vowed to retaliate against them by promising to, "keep the rebels harassed, anxious, and poor, until the day when, by a natural and inevitable process, discontent and disappointment were converted into penitence and remorse.”
This is still how things are done today in Turks and Caicos. The British way is to retaliate against and harass “rebels”, otherwise known as people who are speaking out for democracy. As you will read in this story, they are harassed and retaliated against until they feel remorse wondering if it was worth voicing their demands for their collective human and democratic rights.
During the time of the struggle of the American colonists, the British security soldiers infiltrated the communities of the American rebel peers and told the people that the “rebels” were committing treason and threatened supporters with the crime of treason. The British also called on all British loyalists (Torries) to publicly and socially tear down the rebels. It was a basic form of British propaganda.
The British have found a new way to infiltrate Turks and Caicos communities looking for people to harass and quiet the “rebels”, they use the internet to harass people. For every “rebel” in Turks and Caicos that speaks against British tyranny, there is a British recruit trying to crush their spirit with accusations and lies about the “rebel's” character or reason for wanting rights or making the British abuses seem palatable. The harassment is immense and comes in many forms, including threats by the UK prosecution team who confiscates property and assets of individuals without a trial. Everyone else is silenced with that abuse as an example.
Turks and Caicos “rebels” are not asking for independence, they are asking for democracy. That is what makes their oppression worse then the American colonists, they demanded much more than Turks and Caicos Islanders are demanding. Turks and Caicos Islanders want to restore their self government, elections and democracy.
Before there was rebellion in America against the British, there was a struggle as to what the thing was that needed to be fixed. Seeking independence from Britain was unchartered waters. The main problem that colonists could put their fingers on was that they had their own self sufficiency yet were taxed by Britain on top to create revenue for Britain, they were also forced to purchase British imports or imports that generated revenue for the British. The colonists grew frustrated knowing they did not vote for British parliament to represent them, yet taxes were imposed anyway by parliament. Parliament insisted that it had the right to legislate for the colonies "in all cases whatsoever". This angered the American colonists.
The British are doing this right now in Turks and Caicos by imposing their laws without a vote. The British are insisting that they can take anything they want because they have the sovereign right. Ian Hendry from the Foreign Commonwealth Office told the people that the UK can do what it wants because it, "calls the shots”.
Even though Turks and Caicos had a (well) self sufficient government in place without any benefits from the British at all, not even welfare benefits given to the British citizens, the British still insist that they can tell Turks and Caicos citizens what to do or what they can’t do.
The UN made a ruling in June 2011 finding that British Overseas Territories have a right to sovereignty. The British do not abide by the UN ruling, they obey nobody because they have the power to call the shots simply because they say so. Erstwhile, Turks and Caicos citizens live as colonists did in America without rights to vote on British government impositions, without an elected government, without democracy and without any rights to say it’s so without enduring extreme harassment.
Most colonists in America knew that a foreign parliament legislating for them was a problem but they argued with each other about how to handle this injustice or if there was a problem at all. Thomas Paine, the author of a lengthy pamphlet circulated at the time called Common Sense, asked the colonists in his pamphlet to open their eyes to what Britain was doing. He said, “a long habit of not thinking a thing wrong gives it a superficial appearance of being right.” Paine urged the colonists to see the necessity of (what we now know are the founding fathers’) opposing views and political persuasions from Britain.
The founding fathers of America wanted to create a Constitution representing the values of the colonists. Not just any government, but a society that would grant every citizen a democratic right to create government by the people, for the people. The constitution shaped government and society on the ideals that all of its citizens would be equal and have a say in the governance of the country, an ideal that was denied to them under Britain and George III.
After a long and violent abuse of power by Britain in the American colonies, the undertaking of convincing the colonists to rise against the oppressors was not popular at first. Paine responded saying that he understood that “his sentiments are not yet sufficiently fashionable“ but the oppressive system of government and King’s palaces “are built on the ruins of the bowers.” He said the British government nor the King can meet the increasing public concerns of a public distanced so far away from where laws are made and adjudicated, so much so that the British parliament could not represent the colonists. He further argued that because the colonists had no rights to vote in parliament, it made no difference that parliament was not acquainted with the needs of the colonies, they had no say in it anyway.
The powers vested in Britain excluded the colonists yet empowered judgments without their say. That form of British government power displayed a clear lack of impartiality, and the colonists’ standing were more akin to British property.
This happens today in Turks and Caicos. The citizens are so far removed from the British legislature which are making decisions for them without their vote. It is the same struggle that American colonists fought and died to overcome.
Yet, the “rebels” sit in judgment of an artificially created opposition to keep them from believing they are right to voice the peoples' rights which are being denied. Why are the “rebels” degraded by the loyalists, the same usually nameless loyalists that should be questioned for their motives instead of the other way around. What have they to gain by denying a country's citizens their democratic rights?
As for the American colonists, we know the rest. The “rebels” were renamed with their rightful title as “the people” and defeated Britain and George III. As the citizens of the United States of America celebrate their independence from Britain, Turks and Caicos citizens should also pray to one day be “One Nation, under God, indivisible, with Liberty and Justice for all.” These are worthy values for which all countries should have or for which to aspire.
God bless Turks and Caicos Islands. Happy 4th of July to The United States of America.
colonial shames (14)----THE HERO IS ANYONE FIGHT BRITISH COLONIAL.......FIGHT ANYONE WORKED IN BRITISH ADMINISTRATION......AND ANYONE WORKED WITH COLONIAL IS BETRAYING NATION, IS RUNNING DOG
by Oracle » Thu Oct 02, 2008 9:16 pm
In another example from the great litany of Turkish atrocities ...
Wiki wrote:
Refugees from the fire (Smyrna, 1922)
Despite the fact that there were numerous ships from various Allied powers in the harbor of Smyrna, the vast majority of ships, citing "neutrality," did not pick up Greek and Armenian civilians who were forced to flee the fire and Turkish troops. Military bands played loud music to drown out the screams of those who were drowning in the harbor.
There were approximately 400,000 Greek and Armenian refugees from Smyrna and the surrounding area who received Red Cross aid immediately after the destruction of the city.
Other scholars give a different account of the events; they argue that the Turks first forbade foreign ships in the harbor to pick up the survivors, but, then, under pressure especially from Britain, France, and the United States, they allowed the rescuing of all the Christians except males 17 to 45 years old, whom they aimed to deport into the interior, which "was regarded as a short life sentence to slavery under brutal masters, ended by mysterious death".
A Japanese freighter dumped all of its cargo and filled itself to the brink with refugees, taking them to the Greek port of Pireaus and safety.
The captain of the Japanese freighter is surely a forgotten hero .... a brave and humanitarian person.
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by repulsewarrior » Fri Oct 03, 2008 4:14 am
truly
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by Oracle » Mon Oct 06, 2008 6:03 pm
Lysi village in Mesaoria, Famagusta district, CYPRUS. Birth town of the legendary Gregoris Pieris Afxentiou, Anti-lieutenant of the Greek army, and second in command of the Cypriot Liberation Organisation E.O.K.A. that was fighting the British colonial power between 1955-1959, and helped to achieve independence in 1960.
In 1955 the British offered 5,000 English pounds for his capture. Afxentiou died heroically on the 3rd of March 1957, inside his hide-out near Macheras Greek Orthodox monastery on Macheras mountains, fighting against the British colonial Rule of Cyprus. He fought for more than 8 hours, single handed, against a regiment of British paratroopers that surrounded him after he was betrayed. The British, being unable to capture, or subdue him, and in view of mounting losses that they suffered, they threw petrol/gas inside the cave and burned him alive, only succeeding to prove once more that: "...from now on we will not say that Greeks fight like Heroes, but that Heroes fight like the Greeks..."!!!(BBC broadcast during WWII)
Source: Cyprus Directory.
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by repulsewarrior » Tue Oct 07, 2008 3:46 am
o' how i remember
my way to merika bay
overthe mountain durell
knew, and the black holes
still scarred those days.
i did not know his name
thank-you, mdme. O
my OP
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by denizaksulu » Tue Oct 07, 2008 10:01 am
Oracle wrote:
Lysi village in Mesaoria, Famagusta district, CYPRUS. Birth town of the legendary Gregoris Pieris Afxentiou, Anti-lieutenant of the Greek army, and second in command of the Cypriot Liberation Organisation E.O.K.A. that was fighting the British colonial power between 1955-1959, and helped to achieve independence in 1960.
In 1955 the British offered 5,000 English pounds for his capture. Afxentiou died heroically on the 3rd of March 1957, inside his hide-out near Macheras Greek Orthodox monastery on Macheras mountains, fighting against the British colonial Rule of Cyprus. He fought for more than 8 hours, single handed, against a regiment of British paratroopers that surrounded him after he was betrayed. The British, being unable to capture, or subdue him, and in view of mounting losses that they suffered, they threw petrol/gas inside the cave and burned him alive, only succeeding to prove once more that: "...from now on we will not say that Greeks fight like Heroes, but that Heroes fight like the Greeks..."!!!(BBC broadcast during WWII)
Source: Cyprus Directory.
Oracle, do you have anything on Karaolis. He was executed by the British, around 1955/6 if I am not wrong.
I was living in Kyrenia at the time and what I remembered was the eerie silence and the pealing of the churchbells intermitingly on the day of the execution.
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by Oracle » Tue Oct 07, 2008 12:24 pm
denizaksulu wrote:
Oracle, do you have anything on Karaolis. He was executed by the British, around 1955/6 if I am not wrong.
I was living in Kyrenia at the time and what I remembered was the eerie silence and the pealing of the churchbells intermitingly on the day of the execution.
How were you made aware of why the church-bells rang Deniz? That would be interesting if you could recall that "genesis" which upped the stakes for the struggle.
Briefly Michalis Karaolis joined the struggle against the British by blowing up one of their Tax Offices (where he had worked) on a Sunday to avoid casualties.
After going underground as a wanted man, he was caught by some Turkish Cypriot policemen who handed him over to the British.
Symbolic, huh?
Then he became "martyred" as being amongst the first (along with Andreas Dimitriou) to be executed by the British (by hanging) May 10th 1956, which sparked anti-British Sentiment and riots, even in Greece.
The result of that execution is bloody history ... and here is an archived excerpt from Kathimerini which speaks volumes ....
http://www.cyprus-forum.com/cyprus20008-150.html
UNTIL TODAY......IN THIS FORUM...YOU CAN SEE THE PEOPLE ARE SCREW HARD TO THOSE WORKED WITH BRITISH COLONIAL.........
UNTIL NOW.....PEOPLE ARE STILL SCREWING HARD AND CONDEMNING THOSE WORKED WITH BRITISH COLONIAL ADNINISTRATION......
THESE ARE FACTS...THOSE WORKED WITH COLONIAL ADMINISTRATION ARE BETRAYING ALL, ARE BETRAYING THE WHOLE INDEPENDENCE FIGHTERS.....ARE TRAITORS, PENGKHIANAT, TRUE AFCTS ARE TRUE FACTS....
SEE NOW, IN INDIA...............THOSE WORKED WITH BRITISH ADMINISTRATIONS ARE DOGGIES....RUNNING DOGS AND PENGKHIANAT BANGSA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!FACTS OF THE FACTS!!!!!!!!
This war went on for 300 years.
The British Raj started in India in 1850. Religious beliefs were tampered and gave rise to a rebellion. And the great war of independence began. India took a long time to gain Independence, people were confused as what to use as a weapon to fight against the British – violence or non – violence. Conflict of ideologies led to different paths but produced great individuals. Great leaders. Great revolutionaries. Real heroes.
Mangal Pandey
born – 19th july 1827
died – 8th april 1857 (hanged)
famous for – being the first rebel who instigated the 1857 war of independence.
reason for rebellion – rebellion against cartridges introduced by the british which were greased with the fat of cow, sacred to the hindus.
organisation – 34th Regiment of the bengal native infantry.
why is he so awesome: didn’t give a fuck about anybody. lived life on his own terms. was ready to give up his life for a cause he thought was worth dying for.
quote – “anything for my bharat (india)”.
Rani Laxmibai
born – 19th nov 1828
died – 17th june 1858 (in battle)
famous for – being one of the leading figures in the first war of independence.
reason for rebellion – siege of jhansi by the british.
organisation – queen of jhansi.
why is she so awesome – the coolest queen ever who went to war. fought against the british to save cities from being sieged. fought bravely in battle till her last breath. her courage cannot be measured. hats off my lady.
quote – “won’t give up my jhansi”
Lokmanya Tilak
born – 23rd july 1856
died – 1st aug 1920
famous for – lashing out at the british government fearlessly. he was the strongest advocate of self-rule.
reason for rebellion – fed up of the british imperialism.
organisation – indian national congress.
why is he so awesome – he had the guts to speak his mind against the british when his fellow moderate activists shaked in their boots. went to prison a couple of times. supported revolutionaries and was an extremist to the core. his writings encouraged the chapekar brothers to kill rand.
quote – “swaraj (self-rule) is my birth right and i shall have it”.
Chapekar brothers
died – (damodar hari chapekar) 18th april 1898 (hanged)
(vasudev hari chapekar) 8th may 1899 (hanged)
(balkrishna hari chapekar) 12th may 1899 (hanged)
famous for – killing officer rand and other police informants with the help of fellow revolutionaries, mahadev vinayak ranade and khando vishnu sathe.
reason for rebellion – tyrannical methods were applied by mr. rand when he was entrusted the job of handling the plauge problem in pune in 1896-97. also european soldiers had abused the people and their religious sentiments by breaking idols of hindu deities.
why are they so awesome: shot asshole rand who was responsible for more than 2000 deaths in pune. also shot police informants. even in those days showed the world that revenge in the purest emotion.
sadly very few people remember these daredevil revolutionaries today.
Lala Lajpatrai
born – 28th jan 1865
died – 17th nov 1928 (injuries sustained in a lathi charge)
famous for – leading a procession to demonstrate against the simon commission. he continued to protest amidst a lathi charge. succumbed to his injuries later.
reason for rebellion – fucked up simon commission.
organisation – indian national congress.
why is he so awesome – even at the age of 63 led young revolutionaries like bhagat singh and co. to protest against the british government. the simon commission needed to be opposed and he took the initiative. people often called him ‘the lion of punjab’, which he truly was in the true sense of the term.
quote – “every blow aimed at me is a nail in the coffin of british imperialism”.
Veer Savarkar
born – 28th may 1883
died – 26th feb 1966 (self-termination)
famous for – participating in the indian independence movement. promoted hindutva. also spent 10 years in jail at andaman nicobar islands under inhuman conditions.
reason for rebellion – firm believer of the fact that india belongs to indians (hindus).
organisation – abhinav bharat, india house, hindu-mahasabha.
why is he so awesome - escaped from his cell on a ship through a porthole and dived into the water, swimming a long distance to the shore. under inhuman conditions at andaman and nicobar jail lived like a fighter and refused to give up. wrote songs on the walls of the dark, dingy cell. an inspiration to all of us.
quote – “o great sea, my heart aches for the motherland”.
please read this -
savarkar was a national and political ‘non-entity’ in independent India by the time he died and thereafter. after his death, since savarkar was championing militarization, some thought that it would be fitting if his mortal remains were to be carried on a gun-carriage. a request to that effect was made to the then defence minister, y. b. chavan, who later on became deputy prime minister of india. but chavan turned down the proposal and not a single minister from the maharashtra cabinet showed up in the cremation ground to pay homage to savarkar. in delhi, the speaker of the parliament turned down a request that it pay homage to savarkar. in fact, after the independence of india, jawaharlal nehru had put forward a proposal to demolish the cellular jail in the andamans and build a hospital in its place. when y. b. chavan, as the home minister of india, went to the andamans, he was asked whether he would like to visit savarkar’s jail but he was not interested. also when morarji desai went as prime minister to the andamans, he too refused to visit savarkar’s cell.
savarkar was a great revolutionary who was never given his due by ass-licking congress politicians. may his soul rest in peace. desai, chavan and nehru were assholes who didn’t have the balls to run our nation. bloody mofos.
Bose
born – 23rd jan 1897
died – 18th aug 1945 (plane crash)
famous for – reorganising and leading the indian national army in world war II.
reason for rebellion – grant for complete independence.
organisation – indian national congress, indian national army, azad hind.
why is he so awesome – he was a self-acknowledged extremist to the core. he openly attacked congress’s idiotic policies. supported bhagat singh and was against his execution. during the outbreak of second world war, reorganised the indian army to fight against the british. gutsy but a forgotten hero.
quote – “give me blood and I will give you freedom”.
Madanlal Dhingra
born – 18th feb 1883
died – 17th aug 1909 (hanged)
famous for – killing british official curzon wyllie.
reason for rebellion – poor management of famine affected areas by wyllie during his reign.
organisation – india house.
why is he so awesome – was one of the first revolutionaries of the 20th century. killed a british official on his own turf. inspired lots of other revolutionaries like bhagat singh and azad in years to come.
quote – “poor in health and intellect, a son like myself has nothing else to offer to the mother but his own blood. and so I have sacrificed the same on her altar. the only lesson required in india at present is to learn how to die, and the only way to teach it is by dying ourselves. my only prayer to god is that I may be re-born of the same mother and I may re-die in the same sacred cause till the cause is successful. vande mataram”.
Khudiram Bose
born – 3rd dec 1889
died – 11th aug 1908 (hanged)
famous for – muzzafarpur killing where he threw bombs along with prafulla chaki on a carriage to assassinate kingsford, the calcutta presidency magistrate.
reason for rebellion – partition of bengal by the british.
why is he so awesome – was the youngest revolutionary at that particular time. a mere 18 yr old when he was hanged. still had immense patriotism which was instilled in him at a very young age. as a 16 yr old planted bombs near police stations and targeted government officials.
when the judge pronounced the death sentence for him, khudiram’s immediate and spontaneous response was to smile. the judge, surprised, asked khudiram whether he had understood the meaning of the sentence that was just pronounced. khudiram replied that he surely had. when the judge asked him again whether he had anything to say, in front of a packed audience, khudiram replied with same smile that if he could be given some time, he could teach the judge the skill of bomb-making. by then the judge was instructing the police to escort the boy out of the courtroom. the judge got pawned by an 18 yr old.
also went to the gallows smiling. what an inspiration. hats off.
quote - ”bandemataram”.
i would also like to mention that revolutionary prafulla chaki committed suicide after being cornered by the police. he was 20 yrs old.
Surya Sen
born – 22nd mar 1894
died – 12th jan 1934 (hanged in an unconscious state after being severely tortured for days )
famous for – raided chittagong armoury and succeeded in dislocating telephone and telegraph communications and disrupting the movement of the trains. total sixtyfive revolutionaries took part in the raid, which was undertaken in the name of the indian republican army, chittagong branch. after the successful raids, all the revolutionary groups gathered outside the police armoury where surya sen took a military salute, hoisted the national flag and proclaimed a provisional revolutionary government.
reason for rebellion – hatred against the british.
organisation – anushilan samiti.
why is he so awesome – surya sen was always in hiding, moving from one place to another. sometimes he used to take a job as a workman; sometimes he would take a job as a farmer, or milkman, or priest, houseworker or even as a pious muslim. this is how he used to avoid being captured.
after being captured was allegedly tortured for days (british executioners broke all his teeth with hammer and plucked all nails and broke all limbs and joints. he was dragged to the rope unconscious. after his death his dead body wasn’t given any funeral. the prison authority, it was found later, put his dead body in a metallic cage and dumped into the bay of bengal.
may his soul rest in peace for eternity. i bow to thee. hats off.
quote - ”death is knocking at my door. my mind is flying away towards infinity … this is the moment to myself to embrace death as the dearest of friends. in this happy, sacred and crucial moment, what am I leaving for you all? only one thing, my dream, a golden dream, the dream of a free india. dear friends, march ahead; never retrace your step. days of servitude are receding. freedom’s illuminating ray is visible over there. arise and never give way to despair. success is sure to come.” – from his last letter to his friends.
Pritilata Waddedar
born – 5th may 1911
died – 23rd september 1932
famous for - attack on the Pahartali European Club.
reason for rebellion – the club bore the notorious sign ‘Dogs and Indians not allowed’. enough said.
organisation – anushilan samiti.
why is she so awesome - committed suicide voluntarily, after being surrounded by the police to convey the message that women can, and have to, sacrifice their lives for securing the freedom of india from british colonial rule.
Ashfaqulla Khan
Roshan Singh
Ramprasad Bismil
Chandrashekhar Azad
Bhagat Singh
Shivram Rajguru
Sukhdev Thapar
Nathuram Godse
i salute these heroes and those others who have faded into oblivion. these were the real freedom fighters of india. a tribute to them. my blood boils when i see unworthy politicians conferred with undeserving respect and fame. our freedom fighters were the true heroes. REAL MEN.
india isn’t just about gandhi and nehru, about poverty and filth, about kama-sutra and bollywood, about violence and riots. its more than that. love, humanity, intelligence, sacrifice, loyalty, patriotism, self-respect, pride and courage are all the qualities which make a true indian. proud to be one. JAI HIND.
a message to all indians -
why are we so eager to put back our indianness. all we do is, ape the west. traditional day in colleges is like alien clothing day. people sneer at you if you wear a dhoti or a kurta. being patriotic for people is a waste of time. self-respect and principles are lying in the gutters. watching third grade bollywood romantic movies over patriotic ones like ‘khelein hum jee jaan se’ is more important. getting a hard on over a mere mention of some chutiya foreign university defines today’s youth. people are more interested in touring the swiss landscape than our own heavenly breathtaking leh-ladakh. shameless bollywood personalities throw halloween parties for each other. ‘assholes, diwali, dussehra ki party rakhna banned hai kya.’ christmas celebrations are grander than diwali. why? just because western culture follows it. is this what our freedom fighters died for? shame on us.
http://sidirock.wordpress.com/2009/07/10/heroes/
NEITHER THE COMMUNIST AND COLONIAL POLICEMEN ARE HEROES......
LEARN THESE FACTS!!!!!!!!!!!
don't praise them---communists are bad, and colonial policemen are bad, too!
both are not heroes!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
both should be condemned...........it is bad to praise colonial doggies , too! it is a betraying and khianat act!!!!!!!!!!
condemn both!!!
In another example from the great litany of Turkish atrocities ...
Wiki wrote:
Refugees from the fire (Smyrna, 1922)
Despite the fact that there were numerous ships from various Allied powers in the harbor of Smyrna, the vast majority of ships, citing "neutrality," did not pick up Greek and Armenian civilians who were forced to flee the fire and Turkish troops. Military bands played loud music to drown out the screams of those who were drowning in the harbor.
There were approximately 400,000 Greek and Armenian refugees from Smyrna and the surrounding area who received Red Cross aid immediately after the destruction of the city.
Other scholars give a different account of the events; they argue that the Turks first forbade foreign ships in the harbor to pick up the survivors, but, then, under pressure especially from Britain, France, and the United States, they allowed the rescuing of all the Christians except males 17 to 45 years old, whom they aimed to deport into the interior, which "was regarded as a short life sentence to slavery under brutal masters, ended by mysterious death".
A Japanese freighter dumped all of its cargo and filled itself to the brink with refugees, taking them to the Greek port of Pireaus and safety.
The captain of the Japanese freighter is surely a forgotten hero .... a brave and humanitarian person.
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by repulsewarrior » Fri Oct 03, 2008 4:14 am
truly
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by Oracle » Mon Oct 06, 2008 6:03 pm
Lysi village in Mesaoria, Famagusta district, CYPRUS. Birth town of the legendary Gregoris Pieris Afxentiou, Anti-lieutenant of the Greek army, and second in command of the Cypriot Liberation Organisation E.O.K.A. that was fighting the British colonial power between 1955-1959, and helped to achieve independence in 1960.
In 1955 the British offered 5,000 English pounds for his capture. Afxentiou died heroically on the 3rd of March 1957, inside his hide-out near Macheras Greek Orthodox monastery on Macheras mountains, fighting against the British colonial Rule of Cyprus. He fought for more than 8 hours, single handed, against a regiment of British paratroopers that surrounded him after he was betrayed. The British, being unable to capture, or subdue him, and in view of mounting losses that they suffered, they threw petrol/gas inside the cave and burned him alive, only succeeding to prove once more that: "...from now on we will not say that Greeks fight like Heroes, but that Heroes fight like the Greeks..."!!!(BBC broadcast during WWII)
Source: Cyprus Directory.
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Posts: 23508
Joined: Mon Feb 11, 2008 12:13 pm
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by repulsewarrior » Tue Oct 07, 2008 3:46 am
o' how i remember
my way to merika bay
overthe mountain durell
knew, and the black holes
still scarred those days.
i did not know his name
thank-you, mdme. O
my OP
repulsewarrior
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Posts: 2002
Joined: Sat Apr 08, 2006 3:13 am
Location: homeless in Canada
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by denizaksulu » Tue Oct 07, 2008 10:01 am
Oracle wrote:
Lysi village in Mesaoria, Famagusta district, CYPRUS. Birth town of the legendary Gregoris Pieris Afxentiou, Anti-lieutenant of the Greek army, and second in command of the Cypriot Liberation Organisation E.O.K.A. that was fighting the British colonial power between 1955-1959, and helped to achieve independence in 1960.
In 1955 the British offered 5,000 English pounds for his capture. Afxentiou died heroically on the 3rd of March 1957, inside his hide-out near Macheras Greek Orthodox monastery on Macheras mountains, fighting against the British colonial Rule of Cyprus. He fought for more than 8 hours, single handed, against a regiment of British paratroopers that surrounded him after he was betrayed. The British, being unable to capture, or subdue him, and in view of mounting losses that they suffered, they threw petrol/gas inside the cave and burned him alive, only succeeding to prove once more that: "...from now on we will not say that Greeks fight like Heroes, but that Heroes fight like the Greeks..."!!!(BBC broadcast during WWII)
Source: Cyprus Directory.
Oracle, do you have anything on Karaolis. He was executed by the British, around 1955/6 if I am not wrong.
I was living in Kyrenia at the time and what I remembered was the eerie silence and the pealing of the churchbells intermitingly on the day of the execution.
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by Oracle » Tue Oct 07, 2008 12:24 pm
denizaksulu wrote:
Oracle, do you have anything on Karaolis. He was executed by the British, around 1955/6 if I am not wrong.
I was living in Kyrenia at the time and what I remembered was the eerie silence and the pealing of the churchbells intermitingly on the day of the execution.
How were you made aware of why the church-bells rang Deniz? That would be interesting if you could recall that "genesis" which upped the stakes for the struggle.
Briefly Michalis Karaolis joined the struggle against the British by blowing up one of their Tax Offices (where he had worked) on a Sunday to avoid casualties.
After going underground as a wanted man, he was caught by some Turkish Cypriot policemen who handed him over to the British.
Symbolic, huh?
Then he became "martyred" as being amongst the first (along with Andreas Dimitriou) to be executed by the British (by hanging) May 10th 1956, which sparked anti-British Sentiment and riots, even in Greece.
The result of that execution is bloody history ... and here is an archived excerpt from Kathimerini which speaks volumes ....
http://www.cyprus-forum.com/cyprus20008-150.html
UNTIL TODAY......IN THIS FORUM...YOU CAN SEE THE PEOPLE ARE SCREW HARD TO THOSE WORKED WITH BRITISH COLONIAL.........
UNTIL NOW.....PEOPLE ARE STILL SCREWING HARD AND CONDEMNING THOSE WORKED WITH BRITISH COLONIAL ADNINISTRATION......
THESE ARE FACTS...THOSE WORKED WITH COLONIAL ADMINISTRATION ARE BETRAYING ALL, ARE BETRAYING THE WHOLE INDEPENDENCE FIGHTERS.....ARE TRAITORS, PENGKHIANAT, TRUE AFCTS ARE TRUE FACTS....
SEE NOW, IN INDIA...............THOSE WORKED WITH BRITISH ADMINISTRATIONS ARE DOGGIES....RUNNING DOGS AND PENGKHIANAT BANGSA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!FACTS OF THE FACTS!!!!!!!!
This war went on for 300 years.
The British Raj started in India in 1850. Religious beliefs were tampered and gave rise to a rebellion. And the great war of independence began. India took a long time to gain Independence, people were confused as what to use as a weapon to fight against the British – violence or non – violence. Conflict of ideologies led to different paths but produced great individuals. Great leaders. Great revolutionaries. Real heroes.
Mangal Pandey
born – 19th july 1827
died – 8th april 1857 (hanged)
famous for – being the first rebel who instigated the 1857 war of independence.
reason for rebellion – rebellion against cartridges introduced by the british which were greased with the fat of cow, sacred to the hindus.
organisation – 34th Regiment of the bengal native infantry.
why is he so awesome: didn’t give a fuck about anybody. lived life on his own terms. was ready to give up his life for a cause he thought was worth dying for.
quote – “anything for my bharat (india)”.
Rani Laxmibai
born – 19th nov 1828
died – 17th june 1858 (in battle)
famous for – being one of the leading figures in the first war of independence.
reason for rebellion – siege of jhansi by the british.
organisation – queen of jhansi.
why is she so awesome – the coolest queen ever who went to war. fought against the british to save cities from being sieged. fought bravely in battle till her last breath. her courage cannot be measured. hats off my lady.
quote – “won’t give up my jhansi”
Lokmanya Tilak
born – 23rd july 1856
died – 1st aug 1920
famous for – lashing out at the british government fearlessly. he was the strongest advocate of self-rule.
reason for rebellion – fed up of the british imperialism.
organisation – indian national congress.
why is he so awesome – he had the guts to speak his mind against the british when his fellow moderate activists shaked in their boots. went to prison a couple of times. supported revolutionaries and was an extremist to the core. his writings encouraged the chapekar brothers to kill rand.
quote – “swaraj (self-rule) is my birth right and i shall have it”.
Chapekar brothers
died – (damodar hari chapekar) 18th april 1898 (hanged)
(vasudev hari chapekar) 8th may 1899 (hanged)
(balkrishna hari chapekar) 12th may 1899 (hanged)
famous for – killing officer rand and other police informants with the help of fellow revolutionaries, mahadev vinayak ranade and khando vishnu sathe.
reason for rebellion – tyrannical methods were applied by mr. rand when he was entrusted the job of handling the plauge problem in pune in 1896-97. also european soldiers had abused the people and their religious sentiments by breaking idols of hindu deities.
why are they so awesome: shot asshole rand who was responsible for more than 2000 deaths in pune. also shot police informants. even in those days showed the world that revenge in the purest emotion.
sadly very few people remember these daredevil revolutionaries today.
Lala Lajpatrai
born – 28th jan 1865
died – 17th nov 1928 (injuries sustained in a lathi charge)
famous for – leading a procession to demonstrate against the simon commission. he continued to protest amidst a lathi charge. succumbed to his injuries later.
reason for rebellion – fucked up simon commission.
organisation – indian national congress.
why is he so awesome – even at the age of 63 led young revolutionaries like bhagat singh and co. to protest against the british government. the simon commission needed to be opposed and he took the initiative. people often called him ‘the lion of punjab’, which he truly was in the true sense of the term.
quote – “every blow aimed at me is a nail in the coffin of british imperialism”.
Veer Savarkar
born – 28th may 1883
died – 26th feb 1966 (self-termination)
famous for – participating in the indian independence movement. promoted hindutva. also spent 10 years in jail at andaman nicobar islands under inhuman conditions.
reason for rebellion – firm believer of the fact that india belongs to indians (hindus).
organisation – abhinav bharat, india house, hindu-mahasabha.
why is he so awesome - escaped from his cell on a ship through a porthole and dived into the water, swimming a long distance to the shore. under inhuman conditions at andaman and nicobar jail lived like a fighter and refused to give up. wrote songs on the walls of the dark, dingy cell. an inspiration to all of us.
quote – “o great sea, my heart aches for the motherland”.
please read this -
savarkar was a national and political ‘non-entity’ in independent India by the time he died and thereafter. after his death, since savarkar was championing militarization, some thought that it would be fitting if his mortal remains were to be carried on a gun-carriage. a request to that effect was made to the then defence minister, y. b. chavan, who later on became deputy prime minister of india. but chavan turned down the proposal and not a single minister from the maharashtra cabinet showed up in the cremation ground to pay homage to savarkar. in delhi, the speaker of the parliament turned down a request that it pay homage to savarkar. in fact, after the independence of india, jawaharlal nehru had put forward a proposal to demolish the cellular jail in the andamans and build a hospital in its place. when y. b. chavan, as the home minister of india, went to the andamans, he was asked whether he would like to visit savarkar’s jail but he was not interested. also when morarji desai went as prime minister to the andamans, he too refused to visit savarkar’s cell.
savarkar was a great revolutionary who was never given his due by ass-licking congress politicians. may his soul rest in peace. desai, chavan and nehru were assholes who didn’t have the balls to run our nation. bloody mofos.
Bose
born – 23rd jan 1897
died – 18th aug 1945 (plane crash)
famous for – reorganising and leading the indian national army in world war II.
reason for rebellion – grant for complete independence.
organisation – indian national congress, indian national army, azad hind.
why is he so awesome – he was a self-acknowledged extremist to the core. he openly attacked congress’s idiotic policies. supported bhagat singh and was against his execution. during the outbreak of second world war, reorganised the indian army to fight against the british. gutsy but a forgotten hero.
quote – “give me blood and I will give you freedom”.
Madanlal Dhingra
born – 18th feb 1883
died – 17th aug 1909 (hanged)
famous for – killing british official curzon wyllie.
reason for rebellion – poor management of famine affected areas by wyllie during his reign.
organisation – india house.
why is he so awesome – was one of the first revolutionaries of the 20th century. killed a british official on his own turf. inspired lots of other revolutionaries like bhagat singh and azad in years to come.
quote – “poor in health and intellect, a son like myself has nothing else to offer to the mother but his own blood. and so I have sacrificed the same on her altar. the only lesson required in india at present is to learn how to die, and the only way to teach it is by dying ourselves. my only prayer to god is that I may be re-born of the same mother and I may re-die in the same sacred cause till the cause is successful. vande mataram”.
Khudiram Bose
born – 3rd dec 1889
died – 11th aug 1908 (hanged)
famous for – muzzafarpur killing where he threw bombs along with prafulla chaki on a carriage to assassinate kingsford, the calcutta presidency magistrate.
reason for rebellion – partition of bengal by the british.
why is he so awesome – was the youngest revolutionary at that particular time. a mere 18 yr old when he was hanged. still had immense patriotism which was instilled in him at a very young age. as a 16 yr old planted bombs near police stations and targeted government officials.
when the judge pronounced the death sentence for him, khudiram’s immediate and spontaneous response was to smile. the judge, surprised, asked khudiram whether he had understood the meaning of the sentence that was just pronounced. khudiram replied that he surely had. when the judge asked him again whether he had anything to say, in front of a packed audience, khudiram replied with same smile that if he could be given some time, he could teach the judge the skill of bomb-making. by then the judge was instructing the police to escort the boy out of the courtroom. the judge got pawned by an 18 yr old.
also went to the gallows smiling. what an inspiration. hats off.
quote - ”bandemataram”.
i would also like to mention that revolutionary prafulla chaki committed suicide after being cornered by the police. he was 20 yrs old.
Surya Sen
born – 22nd mar 1894
died – 12th jan 1934 (hanged in an unconscious state after being severely tortured for days )
famous for – raided chittagong armoury and succeeded in dislocating telephone and telegraph communications and disrupting the movement of the trains. total sixtyfive revolutionaries took part in the raid, which was undertaken in the name of the indian republican army, chittagong branch. after the successful raids, all the revolutionary groups gathered outside the police armoury where surya sen took a military salute, hoisted the national flag and proclaimed a provisional revolutionary government.
reason for rebellion – hatred against the british.
organisation – anushilan samiti.
why is he so awesome – surya sen was always in hiding, moving from one place to another. sometimes he used to take a job as a workman; sometimes he would take a job as a farmer, or milkman, or priest, houseworker or even as a pious muslim. this is how he used to avoid being captured.
after being captured was allegedly tortured for days (british executioners broke all his teeth with hammer and plucked all nails and broke all limbs and joints. he was dragged to the rope unconscious. after his death his dead body wasn’t given any funeral. the prison authority, it was found later, put his dead body in a metallic cage and dumped into the bay of bengal.
may his soul rest in peace for eternity. i bow to thee. hats off.
quote - ”death is knocking at my door. my mind is flying away towards infinity … this is the moment to myself to embrace death as the dearest of friends. in this happy, sacred and crucial moment, what am I leaving for you all? only one thing, my dream, a golden dream, the dream of a free india. dear friends, march ahead; never retrace your step. days of servitude are receding. freedom’s illuminating ray is visible over there. arise and never give way to despair. success is sure to come.” – from his last letter to his friends.
Pritilata Waddedar
born – 5th may 1911
died – 23rd september 1932
famous for - attack on the Pahartali European Club.
reason for rebellion – the club bore the notorious sign ‘Dogs and Indians not allowed’. enough said.
organisation – anushilan samiti.
why is she so awesome - committed suicide voluntarily, after being surrounded by the police to convey the message that women can, and have to, sacrifice their lives for securing the freedom of india from british colonial rule.
Ashfaqulla Khan
Roshan Singh
Ramprasad Bismil
Chandrashekhar Azad
Bhagat Singh
Shivram Rajguru
Sukhdev Thapar
Nathuram Godse
i salute these heroes and those others who have faded into oblivion. these were the real freedom fighters of india. a tribute to them. my blood boils when i see unworthy politicians conferred with undeserving respect and fame. our freedom fighters were the true heroes. REAL MEN.
india isn’t just about gandhi and nehru, about poverty and filth, about kama-sutra and bollywood, about violence and riots. its more than that. love, humanity, intelligence, sacrifice, loyalty, patriotism, self-respect, pride and courage are all the qualities which make a true indian. proud to be one. JAI HIND.
a message to all indians -
why are we so eager to put back our indianness. all we do is, ape the west. traditional day in colleges is like alien clothing day. people sneer at you if you wear a dhoti or a kurta. being patriotic for people is a waste of time. self-respect and principles are lying in the gutters. watching third grade bollywood romantic movies over patriotic ones like ‘khelein hum jee jaan se’ is more important. getting a hard on over a mere mention of some chutiya foreign university defines today’s youth. people are more interested in touring the swiss landscape than our own heavenly breathtaking leh-ladakh. shameless bollywood personalities throw halloween parties for each other. ‘assholes, diwali, dussehra ki party rakhna banned hai kya.’ christmas celebrations are grander than diwali. why? just because western culture follows it. is this what our freedom fighters died for? shame on us.
http://sidirock.wordpress.com/2009/07/10/heroes/
NEITHER THE COMMUNIST AND COLONIAL POLICEMEN ARE HEROES......
LEARN THESE FACTS!!!!!!!!!!!
don't praise them---communists are bad, and colonial policemen are bad, too!
both are not heroes!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
both should be condemned...........it is bad to praise colonial doggies , too! it is a betraying and khianat act!!!!!!!!!!
condemn both!!!
colonial shames (13) -- IN ANY PART OF THE WORLD, ALL ACCEPT AND UNDERSTAND THAT ANYONE THAT WORKED WITH BRITISH COLONIAL IS TRAITOR, IS PENGKHIANAT, IS RUNNING DOG.
IF WE ALL ACCEPT THOSE WORKED WITH BRITISH COLONIAL, EITHER AS CIVIL SERVANTS, IN ARM FORCES, POLICEMEN ARE HEROES, THEN MR MAHARAJALELA THAT KILLED BIRCH THEN IS NOT HERO...THE MALAYSIAN HISTORY BOOKS MUST BE REWRITTEN...........
IN ANY PART OF THE WORLD, ALL ACCEPT AND UNDERSTAND THAT ANYONE THAT WORKED WITH BRITISH COLONIAL IS TRAITOR, IS PENGKHIANAT, IS RUNNING DOG...
Aboriginal Resistance Heroes
As the colonial frontiers advanced, some Aboriginal people became prominent in their violent resistance.
Pemulwuy was an Eora man, his people immediately affected by the settlement of the Port Jackson area. From 1790 until 1802 Pemulwuy waged a remarkably brave and successful guerilla resistance in what has now become the city of Sydney. His military exploits included attacks on the major inland British settlements of Toongabbie and Parramatta. Eora people credited him with a magical invincibility. He was ambushed, shot and beheaded in 1802.
Windradyne was a Wiradjuri, from the central western New South Wales. In the years 1822-3 he and his fellows raided settlers, killing some and terrifying all. The Government's determined response had left 100 Wiradjuri dead by mid 1824, including Windradyne's family. As the hunt for Windradyne continued, several hundred Wiradjuri were killed or wounded along the western side of the Great Dividing Range. The toll was great, and Windradyne and his people soon made a peace accord with Governor Brisbane at a ceremony in Parramatta.
Yagan's country was the region of the Swan and Canning rivers. When captured, after a series of skirmishes in 1831, he was held as a prisoner of war. He soon escaped. After his brother Domjum was killed and his head displayed, Yagan killed two settlers, and was declared 'wanted dead or alive' along with his associates Midgegooroo and Munday. Though the latter were captured and executed, Yagan remained free until shot and decapitated by a teenage settler on the upper Swan River in July 1833.
Calyute, like Yagan, defended Swan River country from the invasion which commenced in 1829. In 1834 he led 30 Pinjarup men in a raid on a South Perth flour mill. When captured Calyute was bayoneted, flogged and gaoled before being released. After a settler was murdered by his group, Calyute and his associates were attacked by soldiers - the Battle of Pinjarra. Calyute survived the massacre of his people, and lived to an old age.
Jandamarra or 'Pigeon' harassed sheep herds and their owners who settled the Western Kimberley in the late 1880s. Captured, he agreed to work for the police. However, his Punuba captives shamed him into shooting his police boss in October 1894 and Jandamarra was an outlaw once more, ambushing and killing stockmen. Police reprisals brought a severe toll in the Lennard River area, until Jandamarra and his associates fought a pitched battle (they had captured guns) with police in Windjana Gorge in November 1894. Though wounded, Jandamarra survived and recovered in his rocky and inaccessible homelands. He was killed in 1897, having been wounded while attempting to release chained Aboriginal prisoners.
Keywords: colonial warfare, colonialism, colonists, Eora, Jandamarra, massacres, New South Wales, Pemulwuy, resistance, Sydney, warriors, Windradyne, Yagan, 1790-1897
Encyclopaedia of Aboriginal Australia, 1994, AIATSIS.
Author: Rowse, Tim and Graham, Trevor
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A TRUE KENYAN HERO.
Dedan Kimathi Waciuri (truly, Kimathi wa Waciuri), Field Marshal, (October 31, 1920 -- February 18, 1957) was a Kenyan rebel leader who fought against British colonization in Kenya in the 1950s. He was convicted and executed by the British colonial government.
Kimathi was born in Thenge Village Tetu division, Nyeri District. At the age of fifteen, he joined the local primary school, Karuna-ini, where he perfected his English skills. He would later use those language skills to write extensively before and during the uprising. He was a Debate Club member in his school. He was deeply religious and carried a Bible regularly. He worked for the forest department collecting tree seeds to help him foot his school bill. He later joined Tumutumu CMS School for his secondary learning, but dropped out for lack of funds.
He dabbled with several jobs but never felt fully settled. Notable was his enlisting with the army to fight in the Second World War in 1941. However, in 1944, he was expelled for misconduct. In 1946, he became a member of the Kenya African Union. In 1949, he started teaching at his old school Tumutumu, but left the job within two years.
He became radically political in 1950. He involved himself with the Mau Mau, and later that year administered the oath of the Mau Mau, making him a marked man. He joined Forty Group, the militant wing of the defunct Kikuyu Central Association in 1951. He was elected as a local branch secretary of KAU in Ol' Kalou and Thomson's Falls area in 1952. He was briefly arrested in that same year, but escaped with the help of local police. This marked the beginning of his violent uprising. He formed Kenya Defence Council to co-ordinate all forest fighters in 1953.
In 1956, he was finally arrested with one of his wives, Wambui. He was sentenced to death by a court presided by Chief Justice Sir Kenneth O'Connor, while he was in a hospital bed at the General Hospital Nyeri. In the early morning of February 18, 1957 he was executed by the colonial government. The hanging took place at the Kamiti Maximum Security Prison [4]. He was buried in an unmarked grave, and his burial site remains unknown.
Kimathi is viewed by many Kenyans as a national hero. Many towns in Kenya have a building or street named after him. On February 18, 2007, on the anniversary of the day he was executed, a bronze statue of Kimathi was unveiled in Nairobi city center. Kimathi, clad in military regalia, holds a rifle on the right hand and a dagger on the other, symbolizing the last weapons he held in his struggle.
Statue of Dedan Kimathi in Nairobi Kenya
Kimathi was married to Mukami Kimathi. Among their children are sons Wachiuri and Maina and daughters Nyawira and Wanjugu [5].
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Samuel Whittemore-Official State Hero of Massachusetts
Posted By admin On 11 May 2009. Under Politics Tags: Arlington, heros, Massachusetts, monument, Samuel Whittemore
Samuel Whittemore, born in 1694, when not engaged in numerous wars and conflicts in America and Canada during the eighteenth century, was a hard working farmer in Menotomy, now Arlington, Massachusetts. He was eighty years old and living in Menotomy, Massachusetts (present-day Arlington) when he became the oldest known colonial combatant in the American Revolutionary War.
On April 19, 1775, British forces were returning to Boston from the Battles of Lexington and Concord, the opening engagements of the war. On their march, they were continually shot at by colonial militiamen.
Whittemore was in his fields when he spotted an approaching British relief brigade under Hugh, Earl Percy, sent to assist the retreat. To his families dismay, Whittemore loaded his musket and ambushed the British from behind a nearby stone wall, killing one soldier.
His monument in Arlington, Massachusetts reads: Near this spot, Samuel Whittemore, then 80 years old, killed three British soldiers, April 19, 1775. He was shot, bayoneted, beaten and left for dead, but recovered and lived to be 98 years of age.
He then drew his dueling pistols and killed another. He managed to fire five shots before a British detachment reached his position. Whittemore then attacked with a sword. He was shot in the face, bayoneted thirteen times, and left for dead in a pool of blood.
His family not only found him alive but trying to reload his musket to fight again. He was taken to Dr. Cotton Tufts of Medford, who held out no hope for his survival. However, Whittemore lived another eighteen years until dying of natural causes at the age of ninety-eight.
In the year 2005 Samuel Whittemore was proclaimed the official state hero of Massachusetts….
By Mr. Havern, a petition (accompanied by bill, Senate, No. 1839) of Robert A. Havern for legislation to designate captain Samuel Whittemore the official state hero of the Commonwealth and providing for an annual proclamation of a day in his honor. Tourism, Arts and Cultural Development
Here is the proclaimation….
The Commonwealth of Massachusetts
——————————————————————————–
In the Year Two Thousand and Five.
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AN ACT DESIGNATING CAPTAIN SAMUEL WHITTEMORE THE OFFICIAL STATE HERO OF THE COMMONWEALTH AND PROVIDING FOR AN ANNUAL PROCLAMATION OF A DAY IN HIS HONOR
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives in General Court assembled, and by the authority of the same, as follows:
SECTION 1. Chapter 2 of the General Laws, most recently amended by Chapter 162 of the Acts of 1997, is hereby further amended by adding after section 43 the following new section: -
Section 44. Samuel Whittemore, born in 1694, when not engaged in numerous wars and conflicts in America and Canada during the eighteenth century, was a hard working farmer in Menotomy, now Arlington, Massachusetts. On April 17, 1775, while working in his fields, Whittemore became aware of the retreating British army which had fought the militia men at Lexington and Concord. Although then over 80 years old, he immediately armed himself with his weapon; disregarded warnings of onlookers, and stationed himself behind a stone wall directly in the path of the troops which were being harassed by our militia. When the British army came into point blank range, Samuel Whittemore stood up, opened accurate fire, and killed three soldiers before he collapsed from numerous wounds inflicted by the enraged English combatants who then left him for dead. However, Whittemore recovered from his ghastly injuries and lived to be 90 years old. Samuel Whittemore is the oldest known Patriot to fight in the Revolutionary War. And most recently, the United States never had a braver warrior.
SECTION 2. Chapter 6 of the General Laws is hereby amended by adding after section 12WW the following new section: -
Section 12XX. The governor shall annually issue a proclamation calling for a proper observance of February third, the anniversary of the death of Captain Whittemore, official hero of the Commonwealth, in lasting recognition of his courage, determination, outstanding service and unique contribution to America independence.
http://www.oneangryman.com/ken/2009/05/samuel-whittemore-official-state-hero-of-massachusetts/
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Sinhala genocide and the British
By Janaka Perera
The skull of Veera Monarawila Keppetipola now rests in a monument in Kandy.
Friday, November 26th marks the 192nd anniversary of the execution at Bogambara, Kandy of the patriot and national hero Monarawila Keppettipola, who led the first anti-British independence struggle (1817-18) in the Uva Province. It is a fitting occasion to examine the track record of the ancestors of some of today’s international ‘human rights’ champions and democracy advocates.
No Sri Lankan Government will be able to totally undo the damage that the British did to the Uva Province socially, economically and culturally in the course of brutally crushing the uprising. The repercussions of this genocidal scorched earth policy are felt to this day in the Uva region, where entire villages were wiped out and crops and livestock destroyed.
For 57 years after independence the Uva heroes remained officially on the traitors’ list. Their descendants too were helpless in officially dealing with this grave injustice until the present regime revoked two years ago the notification issued on January 1, 1818.
The alien occupation of the kingdom in March 1815 signaled the end of over two thousand years of self-rule and the whole island became part of the British Empire, paying homage to the English monarch. In should be noted here that the former Nayakkar Kings of Kandy – though they were South Indians and their ancestral religion was Hinduism – ruled according to Sinhala customs and recognized Buddhism as the State religion. This was in sharp contrast to the British who did everything possible to weaken and undermine the Sinhala Buddhist culture. Their Trojan horse in this conspiracy was Christianity.
Before long the Kandyan Chiefs and the people realised their freedom had been bartered. The Bhikkus joined the people in demanding the king of their own to protect Sinhala way of life and to uphold age-old Buddhist religious traditions.
The British – in accordance with their divide-and-rule policy – appointed one Hadjee as Muhandiram of Wellassa in Uva. Elated by his power the muhandiram began to harass Sinhala villagers by forcibly requisitioning their grain, cattle and temple property causing a racial and cultural conflict.
In the midst of this there appeared a pretender to the Kandyan Throne, known as Wilbawe alias Doraisamy who proclaimed himself king claiming relationship to the late King Rajadhi Rajasinghe (1782-1798). This gave the people a good reason to rise against the British in 1817.
The then Assistant Government Agent, Badulla, S.D. Wilson immediately dispatched a small force under the Muhandiram Hadjee’s command to investigate and report. But the rebels captured and killed him along with the guards. Bewildered, Wilson himself led a larger contingent of troops but he too was killed. This prompted the British to declare Martial Law in the entire Kandyan Kingdom.
By 1818 the entire hill country – except part of Sabaragamuwa – had risen against the British. The colonial rulers then sent Monarawila Keppettipola Dissawe with a squad of English soldiers to suppress the rebellion. However the pleadings of his fellow countrymen very much disturbed his conscience and decided to join the patriots. Before taking over their command, he dismissed his foreign troops, asking them to take back with them their ammunition and guns. In doing so he declared that it was unbecoming of the Sinhala nation to use the enemy’s weapons against the enemy.
The rebellion flared up under Keppettipola and spread through Wellassa, Bintenne, Ulapane, Hewaheta, Kotmale and Dumabara and continued for a year (October 1817 – October 1818). But the rebel force was no match for the superiorly armed British who, with the arrival of foreign reinforcements, eventually captured top rebels – all Kandyan Chieftains – one by one.
The rebels fought more in spirit than in might.
In an act of revenge against the Sinhala peasants for daring to rise against the King of England, the British ordered their troops to destroy all property belonging to the peasants. Soldiers entered villages and completely destroyed houses by setting them on fire, cutting down their fruit trees, jak, bread fruit and coconut. The marauders destroyed the harvest having killed or robbed their cattle.
Sinhala peasants were subjected to horrible deaths – by execution, hunger and disease. They laid waste to the entire area of Wellassa. Many a Sinhala noble and bhikku linked to the rebellion were beheaded to terrorize the population.
No Sri Lankan Government will be able to totally undo the damage that the British did to the Uva Province socially, economically and culturally, in the course of brutally crushing the uprising. The repercussions of this genocidal scorched earth policy are felt to this day in the region, where entire villages were wiped out and crops and livestock destroyed.
The London Times of October 7, 1818, reported: “the plan of destroying all the grain and fruit trees in the neighbourhood of Badulla seems to have been completely carried into effect, a dreadful measure.”
Justice Lawrie, Senior Puisne Judge in colonial Ceylon in A Gazetteer of the Central Province of Ceylon wrote: “… The story of English rule in the Kandyan country during 1817 and 1818 cannot be related without shame. In 1819 hardly a member of the leading families, the heads of the people, remained alive; those whom the sword and the gun had spared, cholera and small pox and privations had slain by the hundred.” (Revolt in the Temple)
There were no international human rights organizations in that era to condemn British barbarism in Uva whereas today they are the very people – among others – who have the nerve to periodically pontificate on Sri Lanka’s human rights issues.
After the Uva uprising was crushed the British Colonial Government embarked on a policy of appropriating on one pretext or another millions of acres of land belonging to peasants in the Kandyan provinces and sold them to British capitalists at the nominal rice of one shilling per acre. There is no record of the number of peasants rendered landless and homeless by this inhuman act perpetrated between 1833 and 1886.
Keppettipola was arrested at Nuwara Kalaviya, Anuradhapura in October 1818. Following his arrest and that of his lieutenant Madugalle, both were tried by a Court Martial on November 13 and sentenced to death on November 26, 1818. Both of them were beheaded.
Altogether, the death penalty was imposed on 29 rebel leaders while 27 others, including Pilimathalawe, Ihagama, were banished from the country. Ihagama, once a bhikku, was the guiding force behind the rebellion that Keppettipola led.
The then British Deputy Inspector General of Hospitals in Sri Lanka Henry Marshall was sympathetic to Keppettipola and visited him in prison on several occasions. To Marshall (a Scotsman) Keppettipola was like the Scottish Freedom Fighter, Sir William Wallace, whom the English executed in 1306 for `treason’ after he rebelled against King Edward I.
Marshall was so impressed by the Kandyan Chief’s bravery and intellect that he took possession of the rebel leader’s skull after the execution and presented it to the Phrenological Society of Edinburgh.
Returned to Sri Lanka in 1955, the skull now rests in a monument in the Kandy esplanade. A statue of him stands on the Nuwara-Eliya-Badulla road backing the Uva hills where he fought for his motherland.
A very fair British historian, Marshall’s wrote that “had the insurrection been successful he would have been honoured and characterised as a patriot instead of being stigmatised and punished as a traitor.”
To this day tiny villages are found in the Province – up in the mountains and deep down in the valleys. In these huts scattered in the most inaccessible areas live the descendants of the few survivors who escaped the wrath of British troops and hid in remote hamlets.
The failure of the 1818 freedom struggle was the beginning of the end of Sri Lanka’s dignity as a nation. Today, foreign powers and their proxies are again dictating terms to us and telling us how to run our country.
http://sinhale.wordpress.com/2010/11/26/sinhala-genocide-and-the-british/
IN ANY PART OF THE WORLD, ALL ACCEPT AND UNDERSTAND THAT ANYONE THAT WORKED WITH BRITISH COLONIAL IS TRAITOR, IS PENGKHIANAT, IS RUNNING DOG...
Aboriginal Resistance Heroes
As the colonial frontiers advanced, some Aboriginal people became prominent in their violent resistance.
Pemulwuy was an Eora man, his people immediately affected by the settlement of the Port Jackson area. From 1790 until 1802 Pemulwuy waged a remarkably brave and successful guerilla resistance in what has now become the city of Sydney. His military exploits included attacks on the major inland British settlements of Toongabbie and Parramatta. Eora people credited him with a magical invincibility. He was ambushed, shot and beheaded in 1802.
Windradyne was a Wiradjuri, from the central western New South Wales. In the years 1822-3 he and his fellows raided settlers, killing some and terrifying all. The Government's determined response had left 100 Wiradjuri dead by mid 1824, including Windradyne's family. As the hunt for Windradyne continued, several hundred Wiradjuri were killed or wounded along the western side of the Great Dividing Range. The toll was great, and Windradyne and his people soon made a peace accord with Governor Brisbane at a ceremony in Parramatta.
Yagan's country was the region of the Swan and Canning rivers. When captured, after a series of skirmishes in 1831, he was held as a prisoner of war. He soon escaped. After his brother Domjum was killed and his head displayed, Yagan killed two settlers, and was declared 'wanted dead or alive' along with his associates Midgegooroo and Munday. Though the latter were captured and executed, Yagan remained free until shot and decapitated by a teenage settler on the upper Swan River in July 1833.
Calyute, like Yagan, defended Swan River country from the invasion which commenced in 1829. In 1834 he led 30 Pinjarup men in a raid on a South Perth flour mill. When captured Calyute was bayoneted, flogged and gaoled before being released. After a settler was murdered by his group, Calyute and his associates were attacked by soldiers - the Battle of Pinjarra. Calyute survived the massacre of his people, and lived to an old age.
Jandamarra or 'Pigeon' harassed sheep herds and their owners who settled the Western Kimberley in the late 1880s. Captured, he agreed to work for the police. However, his Punuba captives shamed him into shooting his police boss in October 1894 and Jandamarra was an outlaw once more, ambushing and killing stockmen. Police reprisals brought a severe toll in the Lennard River area, until Jandamarra and his associates fought a pitched battle (they had captured guns) with police in Windjana Gorge in November 1894. Though wounded, Jandamarra survived and recovered in his rocky and inaccessible homelands. He was killed in 1897, having been wounded while attempting to release chained Aboriginal prisoners.
Keywords: colonial warfare, colonialism, colonists, Eora, Jandamarra, massacres, New South Wales, Pemulwuy, resistance, Sydney, warriors, Windradyne, Yagan, 1790-1897
Encyclopaedia of Aboriginal Australia, 1994, AIATSIS.
Author: Rowse, Tim and Graham, Trevor
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A TRUE KENYAN HERO.
Dedan Kimathi Waciuri (truly, Kimathi wa Waciuri), Field Marshal, (October 31, 1920 -- February 18, 1957) was a Kenyan rebel leader who fought against British colonization in Kenya in the 1950s. He was convicted and executed by the British colonial government.
Kimathi was born in Thenge Village Tetu division, Nyeri District. At the age of fifteen, he joined the local primary school, Karuna-ini, where he perfected his English skills. He would later use those language skills to write extensively before and during the uprising. He was a Debate Club member in his school. He was deeply religious and carried a Bible regularly. He worked for the forest department collecting tree seeds to help him foot his school bill. He later joined Tumutumu CMS School for his secondary learning, but dropped out for lack of funds.
He dabbled with several jobs but never felt fully settled. Notable was his enlisting with the army to fight in the Second World War in 1941. However, in 1944, he was expelled for misconduct. In 1946, he became a member of the Kenya African Union. In 1949, he started teaching at his old school Tumutumu, but left the job within two years.
He became radically political in 1950. He involved himself with the Mau Mau, and later that year administered the oath of the Mau Mau, making him a marked man. He joined Forty Group, the militant wing of the defunct Kikuyu Central Association in 1951. He was elected as a local branch secretary of KAU in Ol' Kalou and Thomson's Falls area in 1952. He was briefly arrested in that same year, but escaped with the help of local police. This marked the beginning of his violent uprising. He formed Kenya Defence Council to co-ordinate all forest fighters in 1953.
In 1956, he was finally arrested with one of his wives, Wambui. He was sentenced to death by a court presided by Chief Justice Sir Kenneth O'Connor, while he was in a hospital bed at the General Hospital Nyeri. In the early morning of February 18, 1957 he was executed by the colonial government. The hanging took place at the Kamiti Maximum Security Prison [4]. He was buried in an unmarked grave, and his burial site remains unknown.
Kimathi is viewed by many Kenyans as a national hero. Many towns in Kenya have a building or street named after him. On February 18, 2007, on the anniversary of the day he was executed, a bronze statue of Kimathi was unveiled in Nairobi city center. Kimathi, clad in military regalia, holds a rifle on the right hand and a dagger on the other, symbolizing the last weapons he held in his struggle.
Statue of Dedan Kimathi in Nairobi Kenya
Kimathi was married to Mukami Kimathi. Among their children are sons Wachiuri and Maina and daughters Nyawira and Wanjugu [5].
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Samuel Whittemore-Official State Hero of Massachusetts
Posted By admin On 11 May 2009. Under Politics Tags: Arlington, heros, Massachusetts, monument, Samuel Whittemore
Samuel Whittemore, born in 1694, when not engaged in numerous wars and conflicts in America and Canada during the eighteenth century, was a hard working farmer in Menotomy, now Arlington, Massachusetts. He was eighty years old and living in Menotomy, Massachusetts (present-day Arlington) when he became the oldest known colonial combatant in the American Revolutionary War.
On April 19, 1775, British forces were returning to Boston from the Battles of Lexington and Concord, the opening engagements of the war. On their march, they were continually shot at by colonial militiamen.
Whittemore was in his fields when he spotted an approaching British relief brigade under Hugh, Earl Percy, sent to assist the retreat. To his families dismay, Whittemore loaded his musket and ambushed the British from behind a nearby stone wall, killing one soldier.
His monument in Arlington, Massachusetts reads: Near this spot, Samuel Whittemore, then 80 years old, killed three British soldiers, April 19, 1775. He was shot, bayoneted, beaten and left for dead, but recovered and lived to be 98 years of age.
He then drew his dueling pistols and killed another. He managed to fire five shots before a British detachment reached his position. Whittemore then attacked with a sword. He was shot in the face, bayoneted thirteen times, and left for dead in a pool of blood.
His family not only found him alive but trying to reload his musket to fight again. He was taken to Dr. Cotton Tufts of Medford, who held out no hope for his survival. However, Whittemore lived another eighteen years until dying of natural causes at the age of ninety-eight.
In the year 2005 Samuel Whittemore was proclaimed the official state hero of Massachusetts….
By Mr. Havern, a petition (accompanied by bill, Senate, No. 1839) of Robert A. Havern for legislation to designate captain Samuel Whittemore the official state hero of the Commonwealth and providing for an annual proclamation of a day in his honor. Tourism, Arts and Cultural Development
Here is the proclaimation….
The Commonwealth of Massachusetts
——————————————————————————–
In the Year Two Thousand and Five.
——————————————————————————–
AN ACT DESIGNATING CAPTAIN SAMUEL WHITTEMORE THE OFFICIAL STATE HERO OF THE COMMONWEALTH AND PROVIDING FOR AN ANNUAL PROCLAMATION OF A DAY IN HIS HONOR
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives in General Court assembled, and by the authority of the same, as follows:
SECTION 1. Chapter 2 of the General Laws, most recently amended by Chapter 162 of the Acts of 1997, is hereby further amended by adding after section 43 the following new section: -
Section 44. Samuel Whittemore, born in 1694, when not engaged in numerous wars and conflicts in America and Canada during the eighteenth century, was a hard working farmer in Menotomy, now Arlington, Massachusetts. On April 17, 1775, while working in his fields, Whittemore became aware of the retreating British army which had fought the militia men at Lexington and Concord. Although then over 80 years old, he immediately armed himself with his weapon; disregarded warnings of onlookers, and stationed himself behind a stone wall directly in the path of the troops which were being harassed by our militia. When the British army came into point blank range, Samuel Whittemore stood up, opened accurate fire, and killed three soldiers before he collapsed from numerous wounds inflicted by the enraged English combatants who then left him for dead. However, Whittemore recovered from his ghastly injuries and lived to be 90 years old. Samuel Whittemore is the oldest known Patriot to fight in the Revolutionary War. And most recently, the United States never had a braver warrior.
SECTION 2. Chapter 6 of the General Laws is hereby amended by adding after section 12WW the following new section: -
Section 12XX. The governor shall annually issue a proclamation calling for a proper observance of February third, the anniversary of the death of Captain Whittemore, official hero of the Commonwealth, in lasting recognition of his courage, determination, outstanding service and unique contribution to America independence.
http://www.oneangryman.com/ken/2009/05/samuel-whittemore-official-state-hero-of-massachusetts/
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Sinhala genocide and the British
By Janaka Perera
The skull of Veera Monarawila Keppetipola now rests in a monument in Kandy.
Friday, November 26th marks the 192nd anniversary of the execution at Bogambara, Kandy of the patriot and national hero Monarawila Keppettipola, who led the first anti-British independence struggle (1817-18) in the Uva Province. It is a fitting occasion to examine the track record of the ancestors of some of today’s international ‘human rights’ champions and democracy advocates.
No Sri Lankan Government will be able to totally undo the damage that the British did to the Uva Province socially, economically and culturally in the course of brutally crushing the uprising. The repercussions of this genocidal scorched earth policy are felt to this day in the Uva region, where entire villages were wiped out and crops and livestock destroyed.
For 57 years after independence the Uva heroes remained officially on the traitors’ list. Their descendants too were helpless in officially dealing with this grave injustice until the present regime revoked two years ago the notification issued on January 1, 1818.
The alien occupation of the kingdom in March 1815 signaled the end of over two thousand years of self-rule and the whole island became part of the British Empire, paying homage to the English monarch. In should be noted here that the former Nayakkar Kings of Kandy – though they were South Indians and their ancestral religion was Hinduism – ruled according to Sinhala customs and recognized Buddhism as the State religion. This was in sharp contrast to the British who did everything possible to weaken and undermine the Sinhala Buddhist culture. Their Trojan horse in this conspiracy was Christianity.
Before long the Kandyan Chiefs and the people realised their freedom had been bartered. The Bhikkus joined the people in demanding the king of their own to protect Sinhala way of life and to uphold age-old Buddhist religious traditions.
The British – in accordance with their divide-and-rule policy – appointed one Hadjee as Muhandiram of Wellassa in Uva. Elated by his power the muhandiram began to harass Sinhala villagers by forcibly requisitioning their grain, cattle and temple property causing a racial and cultural conflict.
In the midst of this there appeared a pretender to the Kandyan Throne, known as Wilbawe alias Doraisamy who proclaimed himself king claiming relationship to the late King Rajadhi Rajasinghe (1782-1798). This gave the people a good reason to rise against the British in 1817.
The then Assistant Government Agent, Badulla, S.D. Wilson immediately dispatched a small force under the Muhandiram Hadjee’s command to investigate and report. But the rebels captured and killed him along with the guards. Bewildered, Wilson himself led a larger contingent of troops but he too was killed. This prompted the British to declare Martial Law in the entire Kandyan Kingdom.
By 1818 the entire hill country – except part of Sabaragamuwa – had risen against the British. The colonial rulers then sent Monarawila Keppettipola Dissawe with a squad of English soldiers to suppress the rebellion. However the pleadings of his fellow countrymen very much disturbed his conscience and decided to join the patriots. Before taking over their command, he dismissed his foreign troops, asking them to take back with them their ammunition and guns. In doing so he declared that it was unbecoming of the Sinhala nation to use the enemy’s weapons against the enemy.
The rebellion flared up under Keppettipola and spread through Wellassa, Bintenne, Ulapane, Hewaheta, Kotmale and Dumabara and continued for a year (October 1817 – October 1818). But the rebel force was no match for the superiorly armed British who, with the arrival of foreign reinforcements, eventually captured top rebels – all Kandyan Chieftains – one by one.
The rebels fought more in spirit than in might.
In an act of revenge against the Sinhala peasants for daring to rise against the King of England, the British ordered their troops to destroy all property belonging to the peasants. Soldiers entered villages and completely destroyed houses by setting them on fire, cutting down their fruit trees, jak, bread fruit and coconut. The marauders destroyed the harvest having killed or robbed their cattle.
Sinhala peasants were subjected to horrible deaths – by execution, hunger and disease. They laid waste to the entire area of Wellassa. Many a Sinhala noble and bhikku linked to the rebellion were beheaded to terrorize the population.
No Sri Lankan Government will be able to totally undo the damage that the British did to the Uva Province socially, economically and culturally, in the course of brutally crushing the uprising. The repercussions of this genocidal scorched earth policy are felt to this day in the region, where entire villages were wiped out and crops and livestock destroyed.
The London Times of October 7, 1818, reported: “the plan of destroying all the grain and fruit trees in the neighbourhood of Badulla seems to have been completely carried into effect, a dreadful measure.”
Justice Lawrie, Senior Puisne Judge in colonial Ceylon in A Gazetteer of the Central Province of Ceylon wrote: “… The story of English rule in the Kandyan country during 1817 and 1818 cannot be related without shame. In 1819 hardly a member of the leading families, the heads of the people, remained alive; those whom the sword and the gun had spared, cholera and small pox and privations had slain by the hundred.” (Revolt in the Temple)
There were no international human rights organizations in that era to condemn British barbarism in Uva whereas today they are the very people – among others – who have the nerve to periodically pontificate on Sri Lanka’s human rights issues.
After the Uva uprising was crushed the British Colonial Government embarked on a policy of appropriating on one pretext or another millions of acres of land belonging to peasants in the Kandyan provinces and sold them to British capitalists at the nominal rice of one shilling per acre. There is no record of the number of peasants rendered landless and homeless by this inhuman act perpetrated between 1833 and 1886.
Keppettipola was arrested at Nuwara Kalaviya, Anuradhapura in October 1818. Following his arrest and that of his lieutenant Madugalle, both were tried by a Court Martial on November 13 and sentenced to death on November 26, 1818. Both of them were beheaded.
Altogether, the death penalty was imposed on 29 rebel leaders while 27 others, including Pilimathalawe, Ihagama, were banished from the country. Ihagama, once a bhikku, was the guiding force behind the rebellion that Keppettipola led.
The then British Deputy Inspector General of Hospitals in Sri Lanka Henry Marshall was sympathetic to Keppettipola and visited him in prison on several occasions. To Marshall (a Scotsman) Keppettipola was like the Scottish Freedom Fighter, Sir William Wallace, whom the English executed in 1306 for `treason’ after he rebelled against King Edward I.
Marshall was so impressed by the Kandyan Chief’s bravery and intellect that he took possession of the rebel leader’s skull after the execution and presented it to the Phrenological Society of Edinburgh.
Returned to Sri Lanka in 1955, the skull now rests in a monument in the Kandy esplanade. A statue of him stands on the Nuwara-Eliya-Badulla road backing the Uva hills where he fought for his motherland.
A very fair British historian, Marshall’s wrote that “had the insurrection been successful he would have been honoured and characterised as a patriot instead of being stigmatised and punished as a traitor.”
To this day tiny villages are found in the Province – up in the mountains and deep down in the valleys. In these huts scattered in the most inaccessible areas live the descendants of the few survivors who escaped the wrath of British troops and hid in remote hamlets.
The failure of the 1818 freedom struggle was the beginning of the end of Sri Lanka’s dignity as a nation. Today, foreign powers and their proxies are again dictating terms to us and telling us how to run our country.
http://sinhale.wordpress.com/2010/11/26/sinhala-genocide-and-the-british/
colonial shames (12)----how many malaysians has been killed by bloody colonial??????? by britsih policemen, armies, by bukit kepong traitors and pengkhianat bangsa.....give us the figures now
British barbarity: Morant Bay massacre
published: Tuesday | October 17, 2006
Devon Dick
'Two thousand Negroes killed - eight miles of dead bodies' was the account in the New York Times concerning the actions of the British colonial establishment in the 1865 Jamaican insurrection. This is comparable to dead bodies lining the streets from Stony Hill to Cross Roads. This I read two weeks ago. But not many persons recognise the depth of the massacre.
Yesterday, we recalled the achievements of our revered National Heroes and remembered the events that led to their struggles. It is clear that not enough is known about the National Heroes and the events of the time.
Last week, Dr. Clinton Hutton, a political scientist who specialises in Afro-Caribbean religions at the University of the West Indies, loaned me a video cassette entitled 'Morant Bay Rebellion and Massacre' which features Hutton, Dr. Swithin Wilmot and Professor Stuart Hall as resource persons. This is a copy of a BBC documentary that was aired in England over a decade ago but never in Jamaica. This film rightly focussed on the massacre committed by the British authorities.
The British official inquiry claimed that 439 persons were killed. However, other reports have it much worse and the evidence points to untold brutality and barbarity. There are reports that 3,000 persons were killed. There are writings by British officers boasting about the abuses and killings. One report stated that once it was a 'black face' the person was executed.
Other reports
Another report said if the person of African descent did not run, then he was shot, and if he ran it was a sign that he was guilty so he was hunted down and murdered.
There was also a comment by a 'sensible Scotsman' of that era who said that it was a pattern of the English people to engage in barbarity. He said, "It was so in all the massacres of Ireland and Scotland - it was so in the Indian mutiny, and it is so in Jamaica."
And if we fast-forward to the present, it is a similar thing happening in Iraq with U.S. and British soldiers taking pictures of their brutality. One British soldier has already been convicted of crime against humanity. Things have not changed. By credible estimates 60,000 civilians have been killed in Iraq. But no country dare take a resolution to the UN Security Council about the massacres in Iraq.
Those who claim that we should forget history, those who claim that the study of historical records is a useless exercise are destined to repeat the mistakes of the past and not advance the human race and fail to grasp the trends and connection of the past with the present.
When Governor Eyre was tried for murder in England he was acquitted and the British Parliament voted a pension for Eyre. Britain has never accepted that it was a massacre and historians have done this nation a disservice by referring to it as 'Morant Bay Rebellion' and ignoring the 'massacre'.
The French Parliament adopted a bill which would make it a crime for anyone to claim that the Turks did not commit genocide among the Armenians. But what about the crime of France in Haiti and the crime of Britain at Morant Bay?
The deputy PM of Britain plans to apologize for slavery next year, the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the slave trade. However, atrocities continued after slavery such as at Morant Bay. When will Britain accept that it was a massacre at Morant Bay?
In addition, Jamaica needs to determine how many persons were killed in the Morant Bay massacre.
Rev. Devon Dick is pastor of Boulevard Baptist Church and author of "Rebellion to Riot: the Church in Nation Building"
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let our historians tell us how many lives has been killed by british colonial policemen and armies??????????
these killers are heroes??????
where are the historians??????
why these killers that killed millions of malaysians( at that time called as what human beings)......has been praised by our idiot leaders????????
give us the facts that how many malaysians has been killed by british colonial policemen and armies....
just as the article above said:
Devon Dick
'Two thousand Negroes killed - eight miles of dead bodies' was the account in the New York Times concerning the actions of the British colonial establishment in the 1865 Jamaican insurrection. This is comparable to dead bodies lining the streets from Stony Hill to Cross Roads. This I read two weeks ago. But not many persons recognise the depth of the massacre.
those worked with british colonials are heroes?????????
my goodness???????????
are they already mad?????????????
where are our historians???????????
don't say they just work only, they are protecting our people...........
rubbish....gabage...........let us hv the figures, how many malaysians have been killed by british colonial policemen and armies...........
give us the figures.................now
if the theory of killing birch the british bloody residence is heroes, this was taught by our primary, secondary even tertiary text books......then this theory applies to anyone who killed the british coloniual officer, including policemen, armies!
if you reject this theory, the the hero that killer british residence--brich is a bloody killer, terrorist!!!!!!!!!!
don't cheat the people anymore, don;t talk rubbish and said this is different..............
don't beautified and glorified these british colonial officers..............
please , no more brainwash and cheating .........
ther won't be 2 theories--
if killing birch is hero, killing british officer/s is hero, then anyone that kill british officer is hero, too.
don't give idiot excuse naymore.............
our historians accept anyone who killed british officer is hero--taught in my kid's primary text books, taught by secondary text books..........
facts are facts!
read more----all accept those worked with british colonial officers are traitors ...in anypart of the world....still the facts:
Kampala, Uganda (CNN) -- At the age of 19, Christopher Kagwa was taken from his home in Uganda, East Africa, to fight in a distant war he knew nothing about.
More than 70 years later, the memories of fighting for the British Colonial Government in World War II are still fresh.
Sgt. Kagwa, formerly of the King's African Rifles, is one of Uganda's few living veterans of the world's bloodiest conflict.
He told CNN: "We were very scared of the white men. We didn't know anything about them, all we used to hear about was King George, and that made us really frightened when they said they'd come for us and take us to where they are.
We were very scared of the white men. We didn't know anything about them.
--Christopher Kagwa
RELATED TOPICS
World War II
Uganda
Veterans' Affairs
East Africa
"In the year 1939 we were told King George was going to come for us in a few days to go fight in Germany against Hitler and Mussolini, so after a few days a truck came calling us.
"When it came we got in and were taken to the barracks. In the barracks we did not even know what a gun looked like let alone how to fire one. We were totally ignorant, but they still took us to the frontline."
In his book, Fighting For Britain: African Soldiers in the Second World War, historian David Killingray says more than half a million African troops served with the British forces between 1939 and 1945 -- 289,530 of them with the King's African Rifles from Uganda, Tanzania, Kenya and Malawi.
He describes it as the largest single movement of African men overseas since the slave trade. Their contribution is often forgotten by the wider world.
Sgt Kagwa and his friend Masulum Museker, along with thousands of their countrymen, were taken overseas and spent time in the jungles of Burma.
He said: "The frontline was scary but we had been trained how to run, how to load our guns with magazines, and also when inside a tank how to fire and operate it. So that made us confident and we fought bravely.
"We were better than the British, we were beating the Germans like how you beat a goat in your garden, as well as the Italians.
"The Italians used to have small bombs that looked like cigarette paper, and white men used to go and pick it up, but for us we never picked it up. When we went there to fight we said we're going there to die, so you fight like it's your last day."
Many of those Kagwa fought alongside, including his own brother, did not make it home. They are remembered in the war cemetery in the village of Jinja.
He said: "It pains us a lot when we come here and see the graves and the names. People's bodies were never repatriated, instead they have numbers, because soldiers were each given numbers, so it was the numbers that came.
"So each number had a name of the person as well as their nationality. So if you were from Kenya, your number would be taken back to Kenya, Tanganyika (present day Tanzania) to there, and for Ugandans here."
Kagwa still wears the medals he received for his part in the conflict. He was honored by Queen Elizabeth in 2007 and is regarded as a hero in his home village of Kabwangasi.
His 16-year-old grandson told CNN: "I'm proud of him because he made history, and people are proud of him."
http://edition.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/africa/09/15/ugandan.ww2.veteran/
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Unsung black heroes star in children's book
February 16, 2010|By THERESA WALKER
Ask school children about heroes from the colonial period in America and they can quickly tell you what they know about founding fathers and Revolutionary War figures such as George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Patrick Henry and Paul Revere.
Ask them about African-American heroes from that same era and there's a good chance they can name Crispus Attucks, one of the first five colonists killed by British soldiers in the Boston Massacre in March 1770 and the first black man to die in the struggle for America's freedom.
They might even have heard of Benjamin Banneker, a mathematician and astronomer famous during his time for his almanacs. And perhaps they know of poet Phyllis Wheatley, whose work included a well-regarded celebration of Washington.
YOU SEE FROM HERE---EVEN IN USA, ANYONE THAT FIGHT, KILL BRITISH COLONIAL OFFICERS, ARMIES, POLICEMEN ARE HEROES...THESE ARE FACTS ACCEPTED ANYWHERE...EVEN IN USA, IN EVERYPART OF THE WORLD..............
(NOT IN MALAYSIA??????????HOW TERRIBLE THIS HAPPENDED IN MALAYSIA!!!!!!!!)
But that's probably the extent of their knowledge on African Americans of that time.
You could pretty much say the same for adults, outside of those in academia or history buffs who have studied the colonial period or black history, says Nancy I. Sanders, a children's author who lives in Chino.
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SEE--THE NEGRO THAT KILLED BRITISH COLONIAL ARMY IS HERO...KILLING ANY BRITISH COLONIAL OFFICER IS HERO, ARE HEROES!!!!!!!
Preparing the next generation
of all-American heroes
hosted by http://robt.shepherd.tripod.com
Choice of content can be 'blamed' on Webmeister
Bob Shepherd
We all have a responsibility to the country we call home
(as Barack Obama says)
"America is the greatest country on earth -- but it didn't just happen on its own."
Black Warriors in America's History
Give me men to match my mountains
African Americans have served as underappreciated heroes in every war and countless 'unofficial' skirmishes and conflicts throughout the history of our nation -- and even in colonial days. There has scarcely been a battle when America has not been served by the valor and sacrifice of what poets have called "the darker brother." Like the Kipling poems of England's Victorian "empire" period, America also has a story of forgotten heroes, and a public that seems barely aware of the courage and honor of, in some cases, gallantry almost beyond words.
Kipling wrote of the unappreciated 'Tommy Atkins' - despised or held scarcely above outright contempt - UNTIL the nation needed him. Then he was the hero, the saviour, the man who stood in the gap, who came to his nation's rescue in its our of need. Another Kipling poem describes the despised 'Gunga Din' the brave dark fighters who shed their blood, gave their lives, on behalf of an empire that owed them better. And for Kipling, the white professional soldiers could only say in awe, "You're a better man than I am, Gunga Din."
But in America's case, its Black warriors were not foreign, they were home born and every bit as American as their brother warriors of lighter hue. At long last, America is waking to the glory of "the darker brother" on the field of battle. Just as has been shown in other fields of achievement, perhaps beginning with America's unique homegrown religious heritage, the black contribution has been profound.
The original core of this document was begun by Professor Cunnea as a homework aid for his classes. A note to researchers of "Buffalo Soldiers" -- the Buffalo Soldiers were African-Americans used in the U.S. war to protect settlers not only against brigands but also (primarily) against certain Native Americans. The web has numerous sites on the Buffalo Soldiers but please be aware, while the Buffalo Soldiers spoke American English, and tended to think somewhat similar to the "white" Americans, history reveals that they also shared the prejudices against socalled marauding "red men." You should be aware of this.
The first Buffalo Soldiers were the 9th and 10th Cavalries, formed by the U.S. Army in 1866 and mostly composed of freed slaves and Civil War vets. The patrolled the Mexican border, participated in the Spanish-American War, and in the U.S. expedition to the Philippines. While it is regrettable that black Americans should have participated in military actions adversely affecting native peoples, students should remember that not all the reprisals and measures taken by the government were unprovoked, nor were all of them carried out with the ruthlessness we sometimes hear of. Buffalo soldiers and black cowboys were merely one factor in the opening of the West, and a certain toughness went with the territory. It was a job somebody had to do, and the oppressive aspects, while not excusable whatsoever, were indeed one part of that history. The Buffalo Soldiers were disbanded in the 1950's when President Harry Truman integrated the armed forces. A television movie called "Buffalo Soldiers" starring Danny Glover was made in 1997 and may be available to students on video. It aired on TNT. Set in New Mexico Territory in 1880, it is a fictionalized account of the conflicts between the Buffalo Soldiers and the Native Americans then `plaguing` the pioneers westward.
To Our readers: if you find sites that you cannot reach, we'd appreciate if you alert us -- Dee.
And remember. Freedom isn't free.
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Little known is the history of an officer of the infant Continental Navy who took the War of Independence all the way to British soil to carry out surprise raids. Responding to Britain's looting and burning of Colonial America, this early naval hero damaged or destroyed strongholds and absconded with needed supplies. And while he initially met little resistance, that soon changed.
In the early fall of 1779, the daring sea rover was again sailing the frigid waters off England's coast, looking for British supply ships to seize. But Britain had had its fill of this rogue sailor who was audaciously challenging Britain on her own turf, while successfully preventing large amounts of British supplies from reaching the colonies. The rogue had to be stopped. The hunt was on.
It was September 23rd. While still within sight of the English coast, the Continental Navy commander was secure in his ship, the French-built Bonhomme Richard. A crew member spotted a large convoy of merchant ships protected by two English warships, the H.M.S. Serapis and the H.M.S. Countess of Scarborough. The seasoned skipper of the Serapis, Richard Pearson, knew his American enemy was close and was on the lookout. Just after 6:30 p.m., the American commander, who had displayed a British Union Jack to cause confusion, suddenly took it down and sent up the Stars and Stripes before engaging the Serapis. Soon the two ships were locked in point-blank combat in what became known as the Battle of Flamborough Head.
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Hundreds of people gathered on the chalk cliffs of Flamborough Head to watch the battle, which lasted for nearly four hours with unremitting fury and was later regarded as one of the most desperate and sanguinary fights in naval history. Most onlookers undoubtedly hoped they would witness the Bonhomme Richard's destruction. Many British citizens regarded its captain as a "pirate" whose skullduggery rivaled that of Blackbeard. British chapbooks, the entertainment "magazines" of that time, even carried caricatures of the Richard's captain to drive home this unsavory image.
Cannon fire boomed in both directions, ripping the ships apart piece by piece. As the citizens looked on, the two frigates became entangled together so tightly that the muzzles of the cannons from both ships at times were touching each other. Jones purposely positioned the Richard close to the swifter, copper-bottomed Serapis to deny the larger ship the advantage of its larger and more numerous cannons. Meanwhile, the Alliance, which was sailing with Jones and commanded by a Frenchman, engaged the Countess of Scarborough.
NEITHER COMMUNISTS AND COLONIAL POLICEMEN ARE HEROES.......
NO, THWY ARE NOT HEROES...........WE SHOULD UNDERSTAND BOTH COLONIALSM, IMPERALISM AND COMMUNISM ARE NO GOOD TO ALL!!!
published: Tuesday | October 17, 2006
Devon Dick
'Two thousand Negroes killed - eight miles of dead bodies' was the account in the New York Times concerning the actions of the British colonial establishment in the 1865 Jamaican insurrection. This is comparable to dead bodies lining the streets from Stony Hill to Cross Roads. This I read two weeks ago. But not many persons recognise the depth of the massacre.
Yesterday, we recalled the achievements of our revered National Heroes and remembered the events that led to their struggles. It is clear that not enough is known about the National Heroes and the events of the time.
Last week, Dr. Clinton Hutton, a political scientist who specialises in Afro-Caribbean religions at the University of the West Indies, loaned me a video cassette entitled 'Morant Bay Rebellion and Massacre' which features Hutton, Dr. Swithin Wilmot and Professor Stuart Hall as resource persons. This is a copy of a BBC documentary that was aired in England over a decade ago but never in Jamaica. This film rightly focussed on the massacre committed by the British authorities.
The British official inquiry claimed that 439 persons were killed. However, other reports have it much worse and the evidence points to untold brutality and barbarity. There are reports that 3,000 persons were killed. There are writings by British officers boasting about the abuses and killings. One report stated that once it was a 'black face' the person was executed.
Other reports
Another report said if the person of African descent did not run, then he was shot, and if he ran it was a sign that he was guilty so he was hunted down and murdered.
There was also a comment by a 'sensible Scotsman' of that era who said that it was a pattern of the English people to engage in barbarity. He said, "It was so in all the massacres of Ireland and Scotland - it was so in the Indian mutiny, and it is so in Jamaica."
And if we fast-forward to the present, it is a similar thing happening in Iraq with U.S. and British soldiers taking pictures of their brutality. One British soldier has already been convicted of crime against humanity. Things have not changed. By credible estimates 60,000 civilians have been killed in Iraq. But no country dare take a resolution to the UN Security Council about the massacres in Iraq.
Those who claim that we should forget history, those who claim that the study of historical records is a useless exercise are destined to repeat the mistakes of the past and not advance the human race and fail to grasp the trends and connection of the past with the present.
When Governor Eyre was tried for murder in England he was acquitted and the British Parliament voted a pension for Eyre. Britain has never accepted that it was a massacre and historians have done this nation a disservice by referring to it as 'Morant Bay Rebellion' and ignoring the 'massacre'.
The French Parliament adopted a bill which would make it a crime for anyone to claim that the Turks did not commit genocide among the Armenians. But what about the crime of France in Haiti and the crime of Britain at Morant Bay?
The deputy PM of Britain plans to apologize for slavery next year, the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the slave trade. However, atrocities continued after slavery such as at Morant Bay. When will Britain accept that it was a massacre at Morant Bay?
In addition, Jamaica needs to determine how many persons were killed in the Morant Bay massacre.
Rev. Devon Dick is pastor of Boulevard Baptist Church and author of "Rebellion to Riot: the Church in Nation Building"
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let our historians tell us how many lives has been killed by british colonial policemen and armies??????????
these killers are heroes??????
where are the historians??????
why these killers that killed millions of malaysians( at that time called as what human beings)......has been praised by our idiot leaders????????
give us the facts that how many malaysians has been killed by british colonial policemen and armies....
just as the article above said:
Devon Dick
'Two thousand Negroes killed - eight miles of dead bodies' was the account in the New York Times concerning the actions of the British colonial establishment in the 1865 Jamaican insurrection. This is comparable to dead bodies lining the streets from Stony Hill to Cross Roads. This I read two weeks ago. But not many persons recognise the depth of the massacre.
those worked with british colonials are heroes?????????
my goodness???????????
are they already mad?????????????
where are our historians???????????
don't say they just work only, they are protecting our people...........
rubbish....gabage...........let us hv the figures, how many malaysians have been killed by british colonial policemen and armies...........
give us the figures.................now
if the theory of killing birch the british bloody residence is heroes, this was taught by our primary, secondary even tertiary text books......then this theory applies to anyone who killed the british coloniual officer, including policemen, armies!
if you reject this theory, the the hero that killer british residence--brich is a bloody killer, terrorist!!!!!!!!!!
don't cheat the people anymore, don;t talk rubbish and said this is different..............
don't beautified and glorified these british colonial officers..............
please , no more brainwash and cheating .........
ther won't be 2 theories--
if killing birch is hero, killing british officer/s is hero, then anyone that kill british officer is hero, too.
don't give idiot excuse naymore.............
our historians accept anyone who killed british officer is hero--taught in my kid's primary text books, taught by secondary text books..........
facts are facts!
read more----all accept those worked with british colonial officers are traitors ...in anypart of the world....still the facts:
Kampala, Uganda (CNN) -- At the age of 19, Christopher Kagwa was taken from his home in Uganda, East Africa, to fight in a distant war he knew nothing about.
More than 70 years later, the memories of fighting for the British Colonial Government in World War II are still fresh.
Sgt. Kagwa, formerly of the King's African Rifles, is one of Uganda's few living veterans of the world's bloodiest conflict.
He told CNN: "We were very scared of the white men. We didn't know anything about them, all we used to hear about was King George, and that made us really frightened when they said they'd come for us and take us to where they are.
We were very scared of the white men. We didn't know anything about them.
--Christopher Kagwa
RELATED TOPICS
World War II
Uganda
Veterans' Affairs
East Africa
"In the year 1939 we were told King George was going to come for us in a few days to go fight in Germany against Hitler and Mussolini, so after a few days a truck came calling us.
"When it came we got in and were taken to the barracks. In the barracks we did not even know what a gun looked like let alone how to fire one. We were totally ignorant, but they still took us to the frontline."
In his book, Fighting For Britain: African Soldiers in the Second World War, historian David Killingray says more than half a million African troops served with the British forces between 1939 and 1945 -- 289,530 of them with the King's African Rifles from Uganda, Tanzania, Kenya and Malawi.
He describes it as the largest single movement of African men overseas since the slave trade. Their contribution is often forgotten by the wider world.
Sgt Kagwa and his friend Masulum Museker, along with thousands of their countrymen, were taken overseas and spent time in the jungles of Burma.
He said: "The frontline was scary but we had been trained how to run, how to load our guns with magazines, and also when inside a tank how to fire and operate it. So that made us confident and we fought bravely.
"We were better than the British, we were beating the Germans like how you beat a goat in your garden, as well as the Italians.
"The Italians used to have small bombs that looked like cigarette paper, and white men used to go and pick it up, but for us we never picked it up. When we went there to fight we said we're going there to die, so you fight like it's your last day."
Many of those Kagwa fought alongside, including his own brother, did not make it home. They are remembered in the war cemetery in the village of Jinja.
He said: "It pains us a lot when we come here and see the graves and the names. People's bodies were never repatriated, instead they have numbers, because soldiers were each given numbers, so it was the numbers that came.
"So each number had a name of the person as well as their nationality. So if you were from Kenya, your number would be taken back to Kenya, Tanganyika (present day Tanzania) to there, and for Ugandans here."
Kagwa still wears the medals he received for his part in the conflict. He was honored by Queen Elizabeth in 2007 and is regarded as a hero in his home village of Kabwangasi.
His 16-year-old grandson told CNN: "I'm proud of him because he made history, and people are proud of him."
http://edition.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/africa/09/15/ugandan.ww2.veteran/
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Unsung black heroes star in children's book
February 16, 2010|By THERESA WALKER
Ask school children about heroes from the colonial period in America and they can quickly tell you what they know about founding fathers and Revolutionary War figures such as George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Patrick Henry and Paul Revere.
Ask them about African-American heroes from that same era and there's a good chance they can name Crispus Attucks, one of the first five colonists killed by British soldiers in the Boston Massacre in March 1770 and the first black man to die in the struggle for America's freedom.
They might even have heard of Benjamin Banneker, a mathematician and astronomer famous during his time for his almanacs. And perhaps they know of poet Phyllis Wheatley, whose work included a well-regarded celebration of Washington.
YOU SEE FROM HERE---EVEN IN USA, ANYONE THAT FIGHT, KILL BRITISH COLONIAL OFFICERS, ARMIES, POLICEMEN ARE HEROES...THESE ARE FACTS ACCEPTED ANYWHERE...EVEN IN USA, IN EVERYPART OF THE WORLD..............
(NOT IN MALAYSIA??????????HOW TERRIBLE THIS HAPPENDED IN MALAYSIA!!!!!!!!)
But that's probably the extent of their knowledge on African Americans of that time.
You could pretty much say the same for adults, outside of those in academia or history buffs who have studied the colonial period or black history, says Nancy I. Sanders, a children's author who lives in Chino.
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SEE--THE NEGRO THAT KILLED BRITISH COLONIAL ARMY IS HERO...KILLING ANY BRITISH COLONIAL OFFICER IS HERO, ARE HEROES!!!!!!!
Preparing the next generation
of all-American heroes
hosted by http://robt.shepherd.tripod.com
Choice of content can be 'blamed' on Webmeister
Bob Shepherd
We all have a responsibility to the country we call home
(as Barack Obama says)
"America is the greatest country on earth -- but it didn't just happen on its own."
Black Warriors in America's History
Give me men to match my mountains
African Americans have served as underappreciated heroes in every war and countless 'unofficial' skirmishes and conflicts throughout the history of our nation -- and even in colonial days. There has scarcely been a battle when America has not been served by the valor and sacrifice of what poets have called "the darker brother." Like the Kipling poems of England's Victorian "empire" period, America also has a story of forgotten heroes, and a public that seems barely aware of the courage and honor of, in some cases, gallantry almost beyond words.
Kipling wrote of the unappreciated 'Tommy Atkins' - despised or held scarcely above outright contempt - UNTIL the nation needed him. Then he was the hero, the saviour, the man who stood in the gap, who came to his nation's rescue in its our of need. Another Kipling poem describes the despised 'Gunga Din' the brave dark fighters who shed their blood, gave their lives, on behalf of an empire that owed them better. And for Kipling, the white professional soldiers could only say in awe, "You're a better man than I am, Gunga Din."
But in America's case, its Black warriors were not foreign, they were home born and every bit as American as their brother warriors of lighter hue. At long last, America is waking to the glory of "the darker brother" on the field of battle. Just as has been shown in other fields of achievement, perhaps beginning with America's unique homegrown religious heritage, the black contribution has been profound.
The original core of this document was begun by Professor Cunnea as a homework aid for his classes. A note to researchers of "Buffalo Soldiers" -- the Buffalo Soldiers were African-Americans used in the U.S. war to protect settlers not only against brigands but also (primarily) against certain Native Americans. The web has numerous sites on the Buffalo Soldiers but please be aware, while the Buffalo Soldiers spoke American English, and tended to think somewhat similar to the "white" Americans, history reveals that they also shared the prejudices against socalled marauding "red men." You should be aware of this.
The first Buffalo Soldiers were the 9th and 10th Cavalries, formed by the U.S. Army in 1866 and mostly composed of freed slaves and Civil War vets. The patrolled the Mexican border, participated in the Spanish-American War, and in the U.S. expedition to the Philippines. While it is regrettable that black Americans should have participated in military actions adversely affecting native peoples, students should remember that not all the reprisals and measures taken by the government were unprovoked, nor were all of them carried out with the ruthlessness we sometimes hear of. Buffalo soldiers and black cowboys were merely one factor in the opening of the West, and a certain toughness went with the territory. It was a job somebody had to do, and the oppressive aspects, while not excusable whatsoever, were indeed one part of that history. The Buffalo Soldiers were disbanded in the 1950's when President Harry Truman integrated the armed forces. A television movie called "Buffalo Soldiers" starring Danny Glover was made in 1997 and may be available to students on video. It aired on TNT. Set in New Mexico Territory in 1880, it is a fictionalized account of the conflicts between the Buffalo Soldiers and the Native Americans then `plaguing` the pioneers westward.
To Our readers: if you find sites that you cannot reach, we'd appreciate if you alert us -- Dee.
And remember. Freedom isn't free.
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Little known is the history of an officer of the infant Continental Navy who took the War of Independence all the way to British soil to carry out surprise raids. Responding to Britain's looting and burning of Colonial America, this early naval hero damaged or destroyed strongholds and absconded with needed supplies. And while he initially met little resistance, that soon changed.
In the early fall of 1779, the daring sea rover was again sailing the frigid waters off England's coast, looking for British supply ships to seize. But Britain had had its fill of this rogue sailor who was audaciously challenging Britain on her own turf, while successfully preventing large amounts of British supplies from reaching the colonies. The rogue had to be stopped. The hunt was on.
It was September 23rd. While still within sight of the English coast, the Continental Navy commander was secure in his ship, the French-built Bonhomme Richard. A crew member spotted a large convoy of merchant ships protected by two English warships, the H.M.S. Serapis and the H.M.S. Countess of Scarborough. The seasoned skipper of the Serapis, Richard Pearson, knew his American enemy was close and was on the lookout. Just after 6:30 p.m., the American commander, who had displayed a British Union Jack to cause confusion, suddenly took it down and sent up the Stars and Stripes before engaging the Serapis. Soon the two ships were locked in point-blank combat in what became known as the Battle of Flamborough Head.
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Hundreds of people gathered on the chalk cliffs of Flamborough Head to watch the battle, which lasted for nearly four hours with unremitting fury and was later regarded as one of the most desperate and sanguinary fights in naval history. Most onlookers undoubtedly hoped they would witness the Bonhomme Richard's destruction. Many British citizens regarded its captain as a "pirate" whose skullduggery rivaled that of Blackbeard. British chapbooks, the entertainment "magazines" of that time, even carried caricatures of the Richard's captain to drive home this unsavory image.
Cannon fire boomed in both directions, ripping the ships apart piece by piece. As the citizens looked on, the two frigates became entangled together so tightly that the muzzles of the cannons from both ships at times were touching each other. Jones purposely positioned the Richard close to the swifter, copper-bottomed Serapis to deny the larger ship the advantage of its larger and more numerous cannons. Meanwhile, the Alliance, which was sailing with Jones and commanded by a Frenchman, engaged the Countess of Scarborough.
NEITHER COMMUNISTS AND COLONIAL POLICEMEN ARE HEROES.......
NO, THWY ARE NOT HEROES...........WE SHOULD UNDERSTAND BOTH COLONIALSM, IMPERALISM AND COMMUNISM ARE NO GOOD TO ALL!!!
colonial shames (11) ---those worked with colonial are pengkhianat bangsa dan nusa
read the independence facts of many countries fight colonialsm----
all tell the facts that anyone worked with colonial is traitor, is pengkhianat bangsa, is bastard of the bastard!!!!!!!!
these are facts!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
read more:
East Africa: Hooray All the Heroes, Saints And Foes Outsiders Have Chosen for Us
Joachim Buwembo22 May 2011
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Nairobi — As the US and its allies go on high alert in face of an injured Al Qaeda, it would be interesting to imagine what Uganda's commander in chief would do if his security chiefs started spending more time in Taliban "madrasa" to the extent of neglecting their duties.
That is the feeling you get after reading the recently released book Mwanga II, Resistance to Imposition of British Colonial Rule In Buganda 1884 - 1899, by history professor Samwiri Lwanga Lunyiigo.
The book takes a new look at the Uganda Martyrs and the king blamed for their death. Lunyiigo's book meticulously examines archival evidence to show that the "martyrs" were executed more for political betrayal of their king than for their religious fervour.
What is more, some of these "saints" who will be feted by pilgrims from all over Africa next week on June 3, were top security chiefs whose successors holding their jobs today are generals like David Tinyefuza and Aronda Nyakairima.
St Joseph Mukasa Balikudembe was Kabaka Mwanga's chief of intelligence and St Andrea Kaggwa was deputy army commander.
They allegedly ignored the king's several warnings, even as sensitive intelligence started leaking to the enemy, like plans to deal with one Bishop Hannington who insisted on entering the kingdom using the vulnerable and prohibited eastern route through Busoga.
If Uganda's top military commanders compromised operations in the east (say, Somalia), would you blame Museveni if he threw them to a jittery court martial?
Long vilified as a killer of Christians, Mwanga actually loved Christianity more than his predecessors did.
He never killed anybody just for being Christian and, indeed, after the Namugongo "martyrdom," he appointed more Catholics to his new cabinet and gave them lots of powers.
While the "martyrs" can at best be called naïve, (rather unconvincing for security operatives) the most despicable fellows who enabled the British colonise the country were the Kabaka's top officials -- like premier Sir Apollo Kaggwa and the military turncoat commander Semei Kakungulu.
The UK government had no financial capacity to militarily conquer Uganda, which had no immediate mineral return, and had opted to abandon the costly venture.
But the ambitious missionaries insisted, to the extent of fundraising to bankroll the conquest.
Our kings, Mwanga and Kabalega were captured by African troops commanded by Baganda generals Semei Kakungulu and Andrew Lwandaga.
The British paid the Baganda traitors NOT with wealth from England, but with loot and land stolen from Buganda and Bunyoro.
The key important conclusion from Mwanga II is that colonialism was absolutely unnecessary; the so-called civilisation in the form of western education and infrastructure, were already under way before colonialism as Kabalega, Mwanga and his predecessors were keen on trading, interacting and gaining knowledge from the outside world.
Another sad myth busted is the so-called enmity between Baganda and Banyoro, cleverly fabricated by the victorious divide-and-rule writers. That some Ugandans ignorantly continue viewing Baganda as "the problem" is eloquent proof of Steve Biko's famous assertion that the oppressor's most potent weapon is the mind of the oppressed.
So we continue letting outsiders choose heroes, saints and enemies for us. No wonder Kampala still has street names like Siad Barre, Mobutu Sese Seko and Apolo Kaggwa.
Not surprisingly, Mwanga II has been published by a local venture, Wavah Books Ltd.
Joachim Buwembo is a Knight International fellow for development journalism
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Forgotten claims? Forgotten heroes? Forgotten atrocities?
A People’s History of the British Empire:
A rebuttal to Furgusan, Boot, Kaplan & other Colonial aplogists.
“A conquered nation is like a man with cancer: he can think of nothing else.“ George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw was right. Those who were able to expunge the cancer of Colonialism (India, Pakistan, Nigeria) are weak and had to overcome their hemerage. Those who were unable to overcome the occupation (the Native Americans, the Mayas, Incas, the Aborigines of Australia, the original people of the Caribbean etc.) are in a coma unable to remove the parasites.
The British were responsible for the death and destruction of millions of people in South Asia. London was a shanty-town in the 15thcentury, where Benaras, Calcutta and Delhi were the epitome of cosmopolitan and tolerance, industrialization, art, music and culture. The British destroyed the local industries. ”The What Man’s Burden” was to civilize the populations and “Christianize” them. Asian and African nations were called “tribes’ and European tribes were called “nations”.
The infrastructure of Britain, the roads, railways, sewer lines, water works, subway stations, electrical grids were built on the looted gold, spices, opium, sugar cane, and oil from the colonies. Entire civilizations were reduced to slavery which destroyed the peaceful village culture of Africa and Asia. Uprooted populations were sent to the cities with improper sanitation and facilities. This led to disasters which we are living with today.
With the destruction of the village culture, the population was at the mercy of the Centralized colonialists. The aim was to create chaos and turmoil. The result was pestilence, disease, and death.
Huge political issues have been left behind involving mass movement of populations from Europe to the colonies in Palestine, Azania (South Africa), Zimbabwe, Australia, New Zealand, Americas, South America. Intracable disputes were created which left the indiginous peoples to having to deal with the new realities in Palestine, Kashmir, China and many parts of Africa and Asia. Neocolonialism now takes advantage of these disputes.
The term “democracy” (which does not appear in the US contitution–se my articles on this site on how Jefferson, Madison, Hamilton and Socrates wrote reams against this invention) was coined to disenfranchise the former rulers and upset the political systems of the indigenous populations. The colonies will never forget. The invoices have been prepared and ready to be mailed. There is some glacial progress in the United Nations and other international agencies.
Barely half a century later, the colonies are mocked, goaded and made fun of because of their penury. It is like a home invasion robber taking over your house stealing everything in it, raping your daughter, stealing your bank account and your lands, and leaving the street gang in charge of the ruins and a few days later driving by in your Mercedes making fun of your poverty.
THE EFFECTS OF COLONIALISM
Ayman El Amir syas the following:
“There was a trend during the colonial era among dominated peoples to pretend, by way of desperate resignation, that their colonial rulers were more benign than others. They thanked their lucky stars that the British administration, for example, was less brutal than the French who, in turn, were more merciful than the Portuguese. As four centuries of imperialism and colonialism have proven, the atrocities and consequences of the colonial era have belied the claim of “the white man’s burden” of extending the benefits of Western civilisation to the “primitive savages” they conquered.
The fact is that colonial powers plundered the wealth of future nation- states, displaced tribal populations, carved up territories, sowed the seeds of future inter-state and tribal conflicts, reduced the indigenous population to a sub-human status and enslaved them.
When the conquerors finally departed, they left virtually nothing in place to help colonised peoples develop independent governance or a meaningful political community. The legendary statesman Kwame Nkrumah, the first president of Ghana, eloquently put it this way:
“It is far easier for the proverbial camel to pass through the needle’s eye, hump and all, than for an erstwhile colonial administration to give sound and honest counsel of a political nature to its liberated territory.”
Historically, the colonial experience leaves no doubt that all its protagonists sought to create a subject race of colonised peoples. Together with suppressive military power, the cultivation of this sense of inferiority facilitated the plundering of the colonial territories’ resources and the subjugation of their peoples. In Egypt, for example, the racist undertone of colonial rule was reflected in Lord Cromer’s memoirs, Modern Egypt.
As the British proconsul in Egypt from 1882 to 1907, Cromer denigrated Egypt’s centuries-old civilisation and multicultural tradition as “barbarous”, “coarse”, “cruel” and “lacking in harmony”. His prescription for the Egyptians was to abandon their crude cultural heritage, Pharaonic, Christian and Arab, and try to aspire to the superior ways of the civilised European colonialist. Brutal force and racist subjugation were the hallmark of colonial occupation and administration wherever invading imperial armies set foot.”
….British colonialism had its share of acts of genocide too, whether in the suppression of the Kikuyu tribes revolt in Kenya in the 1950s, the starvation of millions in India, or the Opium Wars against China in the mid-19th century, to name but a few.
The 1960 UN Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples was a watershed landmark ending the centuries-old colonial era.
Soon afterwards the US was involved in the Vietnam War that ended more than a decade later, leaving behind tens of thousands of American casualties and millions of Vietnamese dead, maimed or terminally ill by chemical defoliants. Like France, Britain and other colonial powers, the US never offered an apology to the Vietnamese people nor was it condemned for war crimes.Colonialism in all its abominable forms, whether direct military conquest or settler colonialism, has crept into the 21st century. Its cruelties are daily played out in Iraq and Palestine for the world to see and despair over.http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2007/854/op6.htm
THE BEGINING OF COLONIALISM IN THE SUBCONTINENT: The effects still remain in Bengal
Sankar Ray says the following about the begining of Colonialism in the Subcontinent:
“Two hundred and fifty years ago, on 23 June 1757, the last sovereign nawab of Bengal (which included present-day Bihar, West Bengal, Orissa and Bangladesh) was defeated on the banks of the Ganga by an army under the command of the British East India Company’s Colonel Robert Clive. The battle came to be known as the Battle of Plassey, after the mango orchard of Palashi, near Murshidabad, on which it was fought. Clive’s victory and the subsequent annexation of Bengal allowed the East India Company to strengthen its military might across India, paving the way for it to make massive economic gains – some would say plunder. “
In spite of the importance of this turning point in the region’s history, however, media pundits and historians throughout the Subcontinent showed little interest this past June in remembering the death of Nawab Mirza Muhammad Sirajuddaula (see pic), of his commanders Mir Madan and Mohanlal, or of the hundreds of soldiers who lost their lives on the day that British colonialism established its first territorial foothold on Southasian soil. Even as academics queued up in hope of publishing their essays on the mutinous events of 1857, which took place a full 100 years after the battle, the memorial in Plassey remained largely neglected. No government official deigned to lay a wreath here.
A child of the royal family of Murshidabad, then the capital of Bengal, Sirajuddaula was groomed by his maternal grandfather, Nawab Alivardi Khan, as his successor. To acquaint the 13-year-old boy with the arts of governance and martial affairs, Alivardi took him to battle against the Marathas in 1746. In May 1752, the septuagenarian nawab named Sirajuddaula his heir, splitting Bengal’s gentry along complicated lines of loyalty. With the death of Alivardi in April 1756, things took a difficult turn. The defeat of the army of the 24-year-old nawab, enthroned only 14 months earlier, was no feat of military brilliance, but rather a tale of colonial cunning.
Though discontentment within certain palace factions following Sirajuddaula’s ascension were a shot in the arm for the British, the plot for the young nawab’s overthrow had in fact been in place long beforehand. According to Robert Orme, an official historian of the East India Company, the British had prepared a blueprint for the conquest of Bengal soon after Alivardi named his successor. British private trade had been experiencing severe cash-flow problems since the late 1740s, and financial crisis had also engulfed the Mughal regime.
Bengal, in the meantime, was incredibly rich. According to official colonial records, Shaista Khan, governor of Bengal from 1664 to 1688, had amassed 640 million rupees, excluding gold and jewellery; during the early 1680s, he had even been able to give a bribe of 20 million rupees to the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb for an extension of his governorship.
In 1756, Sirajuddaula seized Calcutta. Months before Clive’s local co-conspirators were brought on board, the Council of Fort St George, the proto-colonial administration in Madras, had instructed officers of the East India Company not only to ensure the “mere retaking of Calcutta” and the payment of “ample reparations”, but “to effect a junction with any powers in the province of Bengal that might be dissatisfied with the violence of the Nawab’s government or that might have pretensions to the Nawabship.”
The rest is history.
Clive moved towards Murshidabad for a head-on clash with Sirajuddaula’s troops at the orchards of Palashi. Sirajuddaula’s commander-in-chief Mir Jafar Ali Khan, in league with the British, defected, causing the collapse of the nawab’s army. The fateful battle went on for eight hours, after which the defeated Sirajuddaula tried to flee towards Rajmahal, in present-day Jharkhand. He was captured, and eventually killed on 2 July 1757.
After Sirajuddaula’s death, Mir Jafar was installed as Nawab of Bengal. Clive, however, made it difficult for him to rule effectively, extracting a massive yearly tax from him, in addition to compensation for losses and military expenditures. The annual revenue extorted by the colonial regime from Bengal ranged between GBP 2-4 million – enough to ensure that the East India Company would be able to maintain its armed forces, and to keep the newly acquired territories under its control. Clive went on to attain knighthood, and to reward some of his other co-conspirators handsomely.
There have been some notable attempts to rescue Sirajuddaula’s reputation. Kali Kinkar Dutta (in his book Sirajuddoula), Akshay Kumar Maitreya (in a similarly titled book in Bengali) and even Rabindranath Tagore considered the nawab a gallant opponent of British colonisation. Luke Scrafton, the director of the East India Company from 1765 to 1768, joined them in their praise.
“The name of Sirajuddaula stands higher in the scale of honour than does the name of Clive,” he wrote. “He was the only one of the principal actors who did not attempt to deceive.” Scrafton added that the young Sirajuddaula had taken an oath on the Koran at Alivardi’s deathbed that he would thenceforth not touch liquor – and that he had kept his promise.
http://tinyurl.com/2ato6s
ECONOMIC APHYXIATION OF THE COLONIES:
Lal Vinay says:
”Some apologists for the British empire, whose numbers have increased rapidly in recent years under aggressive cheerleaders such as Niall Ferguson, Max Boot, and Robert Kaplan, have long argued that British colonial rule was, on balance, something of a gentlemanly affair.“
“The British liked their tea and gin and tonic, cricket and polo, and dealing with the natives was something of a nuisance. Sometime after General Dyer had shot dead at least 379 people at the Jallianwala Bagh, the British initiated an official inquiry and Dyer was brought before the Hunter commission.
In the House of Commons, Churchill thundered forth about how ‘frightfulness’ or terror of the sort in which Dyer engaged was not part of the British pharmacoepia. This is the kind of ‘evidence’ that is usually summoned forth to support the view that the British cared much about what is today called ‘accountability’ and were guided by principles of ‘fair play’. To clinch their argument, the members of the British Empire fan club never fail to mention that had Gandhi faced any foe other than the British, he would certainly have been shot dead long before he had multiple opportunities to create mischief. The apologists invite their readers to countenance the fate of Gandhi before Goebbels’s thugs and Nazi tanks”
“..a history, more precisely, of British repression, of the suffering imposed upon the Empire’s victims, and frequent resistance to colonial rule. Most histories of the British Empire have dwelled on regimes of law and order installed by the British, the bringing of the railways, roads, and telegraph to the natives, the institutionalisation of formal education, the introduction of British political traditions and institutions—not only parliamentary democracy, but law courts, an adversarial judicial system, and so on. Newsinger dispenses with the idea, which is almost like a religion to (especially Anglo) historians of the British empire, that the good must be weighed alongside the (little) evil and that the well-intentioned proconsuls and office-bearers of the Empire have not been done justice.”“What Newsinger offers instead is an annotated catalogue of British crimes, some more familiar than others. The story of the brutal suppression of the Indian Rebellion of 1857-58, for instance, has been the staple of nationalist Indian narratives and is gen erally encountered in most histories of the British empire.
The chapter on the 1940s which covers the Quit India ‘disturbances’ INA trials, and the Royal Indian Navy mutiny, is more intellectually rewarding since the historiographical focus has been largely on the Hindu-Muslim communal conflict. At the same time that Churchill was waging a valiant struggle against the Nazis and Japanese, he complained to Leo Amery, Secretary of State for India, ‘I hate Indians. They are a beastly people with a beastly religion.’ The Hindus, Churchill ob served, are a ‘foul people’, and the Royal Air Force’s surplus bombers could, in his opin ion, be suitably deployed ‘to destroy them’ Amery privately noted, ‘I didn’t see much difference between his outlook and Hitler’s.”
“Though India was doubtless Britain’ most important colony, the British were, as Newsinger amply demonstrates, ecumenical in their pursuit of dominance and, when faced with resistance, unflinching retribution. British historians are fond of dwelling on the abolition of slavery in British possessions, but Newsinger alerts us to the less frequently mentioned suppression of slave revolts by the British in their Caribbean possessions. They initiated ferocious antiinsurgency campaigns against the Malays in the 1940s, pioneering methods of ‘forced villigisation’ that would later be adopted by the Americans in Vietnam.
The Mau Mau revolt in Kenya was crushed with complete abandon, and arguably the British abandoned all restraint on the theory that African people were even less deserving than other people of any measure of dignity and respect. Nor does Newsinger at all incline to the relatively benign reading of the devastating Irish Potato famine of the 1840s, which killed a million people, as merely a consequence of ill-informed English administrative decisions and neglect. He sees the famine through the eyes of the Republican John Mitchel, who described ‘how every one of those years, ’46, ’47 and ’48, Ireland was exporting to England food to the value of 15 million pounds sterling’. Mitchel recognised genocide for what it was.”
THE ECONOMIES OF THE COLONIES SHRUNK DRAMATICALLY DURING COLONIALISM
The Subcontinent+China’s economy shrunk from quarter of Global GDP to inconsequential around 1900 was the direct result of Colonialism. According to various studies the economy of the Subcontinent went down from from 12.2% of global GDP in 1870 to 4.2% of global GDP by 1950 with almost anemic growth for forty years starting 1900.
“.. Newsinger offers instead is an annotated catalogue of British crimes, some more familiar than others. The story of the brutal suppression of the Indian Rebellion of 1857-58, for instance, has been the staple of nationalist Indian narratives and is gen erally encountered in most histories of the British empire.
The chapter on the 1940s which covers the Quit India ‘disturbances’ INA trials, and the Royal Indian Navy mutiny, is more intellectually rewarding since the historiographical focus has been largely on the Hindu-Muslim communal conflict. At the same time that Churchill was waging a valiant struggle against the Nazis and Japanese, he complained to Leo Amery, Secretary of State for India, ‘I hate Indians. They are a beastly people with a beastly religion.’ The Hindus, Churchill ob served, are a ‘foul people’, and the Royal Air Force’s surplus bombers could, in his opin ion, be suitably deployed ‘to destroy them’ Amery privately noted, ‘I didn’t see much difference between his outlook and Hitler’s”.
Vinay Lal: Publication:TOI_Kolkata; Date:Jan 14, 2007; Page Number:8
From 1857 to 1947 India’s share in the world economy fell from 18% to 3%, a six fold decrease. It is also true that British levied high taxes on agriculture, leading to disastrous famines the second half of the nineteenth century (Late Victorian Holocausts by Mike Davis). Cheap and shoddy British goods flooding Indian markets lead to the complete destruction of the Indian industries. The growth less decades of British imperialism transferred wealth to London.
http://tinyurl.com/yof8tm
In reviewing one of the seminal books on colonialism, the reviewer says:
“One of the unexpected consequences of the “War on Terror” has been an attempt to reinvent the history of the British Empire. To justify the actions of the American government around the world, it’s important to show the benovolance of previous Empires.
John Newsinger’s book has been written in response to this re-writing of history. In turn, Newsinger writes short and sharp pieces on moments and places of the British Empire. So we read how the British government decided that the free market would solve the Irish Potato famine of 1846 - resulting in a million deaths. We discover how the British murdered their way around countries from Egypt to China. How, in the interests of Free Trade they fought two brutal wars (though war is hardly the right term for such unequal conflicts) for the right to sell Opium to the Chinese, and along with this, raped, pillaged and plundered the country.”
The “Jewel in the Crown” of the Empire, India, makes for several interesting chapters. Newsinger documents how the manner of British rule led directly to the uprising of 1857. Newsinger calls the events of 1857 an uprising (his authority is no-less a figure as Benjamin Disraeli who described the war as a “National revolt”) rather than the mutiny that it is normally described as.
Newsinger argues that the brutal nature of the uprising, described with glee in the media of the time, was only brutal because it was a response to the violence of British Rule up to that point. He quotes Karl Marx, writing at the time, that however violent the action of the rebels;
“it is only the reflex, in a concentrated form, of England’s own conduct in India, not only during the epoch of the foundation of her Eastern Empire, but even during the last ten years of a long-settled rule.”
The violence of the British troops in putting down the revolt, was often glorified as bravery, worthy of many medals. This violence of course was characteristic of all of Britain’s colonial rules. From the utter brutality of the British response to the Mau Mau uprising in Kenya, to the violence vested on those in countries like Malaysia, Egypt, Iraq or China who dared to question rule from London.Newsinger’s book finishes with a reflection on the new aspect of Imperialism.
How Britain has become so linked to the new American Empire. The author argues that this is not something new, and it is actually a characteristic of Labour government policy over the years. Newsingers conclusion is hopeful; he argues that historically while Empires are brutal, they are also weak. The hope he says must be that those resisting new attempts at neo-colonialism, can eject the oppressors from their lands.
When will the British pay reparations to India, Pakistan Bangladesh and Sri Lanka for the 250 years of colonialism?
THE UN: A CASE FOR REPARATIONS
The Need to Repair the Damage: A Case for Reparations and Compensation
http://www.uctp.org/Reparations.html
Given the lengthy list of human rights abuses endured by the Indigenous Peoples of the Americas as a result of massive and flagrant violations of human rights during slavery, colonialism, wars of conquest and for contemporary forms of racism, the following outlines the case for reparations and compensation.
… Dispossession of land and waters
Since it may be impossible to return the stolen properties, the former colonial powers should pay to the Indigenous Peoples so affected, the monetary value of the properties in question.
Where Indigenous Peoples purchased Crown properties before 1934, as in the case of the former British colonies, the Government of the United Kingdom should pay compensation to the Indigenous Peoples; equivalent to the present market value of the purchased property.
… Dispossession of historical records
All historical records belonging to Indigenous Peoples, illegally obtained by the former colonial powers, should be returned with royalty payments for use; calculated from the date of seizure to the date of release.
… Dispossession of sacred and cultural objects
All such objects should be returned to the rightful owners.
… Use of historical records for financial gain
It is incumbent upon the former colonial powers, organizations and private collectors to return the historical records of the Indigenous Peoples, and with compensation.
… Use of sacred and cultural objects for financial gain
Individuals and organs holding such objects are requested to return them to their rightful owners. The removal of the remains of Indigenous Peoples dead is discouraged and where such remains are stored by individuals, organs or the State, those remains should be re-buried.
… Genocide
Little or nothing can be done by the colonial powers to absolve themselves from this “crime against humanity. The Indigenous Peoples are entitled to compensation for war damage to territorial properties.
… Ethnocide
The execution of millions of Indigenous Peoples in the Americas, deprived the cultural sustenance and robbed the region of its precious human resources.
… Slavery
Compensation must be paid to the Indigenous Peoples, commensurate to the amount of time held in servitude.
… Use of land for commercial purposes
There is no denying that the former colonial powers enriched themselves from the use of, and proceeds of the natural resources of territories belonging to the Indigenous Peoples. By so doing, the former colonial powers are requested to abide by the traditional and ancient law, paying to the Indigenous Peoples, twenty (20%) of the value of all the goods produced and extracted from the resources of their territories from 1492.
… Environmental damage to the land surface and waters
Residues of European sponsored wars for domination of the Americas have heavily polluted the waters and lands of the Indigenous Peoples of the Americas. The former colonial powers are requested to remove the waste and compensate the Indigenous Peoples.
… Violence against Indigenous Peoples’ women
The colonial male raped and impregnated many Indigenous Peoples’ women. They must be held responsible for such violent actions.
… Character assassination
The Indigenous Peoples of the Americas are known to be hospitably and peaceful peoples. The dehumanizing of them by agents of the former colonial powers is deeply rooted in the Americas. The Indigenous Peoples of the Americas are legally and morally entitled to have that true told. [6]
United Nations World Conference Against Racism Follow-Up Activities by the IAAR relating to reparations and compensation; 2003-2004.
The United Nations World Conference Against Racism Follow-up Activities organized by the International Alliance Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia And Related Intolerance, shall be executed in two phases during the period 01 December 2003 and 04 December 2004.
Phase I:
The International Meeting of Experts; 01-05 December 2003.
1. To identify the peoples who have suffered the disastrous consequences of slavery, colonialism, wars of conquest and post-slavery racism since the 1400s.
2. To discuss the historic responsibility of Nations towards the peoples, whom they subjected to slavery colonized, affected by wars of conquest and by post-slavery racism.
3. To arrive at a universal position on the issues of Reparations and Compensation for the disastrous consequences of slavery, colonialism, wars of conquest and post-slavery racism.
4. To submit the conclusions of the “International Meeting of Experts” to the United Nations General Assembly for discussions.
5. To create public awareness of the consequences of massive and flagrant human rights violations during slavery, colonialism, wars of conquest and post-slavery racism.
6. To prepare an agenda for the promotion of 2004 as: “International Year to Commemorate the Struggle against Slavery and its Abolition”.
Phase II:
The International Conference; 29 November to 04 December 2004.
1. To examine, discuss and adopt recommendations arising out of the conclusions of the “International Meeting of Experts” on massive and flagrant violations of human rights during slavery, colonialism, wars of conquest and post-slavery racism.
2. To examine, discuss and adopt recommendations arising out of the contributions of the United Nations General Assembly debate on the conclusions of the “International Meeting of Experts” on massive and flagrant violations of human rights during slavery, colonialism, wars of conquest and post-slavery racism.
3. To establish an International Participatory Mechanism for victims of massive and flagrant violations of human rights during slavery, colonialism, wars of conquest and post-slavery racism.
4. To consider proposals and make recommendations to the United Nations for the strengthening of existing International Human Rights Instruments.
5. To make recommendations for the realization of an International Negotiating Mechanism for encouraging on-going dialogue and understanding between the victims and alleged perpetrators of massive and flagrant violations of human rights during slavery, colonialism, wars of conquest and post-slavery racism.
6. To decide on the nature of the reparations; quantify the amount of compensation due; and determine the mode of distribution.
Participation
The International Meeting of Experts and the International Conference on Reparations and Compensation for Massive and Flagrant Violation of Human Rights during Slavery, Colonialism, Wars of Conquest and Post-Slavery Racism, are open to Victims, Governments, Civil Society, NGOs, Institutions and individuals. [7]
Footnote:[1] The Spanish Decree of 1511: A Turning Point in the history of the Indigenous Peoples of the Caribbean Basin.
[2] UN Press Release HR/SC/01/8; 06 August 2001.
[3] United Nations NGO Forum; South Africa; 2001 World Conference Against Racism; WCAR NGO FORUM DECLARATION AND PROGRAMME OF ACTION; 03 September 2001.
[4] United Nations World Conference Against Racism; Declaration and Programme of Action 08 September 2001.
[5] Declaration of the Indigenous Peoples of the Americas in Santiago de Chile, Chile; 04 December 2000.
[6] The Need to Repair the Damage: A Case for Reparations and Compensation.
[7] International Meeting of Experts/International Conference on Reparations and Compensation for Massive and Flagrant Violations of Human Rights during Slavery, Colonialism, Wars of Conquest for Post-Slavery Racism.
How much reparations are to be paid? Several studies have come up with numbers.
“Grasse and his Center City-based organization, the International Coalition for British Reparations, waited for the weekend of Prince Charles and the Duchess Camilla’s visit to Philadelphia in late January to announce plans for their new petition, which asks the United Kingdom’s government to pay out the world’s citizens for centuries of imperialism, war and diseases. The coalition’s plan would see the $58 trillion split out evenly at $8,350 for every living human being on the planet”
An American led “Marshall Plan” for Pakistan and Afghanistan will reduce tensions, and provide employment to the disaffected youth of the area.
HOW MUCH TO PAY?
When your last general left the Subcontinent, Pakistanis and Afghans thought that you would really leave, we would remember you for trains started by Lord delhousie’s. But you keep coming back to the Middle East and South Asia.
The main purpose of introducing railways was to “immensely increase the striking power of the military forces at every point of the Indian empire, to bring British capital and enterprise to India and to bring into the ports the produce from the interior.”
“Even in the 19thcentury technology was not the panacea that prevented defeat. Unfortunately the lessons of unmitigated disaster of “Auckland’s Folly”, (First Anglo-Afghan War 1838-42) have not been taught to the Oxbridge students. Perhaps Blair and Brown never saw Lady Butler’s famous painting of Dr William Brydon, the sole survivor, gasping his way to the British outpost in Jalalabad. This painting codified Elphinstone’s retreat from Kabul and established Afghanistan’s reputation as a graveyard for foreign armiesThe lessons learned from the defeat of Lord Curzon’s (1878-1893) “On to the Oxus” policy are not taught to the Eaton and Harrow graduates. ”
Will Britannia learn her lessons ever? Does no one in Britain read Robert Fisk anymore? The minority Northern Alliance led non-Pashtun government has been a total failure. The only way out of the Afghan quagmire for NATO is to negotiate with the Talibaan and the Pashtuns. Pakistan’s vital interests in Afghanstan have to be taken into account, and the Hindu Kush mountains cannot be used to launch terrorism into Pakistani Baluchistan.
HOW TO MAKE BRITIAN PAY? WILL THEY EVER PAY?
“NEVER SAY NEVER”; 2050 will be the year for reparations.
No nation has been forced to pay raparations when she had strength. Nations that paid repearations were the countries that were defeated–Austro Hungarian Empire, Germany, Japan and Iraq. All countreis were forced to pay reparations when they were most vulnerable. Britian is powerful and it is in her best interests to pay of the reparations when she can afford it. Else the Chinese Superpower in 2050 will be the first country to ask for reparations. India and Pakistan will not be far behind. Then the avalance will commence from Africa and the Caribbean. Todays bill of $58 Trillion will be quadrupled by that time. This will totally devastate the economy of Britian, and she will have to sell off her “colonies”, Grand Cayman Islands and others as compensation. It is in Britain’s own interests to begin paying off $1 Trillion per year to the countries so that when the Chinese are a superpower, it will be much easier to pay of the debt.
FOOLS GOLD? Pay Now or pay later! Only vulnerable populations pay reparations
THE UN RESOLUTION OF 2001 ON COLONIAL REPARATIONS
The Spanish Decree of 1511: A Turning Point in the history of the Indigenous Peoples of the Caribbean Basin. [1]
In United Nations Press Release dated 06 August 2001 entitled “Subcommission adopts resolution on responsibility, reparation for violations during slavery and colonial period”, sensing the mood of preparatory discussions and resolutions by non-governmental organizations during the process leading to the World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance, the international community was told:
“The Subcommission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights adopted unanimously this morning a resolution on recognition of responsibility and reparation for the massive and flagrant violations of human rights which constituted crimes against humanity that took place during slavery and the colonial period.
Through this measure, the Subcommission requested all the countries concerned to take initiatives which would assist, notably through debate and the provision of truthful information, in the rising of public awareness of the disastrous consequences of the periods of slavery and colonialism; requested that a process of reflection be initiated in a concerted fashion on appropriate procedures which would enable the guarantee of the implementation of this resolution; and to continue consideration of this question at its fifty-fourth session”. [2]
In a collective declaration, the United Nations NGO Forum of the World Conference Against Racism states that the slavery was a crime against humanity and a unique tragedy in the history of humanity and that its roots and bases were economic, institutional, systemic and transnational in dimension. [3] http://www.uctp.org/Reparations.html
APPENDIX AND SUPPORTING DOCUMENTS
Her are some references:This is a microcosm of the British rape of India
http://tinyurl.com/ysq6gm
and
http://tinyurl.com/yqfjv7
http://tinyurl.com/252zogAPPENDIX A
A REVIEW OF “The Blood Never Dried: A People’s History of the British Empire” JOHN NEWSINGER LONDON: BOOKMARKS
http://ellissharp.blogspot.com/2006/11/john-newsinger-blood-never-dried.html
Newsinger has three basic propositions:
Firstly, he identifies the history of the British Empire in these terms:
Whereas Britain after 1918 was a ‘satisfied’ empire, concerned to hold what it had rather than seize more, in the 19th century the British Empire, despite the liberalism of its metropolitan rulers, was a predatory empire engaged in continuous warfare. (p. 67)
Secondly, he diagnoses extreme violence as an inherent component of imperialism. Colonialism always requires police officers and soldiers, whose brutality towards the colonized is a fundamental condition of governance. There is no imperialism without repression and violence.
Thirdly, politicians and journalists have, historically, generally failed to confront the barbarism which formed an essential feature of British imperial rule, and this has been replicated by academics. Historians shy away from acknowledging the stupendous brutality of empire; often they ignore it completely. In so doing they fail to provide an adequate or reasonably objective account of Britain’s past. Newsinger’s book corrects this blind spot with a revisionist history of the British empire which focuses on native resistance to it and the extreme violence used by a supposedly civilized state to suppress it. His title echoes the words of the Chartist and socialist Ernest Jones, who in 1851 wrote of Britain, “On its colonies the sun never sets, but the blood never dries.”
Newsinger develops these three arguments over twelve chapters which analyze, in chronological order, key episodes in the history of the British Empire. These are
(1) slavery in the Caribbean
(2) the Irish famine
(3) China and the opium wars
(4) the Indian mutiny
(5) the invasion of Egypt
(6) global insurgencies against the Empire in the wake of the First World War
(7) the Palestinian uprising 1936-9
(8) the struggle for Indian independence
(9) Suez
(10) insurgency in Kenya
(11) insurgency in the Far East
(12) the subordination of the British Empire to US imperialism.
I think it’s a brilliant book. Newsinger is prodigiously well read and writes with absolute lucidity and clarity. His book is full of shocking examples of terror and atrocity.
It’s a great resource and my copy will go on the same shelf as Mark Curtis’s Web of Deceit and Robert Fisk’s The Great War for Civilisation. I’ll probably return to this book in a future post, but for the moment let me just briefly mention Newsinger’s account of the great Indian rebellion 1857-8, an insurrection which is memorialized in Trafalgar Square by the monument to Major General Sir Henry Havelock, who was in charge of the army which suppressed it.
Newsinger argues that torture was a fundamental aspect of the financial operations of British colonialism in India. Having cited the evidence for this he remarks,
What is remarkable is how little this regime of torture has figured in accounts of British rule in India. It is a hidden history that has been unremarked on and almost completely unexplored. Book after book remains silent on the subject. This most surely calls into question the whole historiography of the Raj. (p. 70)
The revolt which erupted in 1857 against British rule was, he asserts, “without doubt, one of the largest revolutionary outbreaks of the 19th century.” And it was put down with massive force and extreme violence. The mass media of the day played a crucial role in mobilising British public opinion in support of the repression. Firstly, it ran bogus horror stories, which cast the rebels as barbarians: “It was widely reported that British women had been cooked alive, forced to eat their children, horribly mutilated with noses and ears cut off and eyes put out, and stripped naked and publicly raped. These stories were untrue.” (p. 74)
Conversely, the barbarism and atrocities carried out by the British army went unreported. The horrors matched those perpetrated by the Third Reich when it rampaged through eastern Europe. Sergeant William Forbes recorded witnessing 130 men hanged from a giant banyan tree. And the intelligentsia played its part, too. Charles Dickens raged that he desired “to exterminate the race upon whom the stain of the late cruelties rested…to blot it out of mankind and raze it off the face of the earth.”
The great rebellion was crushed. But it led to the termination of the power of the East India Company and marked the beginning of the long struggle for Indian independence, proving an inspiration to later generations.
http://tinyurl.com/yvmuvg
APPENDIX B
JOHN NEWSINGER ON BRITISH ATROCITIES
Amid the recent outpouring of books and articles rehabilitating the purposes and practices of empire, two works have stood out for their unflinching scrutiny of British colonialism in Kenya. David Anderson’s Histories of the Hanged and Caroline Elkins’s Britain’s Gulag provide complementary accounts of the Mau Mau Emergency, the former an overall study of the rebellion, the latter focusing on the Kikuyu experience of repression, and in particular on the mass detention camps through which at least 160,000 Africans passed between 1952 and 1960. Anderson, a British Africanist, has mined the substantial body of court records of the Mau Mau trials preserved in the Kenya National Archive and reconstructs a detailed account of the rebellion, providing a vivid portrait of the struggle for Nairobi. His Histories of the Hanged is the best book to appear on the Kenya Emergency so far. Elkins, at Harvard, had originally intended to write ‘a history of the success of Britain’s civilizing mission in the detention camps of Kenya’ as her doctoral thesis; finding that British official records had been systematically destroyed on Kenyan independence in 1963, she was driven to attempt an oral history of the Emergency from the Kikuyu side. In her interviews with some three hundred men and women, which provide the bulk of the material for her trenchant book, she discovered an appalling catalogue of hardship, abuse, torture and murder. http://newleftreview.org/?view=2558
APPENDIX C
KARL MARX ON THE WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
Karl Marx in the New-York Tribune 1857
The Indian Revolt
——————————————————————————–
Source: New-York Daily Tribune, September 16, 1857;
Transcribed: by Tony Brown.
——————————————————————————–
London, Sept. 4, 1857
The outrages committed by the revolted Sepoys in India are indeed appalling, hideous, ineffable - such as one is prepared to meet - only in wars of insurrection, of nationalities, of races, and above all of religion; in one word, such as respectable England used to applaud when perpetrated by the Vendeans on the “Blues,” by the Spanish guerrillas on the infidel Frenchmen, by Servians on their German and Hungarian neighbors, by Croats on Viennese rebels, by Cavaignac’s Garde Mobile or Bonaparte’s Decembrists on the sons and daughters of proletarian France.
However infamous the conduct of the Sepoys, it is only the reflex, in a concentrated form, of England’s own conduct in India, not only during the epoch of the foundation of her Eastern Empire, but even during the last ten years of a long-settled rule. To characterize that rule, it suffices to say that torture formed ail organic institution of its financial policy. There is something in human history like retribution: and it is a rule of historical retribution that its instrument be forged not by the offended, but by the offender himself.
The first blow dealt to the French monarchy proceeded from the nobility, not from the peasants. The Indian revolt does not commence with the Ryots, tortured, dishonored and stripped naked by the British, but with the Sepoys, clad, fed, petted, fatted and pampered by them. To find parallels to the Sepoy atrocities, we need not, as some London papers pretend, fall back on the middle ages, not, even wander beyond the history of contemporary England. All we want is to study the first Chinese war, an event, so to say, of yesterday. The English soldiery then committed abominations for the mere fun of it; their passions being neither sanctified by religious fanaticism nor exacerbated by hatred against an overbearing and conquering race, nor provoked by the stern resistance of a heroic enemy. The violations of women, the spittings of children, the roastings of whole villages, were then mere wanton sports, not recorded by Mandarins, but by British officers themselves.
Even at the present catastrophe it would be an unmitigated mistake to suppose that all the cruelty is on the side of the Sepoys, and all the milk of human kindness flows on the side of the English. The letters of the British officers are redolent of malignity. An officer writing from Peshawur gives a description of the disarming of the 10th irregular cavalry for not charging the 55th native infantry when ordered to do so. He exults in the fact that they were not only disarmed, but stripped of their coats and boots, and after having received 12d. per man, were marched down to the river side, and there embarked in boats and sent down the Indus, where the writer is delighted to expect every mother’s son will have a chance of being drowned in the rapids. Another writer informs us that, some inhabitants of Peshawur having caused a night alarm by exploding little mines of gunpowder in honor of a wedding (a national custom), the persons concerned were tied up next morning, and “received such a flogging as they will not easily forget.”
News arrived from Pindee that three native chiefs were plotting. Sir John Lawrence replied by a message ordering a spy to attend to the meeting. On the spy’s report, Sir John sent a second message, “Hang them.” The chiefs were hanged. An officer in the civil service, from Allahabad, writes:
“We have power of life and death in our hands, and we assure you we spare not.”
Another, from the same place:
“Not a day passes but we string up front ten to fifteen of them (non-combatants).”
One exulting officer writes:
“Holmes is hanging them by the score, like a ‘brick.‘”
Another, in allusion to the summary hanging of a large body of the natives:
“Then our fun commenced.”
A third:
“We hold court-martials on horseback, and every nigger we meet with we either string up or shoot.”
From Benares we are informed that thirty Zemindars were hanged or) the mere suspicion of sympathizing with their own countrymen, and whole villages were burned down on the same plea. An officer from Benares, whose letter is printed in The London Times, says:
“The European troops have become fiends when opposed to natives.”
And then it should not be forgotten that, while the cruelties of the English are related as acts of martial vigor, told simply, rapidly, without dwelling on disgusting details, the outrages of the natives, shocking as they are, are still deliberately exaggerated. For instance, the circumstantial account first appearing in The Times, and then going the round of the London press, of the atrocities perpetrated at Delhi and Meerut, from whom did it proceed? From a cowardly parson residing at Bangalore, Mysore, more than a thousand miles, as the bird flies, distant from the scene of action. Actual accounts of Delhi evince the imagination of an English parson to be capable of breeding greater horrors than even the wild fancy of a Hindoo mutineer. The cutting of noses, breasts, &c., in one word, the horrid mutilations committed by the Sepoys, are of course more revolting to European feeling than the throwing of red-hot shell on Canton dwellings by a Secretary of the Manchester Peace Society, or the roasting of Arabs pent up in a cave by a French Marshal, or the flaying alive of British soldiers by the cat-o’-nine-tails under drum-head court-martial, or any other of the philanthropical appliances used in British penitentiary colonies. Cruelty, like every other thing, has its fashion, changing according to time and place. Caesar, the accomplished scholar, candidly narrates how he ordered many thousand Gallic warriors to have their right hands cut off. Napoleon would have been ashamed to do this. He preferred dispatching his own French regiments, suspected of republicanism, to St. Domingo, there to die of the blacks and the plague.
The infamous mutilations committed by the Sepoys remind one of the practices of the Christian Byzantine Empire, or the prescriptions of Emperor Charles V.’s criminal law, or the English punishments for high treason, as still recorded by Judge Blackstone. With Hindoos, whom their religion has made virtuosi in the art of self-torturing, these tortures inflicted on the enemies of their race and creed appear quite natural, and must appear still more so to the English, who, only some years since, still used to draw revenues from the Juggernaut festivals, protecting and assisting the bloody rites of a religion of cruelty.
The frantic roars of the “bloody old Times,” as Cobbett used to call it - its, playing the part of a furious character in one of Mozart’s operas, who indulges in most melodious strains in the idea of first hanging his enemy, then roasting him, then quartering him, then spitting him, and then flaying him alive - its tearing the passion of revenge to tatters and to rags - all this would appear but silly if under the pathos of tragedy there were not distinctly perceptible the tricks of comedy. The London Times overdoes its part, not only from panic. It supplies comedy with a subject even missed by Molière, the Tartuffe of Revenge. What it simply wants is to write up the funds and to screen the Government. As Delhi has not, like the walls of Jericho, fallen before mere puffs of wind, Jolin Bull is to be steeped in cries for revenge up to his very ears, to make him forget that his Government is responsible for the mischief hatched and the colossal dimensions it has been allowed to assume.
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1857/09/16.htm
all tell the facts that anyone worked with colonial is traitor, is pengkhianat bangsa, is bastard of the bastard!!!!!!!!
these are facts!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
read more:
East Africa: Hooray All the Heroes, Saints And Foes Outsiders Have Chosen for Us
Joachim Buwembo22 May 2011
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opinion
Nairobi — As the US and its allies go on high alert in face of an injured Al Qaeda, it would be interesting to imagine what Uganda's commander in chief would do if his security chiefs started spending more time in Taliban "madrasa" to the extent of neglecting their duties.
That is the feeling you get after reading the recently released book Mwanga II, Resistance to Imposition of British Colonial Rule In Buganda 1884 - 1899, by history professor Samwiri Lwanga Lunyiigo.
The book takes a new look at the Uganda Martyrs and the king blamed for their death. Lunyiigo's book meticulously examines archival evidence to show that the "martyrs" were executed more for political betrayal of their king than for their religious fervour.
What is more, some of these "saints" who will be feted by pilgrims from all over Africa next week on June 3, were top security chiefs whose successors holding their jobs today are generals like David Tinyefuza and Aronda Nyakairima.
St Joseph Mukasa Balikudembe was Kabaka Mwanga's chief of intelligence and St Andrea Kaggwa was deputy army commander.
They allegedly ignored the king's several warnings, even as sensitive intelligence started leaking to the enemy, like plans to deal with one Bishop Hannington who insisted on entering the kingdom using the vulnerable and prohibited eastern route through Busoga.
If Uganda's top military commanders compromised operations in the east (say, Somalia), would you blame Museveni if he threw them to a jittery court martial?
Long vilified as a killer of Christians, Mwanga actually loved Christianity more than his predecessors did.
He never killed anybody just for being Christian and, indeed, after the Namugongo "martyrdom," he appointed more Catholics to his new cabinet and gave them lots of powers.
While the "martyrs" can at best be called naïve, (rather unconvincing for security operatives) the most despicable fellows who enabled the British colonise the country were the Kabaka's top officials -- like premier Sir Apollo Kaggwa and the military turncoat commander Semei Kakungulu.
The UK government had no financial capacity to militarily conquer Uganda, which had no immediate mineral return, and had opted to abandon the costly venture.
But the ambitious missionaries insisted, to the extent of fundraising to bankroll the conquest.
Our kings, Mwanga and Kabalega were captured by African troops commanded by Baganda generals Semei Kakungulu and Andrew Lwandaga.
The British paid the Baganda traitors NOT with wealth from England, but with loot and land stolen from Buganda and Bunyoro.
The key important conclusion from Mwanga II is that colonialism was absolutely unnecessary; the so-called civilisation in the form of western education and infrastructure, were already under way before colonialism as Kabalega, Mwanga and his predecessors were keen on trading, interacting and gaining knowledge from the outside world.
Another sad myth busted is the so-called enmity between Baganda and Banyoro, cleverly fabricated by the victorious divide-and-rule writers. That some Ugandans ignorantly continue viewing Baganda as "the problem" is eloquent proof of Steve Biko's famous assertion that the oppressor's most potent weapon is the mind of the oppressed.
So we continue letting outsiders choose heroes, saints and enemies for us. No wonder Kampala still has street names like Siad Barre, Mobutu Sese Seko and Apolo Kaggwa.
Not surprisingly, Mwanga II has been published by a local venture, Wavah Books Ltd.
Joachim Buwembo is a Knight International fellow for development journalism
VVVVVVVVVVV
Forgotten claims? Forgotten heroes? Forgotten atrocities?
A People’s History of the British Empire:
A rebuttal to Furgusan, Boot, Kaplan & other Colonial aplogists.
“A conquered nation is like a man with cancer: he can think of nothing else.“ George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw was right. Those who were able to expunge the cancer of Colonialism (India, Pakistan, Nigeria) are weak and had to overcome their hemerage. Those who were unable to overcome the occupation (the Native Americans, the Mayas, Incas, the Aborigines of Australia, the original people of the Caribbean etc.) are in a coma unable to remove the parasites.
The British were responsible for the death and destruction of millions of people in South Asia. London was a shanty-town in the 15thcentury, where Benaras, Calcutta and Delhi were the epitome of cosmopolitan and tolerance, industrialization, art, music and culture. The British destroyed the local industries. ”The What Man’s Burden” was to civilize the populations and “Christianize” them. Asian and African nations were called “tribes’ and European tribes were called “nations”.
The infrastructure of Britain, the roads, railways, sewer lines, water works, subway stations, electrical grids were built on the looted gold, spices, opium, sugar cane, and oil from the colonies. Entire civilizations were reduced to slavery which destroyed the peaceful village culture of Africa and Asia. Uprooted populations were sent to the cities with improper sanitation and facilities. This led to disasters which we are living with today.
With the destruction of the village culture, the population was at the mercy of the Centralized colonialists. The aim was to create chaos and turmoil. The result was pestilence, disease, and death.
Huge political issues have been left behind involving mass movement of populations from Europe to the colonies in Palestine, Azania (South Africa), Zimbabwe, Australia, New Zealand, Americas, South America. Intracable disputes were created which left the indiginous peoples to having to deal with the new realities in Palestine, Kashmir, China and many parts of Africa and Asia. Neocolonialism now takes advantage of these disputes.
The term “democracy” (which does not appear in the US contitution–se my articles on this site on how Jefferson, Madison, Hamilton and Socrates wrote reams against this invention) was coined to disenfranchise the former rulers and upset the political systems of the indigenous populations. The colonies will never forget. The invoices have been prepared and ready to be mailed. There is some glacial progress in the United Nations and other international agencies.
Barely half a century later, the colonies are mocked, goaded and made fun of because of their penury. It is like a home invasion robber taking over your house stealing everything in it, raping your daughter, stealing your bank account and your lands, and leaving the street gang in charge of the ruins and a few days later driving by in your Mercedes making fun of your poverty.
THE EFFECTS OF COLONIALISM
Ayman El Amir syas the following:
“There was a trend during the colonial era among dominated peoples to pretend, by way of desperate resignation, that their colonial rulers were more benign than others. They thanked their lucky stars that the British administration, for example, was less brutal than the French who, in turn, were more merciful than the Portuguese. As four centuries of imperialism and colonialism have proven, the atrocities and consequences of the colonial era have belied the claim of “the white man’s burden” of extending the benefits of Western civilisation to the “primitive savages” they conquered.
The fact is that colonial powers plundered the wealth of future nation- states, displaced tribal populations, carved up territories, sowed the seeds of future inter-state and tribal conflicts, reduced the indigenous population to a sub-human status and enslaved them.
When the conquerors finally departed, they left virtually nothing in place to help colonised peoples develop independent governance or a meaningful political community. The legendary statesman Kwame Nkrumah, the first president of Ghana, eloquently put it this way:
“It is far easier for the proverbial camel to pass through the needle’s eye, hump and all, than for an erstwhile colonial administration to give sound and honest counsel of a political nature to its liberated territory.”
Historically, the colonial experience leaves no doubt that all its protagonists sought to create a subject race of colonised peoples. Together with suppressive military power, the cultivation of this sense of inferiority facilitated the plundering of the colonial territories’ resources and the subjugation of their peoples. In Egypt, for example, the racist undertone of colonial rule was reflected in Lord Cromer’s memoirs, Modern Egypt.
As the British proconsul in Egypt from 1882 to 1907, Cromer denigrated Egypt’s centuries-old civilisation and multicultural tradition as “barbarous”, “coarse”, “cruel” and “lacking in harmony”. His prescription for the Egyptians was to abandon their crude cultural heritage, Pharaonic, Christian and Arab, and try to aspire to the superior ways of the civilised European colonialist. Brutal force and racist subjugation were the hallmark of colonial occupation and administration wherever invading imperial armies set foot.”
….British colonialism had its share of acts of genocide too, whether in the suppression of the Kikuyu tribes revolt in Kenya in the 1950s, the starvation of millions in India, or the Opium Wars against China in the mid-19th century, to name but a few.
The 1960 UN Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples was a watershed landmark ending the centuries-old colonial era.
Soon afterwards the US was involved in the Vietnam War that ended more than a decade later, leaving behind tens of thousands of American casualties and millions of Vietnamese dead, maimed or terminally ill by chemical defoliants. Like France, Britain and other colonial powers, the US never offered an apology to the Vietnamese people nor was it condemned for war crimes.Colonialism in all its abominable forms, whether direct military conquest or settler colonialism, has crept into the 21st century. Its cruelties are daily played out in Iraq and Palestine for the world to see and despair over.http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2007/854/op6.htm
THE BEGINING OF COLONIALISM IN THE SUBCONTINENT: The effects still remain in Bengal
Sankar Ray says the following about the begining of Colonialism in the Subcontinent:
“Two hundred and fifty years ago, on 23 June 1757, the last sovereign nawab of Bengal (which included present-day Bihar, West Bengal, Orissa and Bangladesh) was defeated on the banks of the Ganga by an army under the command of the British East India Company’s Colonel Robert Clive. The battle came to be known as the Battle of Plassey, after the mango orchard of Palashi, near Murshidabad, on which it was fought. Clive’s victory and the subsequent annexation of Bengal allowed the East India Company to strengthen its military might across India, paving the way for it to make massive economic gains – some would say plunder. “
In spite of the importance of this turning point in the region’s history, however, media pundits and historians throughout the Subcontinent showed little interest this past June in remembering the death of Nawab Mirza Muhammad Sirajuddaula (see pic), of his commanders Mir Madan and Mohanlal, or of the hundreds of soldiers who lost their lives on the day that British colonialism established its first territorial foothold on Southasian soil. Even as academics queued up in hope of publishing their essays on the mutinous events of 1857, which took place a full 100 years after the battle, the memorial in Plassey remained largely neglected. No government official deigned to lay a wreath here.
A child of the royal family of Murshidabad, then the capital of Bengal, Sirajuddaula was groomed by his maternal grandfather, Nawab Alivardi Khan, as his successor. To acquaint the 13-year-old boy with the arts of governance and martial affairs, Alivardi took him to battle against the Marathas in 1746. In May 1752, the septuagenarian nawab named Sirajuddaula his heir, splitting Bengal’s gentry along complicated lines of loyalty. With the death of Alivardi in April 1756, things took a difficult turn. The defeat of the army of the 24-year-old nawab, enthroned only 14 months earlier, was no feat of military brilliance, but rather a tale of colonial cunning.
Though discontentment within certain palace factions following Sirajuddaula’s ascension were a shot in the arm for the British, the plot for the young nawab’s overthrow had in fact been in place long beforehand. According to Robert Orme, an official historian of the East India Company, the British had prepared a blueprint for the conquest of Bengal soon after Alivardi named his successor. British private trade had been experiencing severe cash-flow problems since the late 1740s, and financial crisis had also engulfed the Mughal regime.
Bengal, in the meantime, was incredibly rich. According to official colonial records, Shaista Khan, governor of Bengal from 1664 to 1688, had amassed 640 million rupees, excluding gold and jewellery; during the early 1680s, he had even been able to give a bribe of 20 million rupees to the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb for an extension of his governorship.
In 1756, Sirajuddaula seized Calcutta. Months before Clive’s local co-conspirators were brought on board, the Council of Fort St George, the proto-colonial administration in Madras, had instructed officers of the East India Company not only to ensure the “mere retaking of Calcutta” and the payment of “ample reparations”, but “to effect a junction with any powers in the province of Bengal that might be dissatisfied with the violence of the Nawab’s government or that might have pretensions to the Nawabship.”
The rest is history.
Clive moved towards Murshidabad for a head-on clash with Sirajuddaula’s troops at the orchards of Palashi. Sirajuddaula’s commander-in-chief Mir Jafar Ali Khan, in league with the British, defected, causing the collapse of the nawab’s army. The fateful battle went on for eight hours, after which the defeated Sirajuddaula tried to flee towards Rajmahal, in present-day Jharkhand. He was captured, and eventually killed on 2 July 1757.
After Sirajuddaula’s death, Mir Jafar was installed as Nawab of Bengal. Clive, however, made it difficult for him to rule effectively, extracting a massive yearly tax from him, in addition to compensation for losses and military expenditures. The annual revenue extorted by the colonial regime from Bengal ranged between GBP 2-4 million – enough to ensure that the East India Company would be able to maintain its armed forces, and to keep the newly acquired territories under its control. Clive went on to attain knighthood, and to reward some of his other co-conspirators handsomely.
There have been some notable attempts to rescue Sirajuddaula’s reputation. Kali Kinkar Dutta (in his book Sirajuddoula), Akshay Kumar Maitreya (in a similarly titled book in Bengali) and even Rabindranath Tagore considered the nawab a gallant opponent of British colonisation. Luke Scrafton, the director of the East India Company from 1765 to 1768, joined them in their praise.
“The name of Sirajuddaula stands higher in the scale of honour than does the name of Clive,” he wrote. “He was the only one of the principal actors who did not attempt to deceive.” Scrafton added that the young Sirajuddaula had taken an oath on the Koran at Alivardi’s deathbed that he would thenceforth not touch liquor – and that he had kept his promise.
http://tinyurl.com/2ato6s
ECONOMIC APHYXIATION OF THE COLONIES:
Lal Vinay says:
”Some apologists for the British empire, whose numbers have increased rapidly in recent years under aggressive cheerleaders such as Niall Ferguson, Max Boot, and Robert Kaplan, have long argued that British colonial rule was, on balance, something of a gentlemanly affair.“
“The British liked their tea and gin and tonic, cricket and polo, and dealing with the natives was something of a nuisance. Sometime after General Dyer had shot dead at least 379 people at the Jallianwala Bagh, the British initiated an official inquiry and Dyer was brought before the Hunter commission.
In the House of Commons, Churchill thundered forth about how ‘frightfulness’ or terror of the sort in which Dyer engaged was not part of the British pharmacoepia. This is the kind of ‘evidence’ that is usually summoned forth to support the view that the British cared much about what is today called ‘accountability’ and were guided by principles of ‘fair play’. To clinch their argument, the members of the British Empire fan club never fail to mention that had Gandhi faced any foe other than the British, he would certainly have been shot dead long before he had multiple opportunities to create mischief. The apologists invite their readers to countenance the fate of Gandhi before Goebbels’s thugs and Nazi tanks”
“..a history, more precisely, of British repression, of the suffering imposed upon the Empire’s victims, and frequent resistance to colonial rule. Most histories of the British Empire have dwelled on regimes of law and order installed by the British, the bringing of the railways, roads, and telegraph to the natives, the institutionalisation of formal education, the introduction of British political traditions and institutions—not only parliamentary democracy, but law courts, an adversarial judicial system, and so on. Newsinger dispenses with the idea, which is almost like a religion to (especially Anglo) historians of the British empire, that the good must be weighed alongside the (little) evil and that the well-intentioned proconsuls and office-bearers of the Empire have not been done justice.”“What Newsinger offers instead is an annotated catalogue of British crimes, some more familiar than others. The story of the brutal suppression of the Indian Rebellion of 1857-58, for instance, has been the staple of nationalist Indian narratives and is gen erally encountered in most histories of the British empire.
The chapter on the 1940s which covers the Quit India ‘disturbances’ INA trials, and the Royal Indian Navy mutiny, is more intellectually rewarding since the historiographical focus has been largely on the Hindu-Muslim communal conflict. At the same time that Churchill was waging a valiant struggle against the Nazis and Japanese, he complained to Leo Amery, Secretary of State for India, ‘I hate Indians. They are a beastly people with a beastly religion.’ The Hindus, Churchill ob served, are a ‘foul people’, and the Royal Air Force’s surplus bombers could, in his opin ion, be suitably deployed ‘to destroy them’ Amery privately noted, ‘I didn’t see much difference between his outlook and Hitler’s.”
“Though India was doubtless Britain’ most important colony, the British were, as Newsinger amply demonstrates, ecumenical in their pursuit of dominance and, when faced with resistance, unflinching retribution. British historians are fond of dwelling on the abolition of slavery in British possessions, but Newsinger alerts us to the less frequently mentioned suppression of slave revolts by the British in their Caribbean possessions. They initiated ferocious antiinsurgency campaigns against the Malays in the 1940s, pioneering methods of ‘forced villigisation’ that would later be adopted by the Americans in Vietnam.
The Mau Mau revolt in Kenya was crushed with complete abandon, and arguably the British abandoned all restraint on the theory that African people were even less deserving than other people of any measure of dignity and respect. Nor does Newsinger at all incline to the relatively benign reading of the devastating Irish Potato famine of the 1840s, which killed a million people, as merely a consequence of ill-informed English administrative decisions and neglect. He sees the famine through the eyes of the Republican John Mitchel, who described ‘how every one of those years, ’46, ’47 and ’48, Ireland was exporting to England food to the value of 15 million pounds sterling’. Mitchel recognised genocide for what it was.”
THE ECONOMIES OF THE COLONIES SHRUNK DRAMATICALLY DURING COLONIALISM
The Subcontinent+China’s economy shrunk from quarter of Global GDP to inconsequential around 1900 was the direct result of Colonialism. According to various studies the economy of the Subcontinent went down from from 12.2% of global GDP in 1870 to 4.2% of global GDP by 1950 with almost anemic growth for forty years starting 1900.
“.. Newsinger offers instead is an annotated catalogue of British crimes, some more familiar than others. The story of the brutal suppression of the Indian Rebellion of 1857-58, for instance, has been the staple of nationalist Indian narratives and is gen erally encountered in most histories of the British empire.
The chapter on the 1940s which covers the Quit India ‘disturbances’ INA trials, and the Royal Indian Navy mutiny, is more intellectually rewarding since the historiographical focus has been largely on the Hindu-Muslim communal conflict. At the same time that Churchill was waging a valiant struggle against the Nazis and Japanese, he complained to Leo Amery, Secretary of State for India, ‘I hate Indians. They are a beastly people with a beastly religion.’ The Hindus, Churchill ob served, are a ‘foul people’, and the Royal Air Force’s surplus bombers could, in his opin ion, be suitably deployed ‘to destroy them’ Amery privately noted, ‘I didn’t see much difference between his outlook and Hitler’s”.
Vinay Lal: Publication:TOI_Kolkata; Date:Jan 14, 2007; Page Number:8
From 1857 to 1947 India’s share in the world economy fell from 18% to 3%, a six fold decrease. It is also true that British levied high taxes on agriculture, leading to disastrous famines the second half of the nineteenth century (Late Victorian Holocausts by Mike Davis). Cheap and shoddy British goods flooding Indian markets lead to the complete destruction of the Indian industries. The growth less decades of British imperialism transferred wealth to London.
http://tinyurl.com/yof8tm
In reviewing one of the seminal books on colonialism, the reviewer says:
“One of the unexpected consequences of the “War on Terror” has been an attempt to reinvent the history of the British Empire. To justify the actions of the American government around the world, it’s important to show the benovolance of previous Empires.
John Newsinger’s book has been written in response to this re-writing of history. In turn, Newsinger writes short and sharp pieces on moments and places of the British Empire. So we read how the British government decided that the free market would solve the Irish Potato famine of 1846 - resulting in a million deaths. We discover how the British murdered their way around countries from Egypt to China. How, in the interests of Free Trade they fought two brutal wars (though war is hardly the right term for such unequal conflicts) for the right to sell Opium to the Chinese, and along with this, raped, pillaged and plundered the country.”
The “Jewel in the Crown” of the Empire, India, makes for several interesting chapters. Newsinger documents how the manner of British rule led directly to the uprising of 1857. Newsinger calls the events of 1857 an uprising (his authority is no-less a figure as Benjamin Disraeli who described the war as a “National revolt”) rather than the mutiny that it is normally described as.
Newsinger argues that the brutal nature of the uprising, described with glee in the media of the time, was only brutal because it was a response to the violence of British Rule up to that point. He quotes Karl Marx, writing at the time, that however violent the action of the rebels;
“it is only the reflex, in a concentrated form, of England’s own conduct in India, not only during the epoch of the foundation of her Eastern Empire, but even during the last ten years of a long-settled rule.”
The violence of the British troops in putting down the revolt, was often glorified as bravery, worthy of many medals. This violence of course was characteristic of all of Britain’s colonial rules. From the utter brutality of the British response to the Mau Mau uprising in Kenya, to the violence vested on those in countries like Malaysia, Egypt, Iraq or China who dared to question rule from London.Newsinger’s book finishes with a reflection on the new aspect of Imperialism.
How Britain has become so linked to the new American Empire. The author argues that this is not something new, and it is actually a characteristic of Labour government policy over the years. Newsingers conclusion is hopeful; he argues that historically while Empires are brutal, they are also weak. The hope he says must be that those resisting new attempts at neo-colonialism, can eject the oppressors from their lands.
When will the British pay reparations to India, Pakistan Bangladesh and Sri Lanka for the 250 years of colonialism?
THE UN: A CASE FOR REPARATIONS
The Need to Repair the Damage: A Case for Reparations and Compensation
http://www.uctp.org/Reparations.html
Given the lengthy list of human rights abuses endured by the Indigenous Peoples of the Americas as a result of massive and flagrant violations of human rights during slavery, colonialism, wars of conquest and for contemporary forms of racism, the following outlines the case for reparations and compensation.
… Dispossession of land and waters
Since it may be impossible to return the stolen properties, the former colonial powers should pay to the Indigenous Peoples so affected, the monetary value of the properties in question.
Where Indigenous Peoples purchased Crown properties before 1934, as in the case of the former British colonies, the Government of the United Kingdom should pay compensation to the Indigenous Peoples; equivalent to the present market value of the purchased property.
… Dispossession of historical records
All historical records belonging to Indigenous Peoples, illegally obtained by the former colonial powers, should be returned with royalty payments for use; calculated from the date of seizure to the date of release.
… Dispossession of sacred and cultural objects
All such objects should be returned to the rightful owners.
… Use of historical records for financial gain
It is incumbent upon the former colonial powers, organizations and private collectors to return the historical records of the Indigenous Peoples, and with compensation.
… Use of sacred and cultural objects for financial gain
Individuals and organs holding such objects are requested to return them to their rightful owners. The removal of the remains of Indigenous Peoples dead is discouraged and where such remains are stored by individuals, organs or the State, those remains should be re-buried.
… Genocide
Little or nothing can be done by the colonial powers to absolve themselves from this “crime against humanity. The Indigenous Peoples are entitled to compensation for war damage to territorial properties.
… Ethnocide
The execution of millions of Indigenous Peoples in the Americas, deprived the cultural sustenance and robbed the region of its precious human resources.
… Slavery
Compensation must be paid to the Indigenous Peoples, commensurate to the amount of time held in servitude.
… Use of land for commercial purposes
There is no denying that the former colonial powers enriched themselves from the use of, and proceeds of the natural resources of territories belonging to the Indigenous Peoples. By so doing, the former colonial powers are requested to abide by the traditional and ancient law, paying to the Indigenous Peoples, twenty (20%) of the value of all the goods produced and extracted from the resources of their territories from 1492.
… Environmental damage to the land surface and waters
Residues of European sponsored wars for domination of the Americas have heavily polluted the waters and lands of the Indigenous Peoples of the Americas. The former colonial powers are requested to remove the waste and compensate the Indigenous Peoples.
… Violence against Indigenous Peoples’ women
The colonial male raped and impregnated many Indigenous Peoples’ women. They must be held responsible for such violent actions.
… Character assassination
The Indigenous Peoples of the Americas are known to be hospitably and peaceful peoples. The dehumanizing of them by agents of the former colonial powers is deeply rooted in the Americas. The Indigenous Peoples of the Americas are legally and morally entitled to have that true told. [6]
United Nations World Conference Against Racism Follow-Up Activities by the IAAR relating to reparations and compensation; 2003-2004.
The United Nations World Conference Against Racism Follow-up Activities organized by the International Alliance Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia And Related Intolerance, shall be executed in two phases during the period 01 December 2003 and 04 December 2004.
Phase I:
The International Meeting of Experts; 01-05 December 2003.
1. To identify the peoples who have suffered the disastrous consequences of slavery, colonialism, wars of conquest and post-slavery racism since the 1400s.
2. To discuss the historic responsibility of Nations towards the peoples, whom they subjected to slavery colonized, affected by wars of conquest and by post-slavery racism.
3. To arrive at a universal position on the issues of Reparations and Compensation for the disastrous consequences of slavery, colonialism, wars of conquest and post-slavery racism.
4. To submit the conclusions of the “International Meeting of Experts” to the United Nations General Assembly for discussions.
5. To create public awareness of the consequences of massive and flagrant human rights violations during slavery, colonialism, wars of conquest and post-slavery racism.
6. To prepare an agenda for the promotion of 2004 as: “International Year to Commemorate the Struggle against Slavery and its Abolition”.
Phase II:
The International Conference; 29 November to 04 December 2004.
1. To examine, discuss and adopt recommendations arising out of the conclusions of the “International Meeting of Experts” on massive and flagrant violations of human rights during slavery, colonialism, wars of conquest and post-slavery racism.
2. To examine, discuss and adopt recommendations arising out of the contributions of the United Nations General Assembly debate on the conclusions of the “International Meeting of Experts” on massive and flagrant violations of human rights during slavery, colonialism, wars of conquest and post-slavery racism.
3. To establish an International Participatory Mechanism for victims of massive and flagrant violations of human rights during slavery, colonialism, wars of conquest and post-slavery racism.
4. To consider proposals and make recommendations to the United Nations for the strengthening of existing International Human Rights Instruments.
5. To make recommendations for the realization of an International Negotiating Mechanism for encouraging on-going dialogue and understanding between the victims and alleged perpetrators of massive and flagrant violations of human rights during slavery, colonialism, wars of conquest and post-slavery racism.
6. To decide on the nature of the reparations; quantify the amount of compensation due; and determine the mode of distribution.
Participation
The International Meeting of Experts and the International Conference on Reparations and Compensation for Massive and Flagrant Violation of Human Rights during Slavery, Colonialism, Wars of Conquest and Post-Slavery Racism, are open to Victims, Governments, Civil Society, NGOs, Institutions and individuals. [7]
Footnote:[1] The Spanish Decree of 1511: A Turning Point in the history of the Indigenous Peoples of the Caribbean Basin.
[2] UN Press Release HR/SC/01/8; 06 August 2001.
[3] United Nations NGO Forum; South Africa; 2001 World Conference Against Racism; WCAR NGO FORUM DECLARATION AND PROGRAMME OF ACTION; 03 September 2001.
[4] United Nations World Conference Against Racism; Declaration and Programme of Action 08 September 2001.
[5] Declaration of the Indigenous Peoples of the Americas in Santiago de Chile, Chile; 04 December 2000.
[6] The Need to Repair the Damage: A Case for Reparations and Compensation.
[7] International Meeting of Experts/International Conference on Reparations and Compensation for Massive and Flagrant Violations of Human Rights during Slavery, Colonialism, Wars of Conquest for Post-Slavery Racism.
How much reparations are to be paid? Several studies have come up with numbers.
“Grasse and his Center City-based organization, the International Coalition for British Reparations, waited for the weekend of Prince Charles and the Duchess Camilla’s visit to Philadelphia in late January to announce plans for their new petition, which asks the United Kingdom’s government to pay out the world’s citizens for centuries of imperialism, war and diseases. The coalition’s plan would see the $58 trillion split out evenly at $8,350 for every living human being on the planet”
An American led “Marshall Plan” for Pakistan and Afghanistan will reduce tensions, and provide employment to the disaffected youth of the area.
HOW MUCH TO PAY?
When your last general left the Subcontinent, Pakistanis and Afghans thought that you would really leave, we would remember you for trains started by Lord delhousie’s. But you keep coming back to the Middle East and South Asia.
The main purpose of introducing railways was to “immensely increase the striking power of the military forces at every point of the Indian empire, to bring British capital and enterprise to India and to bring into the ports the produce from the interior.”
“Even in the 19thcentury technology was not the panacea that prevented defeat. Unfortunately the lessons of unmitigated disaster of “Auckland’s Folly”, (First Anglo-Afghan War 1838-42) have not been taught to the Oxbridge students. Perhaps Blair and Brown never saw Lady Butler’s famous painting of Dr William Brydon, the sole survivor, gasping his way to the British outpost in Jalalabad. This painting codified Elphinstone’s retreat from Kabul and established Afghanistan’s reputation as a graveyard for foreign armiesThe lessons learned from the defeat of Lord Curzon’s (1878-1893) “On to the Oxus” policy are not taught to the Eaton and Harrow graduates. ”
Will Britannia learn her lessons ever? Does no one in Britain read Robert Fisk anymore? The minority Northern Alliance led non-Pashtun government has been a total failure. The only way out of the Afghan quagmire for NATO is to negotiate with the Talibaan and the Pashtuns. Pakistan’s vital interests in Afghanstan have to be taken into account, and the Hindu Kush mountains cannot be used to launch terrorism into Pakistani Baluchistan.
HOW TO MAKE BRITIAN PAY? WILL THEY EVER PAY?
“NEVER SAY NEVER”; 2050 will be the year for reparations.
No nation has been forced to pay raparations when she had strength. Nations that paid repearations were the countries that were defeated–Austro Hungarian Empire, Germany, Japan and Iraq. All countreis were forced to pay reparations when they were most vulnerable. Britian is powerful and it is in her best interests to pay of the reparations when she can afford it. Else the Chinese Superpower in 2050 will be the first country to ask for reparations. India and Pakistan will not be far behind. Then the avalance will commence from Africa and the Caribbean. Todays bill of $58 Trillion will be quadrupled by that time. This will totally devastate the economy of Britian, and she will have to sell off her “colonies”, Grand Cayman Islands and others as compensation. It is in Britain’s own interests to begin paying off $1 Trillion per year to the countries so that when the Chinese are a superpower, it will be much easier to pay of the debt.
FOOLS GOLD? Pay Now or pay later! Only vulnerable populations pay reparations
THE UN RESOLUTION OF 2001 ON COLONIAL REPARATIONS
The Spanish Decree of 1511: A Turning Point in the history of the Indigenous Peoples of the Caribbean Basin. [1]
In United Nations Press Release dated 06 August 2001 entitled “Subcommission adopts resolution on responsibility, reparation for violations during slavery and colonial period”, sensing the mood of preparatory discussions and resolutions by non-governmental organizations during the process leading to the World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance, the international community was told:
“The Subcommission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights adopted unanimously this morning a resolution on recognition of responsibility and reparation for the massive and flagrant violations of human rights which constituted crimes against humanity that took place during slavery and the colonial period.
Through this measure, the Subcommission requested all the countries concerned to take initiatives which would assist, notably through debate and the provision of truthful information, in the rising of public awareness of the disastrous consequences of the periods of slavery and colonialism; requested that a process of reflection be initiated in a concerted fashion on appropriate procedures which would enable the guarantee of the implementation of this resolution; and to continue consideration of this question at its fifty-fourth session”. [2]
In a collective declaration, the United Nations NGO Forum of the World Conference Against Racism states that the slavery was a crime against humanity and a unique tragedy in the history of humanity and that its roots and bases were economic, institutional, systemic and transnational in dimension. [3] http://www.uctp.org/Reparations.html
APPENDIX AND SUPPORTING DOCUMENTS
Her are some references:This is a microcosm of the British rape of India
http://tinyurl.com/ysq6gm
and
http://tinyurl.com/yqfjv7
http://tinyurl.com/252zogAPPENDIX A
A REVIEW OF “The Blood Never Dried: A People’s History of the British Empire” JOHN NEWSINGER LONDON: BOOKMARKS
http://ellissharp.blogspot.com/2006/11/john-newsinger-blood-never-dried.html
Newsinger has three basic propositions:
Firstly, he identifies the history of the British Empire in these terms:
Whereas Britain after 1918 was a ‘satisfied’ empire, concerned to hold what it had rather than seize more, in the 19th century the British Empire, despite the liberalism of its metropolitan rulers, was a predatory empire engaged in continuous warfare. (p. 67)
Secondly, he diagnoses extreme violence as an inherent component of imperialism. Colonialism always requires police officers and soldiers, whose brutality towards the colonized is a fundamental condition of governance. There is no imperialism without repression and violence.
Thirdly, politicians and journalists have, historically, generally failed to confront the barbarism which formed an essential feature of British imperial rule, and this has been replicated by academics. Historians shy away from acknowledging the stupendous brutality of empire; often they ignore it completely. In so doing they fail to provide an adequate or reasonably objective account of Britain’s past. Newsinger’s book corrects this blind spot with a revisionist history of the British empire which focuses on native resistance to it and the extreme violence used by a supposedly civilized state to suppress it. His title echoes the words of the Chartist and socialist Ernest Jones, who in 1851 wrote of Britain, “On its colonies the sun never sets, but the blood never dries.”
Newsinger develops these three arguments over twelve chapters which analyze, in chronological order, key episodes in the history of the British Empire. These are
(1) slavery in the Caribbean
(2) the Irish famine
(3) China and the opium wars
(4) the Indian mutiny
(5) the invasion of Egypt
(6) global insurgencies against the Empire in the wake of the First World War
(7) the Palestinian uprising 1936-9
(8) the struggle for Indian independence
(9) Suez
(10) insurgency in Kenya
(11) insurgency in the Far East
(12) the subordination of the British Empire to US imperialism.
I think it’s a brilliant book. Newsinger is prodigiously well read and writes with absolute lucidity and clarity. His book is full of shocking examples of terror and atrocity.
It’s a great resource and my copy will go on the same shelf as Mark Curtis’s Web of Deceit and Robert Fisk’s The Great War for Civilisation. I’ll probably return to this book in a future post, but for the moment let me just briefly mention Newsinger’s account of the great Indian rebellion 1857-8, an insurrection which is memorialized in Trafalgar Square by the monument to Major General Sir Henry Havelock, who was in charge of the army which suppressed it.
Newsinger argues that torture was a fundamental aspect of the financial operations of British colonialism in India. Having cited the evidence for this he remarks,
What is remarkable is how little this regime of torture has figured in accounts of British rule in India. It is a hidden history that has been unremarked on and almost completely unexplored. Book after book remains silent on the subject. This most surely calls into question the whole historiography of the Raj. (p. 70)
The revolt which erupted in 1857 against British rule was, he asserts, “without doubt, one of the largest revolutionary outbreaks of the 19th century.” And it was put down with massive force and extreme violence. The mass media of the day played a crucial role in mobilising British public opinion in support of the repression. Firstly, it ran bogus horror stories, which cast the rebels as barbarians: “It was widely reported that British women had been cooked alive, forced to eat their children, horribly mutilated with noses and ears cut off and eyes put out, and stripped naked and publicly raped. These stories were untrue.” (p. 74)
Conversely, the barbarism and atrocities carried out by the British army went unreported. The horrors matched those perpetrated by the Third Reich when it rampaged through eastern Europe. Sergeant William Forbes recorded witnessing 130 men hanged from a giant banyan tree. And the intelligentsia played its part, too. Charles Dickens raged that he desired “to exterminate the race upon whom the stain of the late cruelties rested…to blot it out of mankind and raze it off the face of the earth.”
The great rebellion was crushed. But it led to the termination of the power of the East India Company and marked the beginning of the long struggle for Indian independence, proving an inspiration to later generations.
http://tinyurl.com/yvmuvg
APPENDIX B
JOHN NEWSINGER ON BRITISH ATROCITIES
Amid the recent outpouring of books and articles rehabilitating the purposes and practices of empire, two works have stood out for their unflinching scrutiny of British colonialism in Kenya. David Anderson’s Histories of the Hanged and Caroline Elkins’s Britain’s Gulag provide complementary accounts of the Mau Mau Emergency, the former an overall study of the rebellion, the latter focusing on the Kikuyu experience of repression, and in particular on the mass detention camps through which at least 160,000 Africans passed between 1952 and 1960. Anderson, a British Africanist, has mined the substantial body of court records of the Mau Mau trials preserved in the Kenya National Archive and reconstructs a detailed account of the rebellion, providing a vivid portrait of the struggle for Nairobi. His Histories of the Hanged is the best book to appear on the Kenya Emergency so far. Elkins, at Harvard, had originally intended to write ‘a history of the success of Britain’s civilizing mission in the detention camps of Kenya’ as her doctoral thesis; finding that British official records had been systematically destroyed on Kenyan independence in 1963, she was driven to attempt an oral history of the Emergency from the Kikuyu side. In her interviews with some three hundred men and women, which provide the bulk of the material for her trenchant book, she discovered an appalling catalogue of hardship, abuse, torture and murder. http://newleftreview.org/?view=2558
APPENDIX C
KARL MARX ON THE WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
Karl Marx in the New-York Tribune 1857
The Indian Revolt
——————————————————————————–
Source: New-York Daily Tribune, September 16, 1857;
Transcribed: by Tony Brown.
——————————————————————————–
London, Sept. 4, 1857
The outrages committed by the revolted Sepoys in India are indeed appalling, hideous, ineffable - such as one is prepared to meet - only in wars of insurrection, of nationalities, of races, and above all of religion; in one word, such as respectable England used to applaud when perpetrated by the Vendeans on the “Blues,” by the Spanish guerrillas on the infidel Frenchmen, by Servians on their German and Hungarian neighbors, by Croats on Viennese rebels, by Cavaignac’s Garde Mobile or Bonaparte’s Decembrists on the sons and daughters of proletarian France.
However infamous the conduct of the Sepoys, it is only the reflex, in a concentrated form, of England’s own conduct in India, not only during the epoch of the foundation of her Eastern Empire, but even during the last ten years of a long-settled rule. To characterize that rule, it suffices to say that torture formed ail organic institution of its financial policy. There is something in human history like retribution: and it is a rule of historical retribution that its instrument be forged not by the offended, but by the offender himself.
The first blow dealt to the French monarchy proceeded from the nobility, not from the peasants. The Indian revolt does not commence with the Ryots, tortured, dishonored and stripped naked by the British, but with the Sepoys, clad, fed, petted, fatted and pampered by them. To find parallels to the Sepoy atrocities, we need not, as some London papers pretend, fall back on the middle ages, not, even wander beyond the history of contemporary England. All we want is to study the first Chinese war, an event, so to say, of yesterday. The English soldiery then committed abominations for the mere fun of it; their passions being neither sanctified by religious fanaticism nor exacerbated by hatred against an overbearing and conquering race, nor provoked by the stern resistance of a heroic enemy. The violations of women, the spittings of children, the roastings of whole villages, were then mere wanton sports, not recorded by Mandarins, but by British officers themselves.
Even at the present catastrophe it would be an unmitigated mistake to suppose that all the cruelty is on the side of the Sepoys, and all the milk of human kindness flows on the side of the English. The letters of the British officers are redolent of malignity. An officer writing from Peshawur gives a description of the disarming of the 10th irregular cavalry for not charging the 55th native infantry when ordered to do so. He exults in the fact that they were not only disarmed, but stripped of their coats and boots, and after having received 12d. per man, were marched down to the river side, and there embarked in boats and sent down the Indus, where the writer is delighted to expect every mother’s son will have a chance of being drowned in the rapids. Another writer informs us that, some inhabitants of Peshawur having caused a night alarm by exploding little mines of gunpowder in honor of a wedding (a national custom), the persons concerned were tied up next morning, and “received such a flogging as they will not easily forget.”
News arrived from Pindee that three native chiefs were plotting. Sir John Lawrence replied by a message ordering a spy to attend to the meeting. On the spy’s report, Sir John sent a second message, “Hang them.” The chiefs were hanged. An officer in the civil service, from Allahabad, writes:
“We have power of life and death in our hands, and we assure you we spare not.”
Another, from the same place:
“Not a day passes but we string up front ten to fifteen of them (non-combatants).”
One exulting officer writes:
“Holmes is hanging them by the score, like a ‘brick.‘”
Another, in allusion to the summary hanging of a large body of the natives:
“Then our fun commenced.”
A third:
“We hold court-martials on horseback, and every nigger we meet with we either string up or shoot.”
From Benares we are informed that thirty Zemindars were hanged or) the mere suspicion of sympathizing with their own countrymen, and whole villages were burned down on the same plea. An officer from Benares, whose letter is printed in The London Times, says:
“The European troops have become fiends when opposed to natives.”
And then it should not be forgotten that, while the cruelties of the English are related as acts of martial vigor, told simply, rapidly, without dwelling on disgusting details, the outrages of the natives, shocking as they are, are still deliberately exaggerated. For instance, the circumstantial account first appearing in The Times, and then going the round of the London press, of the atrocities perpetrated at Delhi and Meerut, from whom did it proceed? From a cowardly parson residing at Bangalore, Mysore, more than a thousand miles, as the bird flies, distant from the scene of action. Actual accounts of Delhi evince the imagination of an English parson to be capable of breeding greater horrors than even the wild fancy of a Hindoo mutineer. The cutting of noses, breasts, &c., in one word, the horrid mutilations committed by the Sepoys, are of course more revolting to European feeling than the throwing of red-hot shell on Canton dwellings by a Secretary of the Manchester Peace Society, or the roasting of Arabs pent up in a cave by a French Marshal, or the flaying alive of British soldiers by the cat-o’-nine-tails under drum-head court-martial, or any other of the philanthropical appliances used in British penitentiary colonies. Cruelty, like every other thing, has its fashion, changing according to time and place. Caesar, the accomplished scholar, candidly narrates how he ordered many thousand Gallic warriors to have their right hands cut off. Napoleon would have been ashamed to do this. He preferred dispatching his own French regiments, suspected of republicanism, to St. Domingo, there to die of the blacks and the plague.
The infamous mutilations committed by the Sepoys remind one of the practices of the Christian Byzantine Empire, or the prescriptions of Emperor Charles V.’s criminal law, or the English punishments for high treason, as still recorded by Judge Blackstone. With Hindoos, whom their religion has made virtuosi in the art of self-torturing, these tortures inflicted on the enemies of their race and creed appear quite natural, and must appear still more so to the English, who, only some years since, still used to draw revenues from the Juggernaut festivals, protecting and assisting the bloody rites of a religion of cruelty.
The frantic roars of the “bloody old Times,” as Cobbett used to call it - its, playing the part of a furious character in one of Mozart’s operas, who indulges in most melodious strains in the idea of first hanging his enemy, then roasting him, then quartering him, then spitting him, and then flaying him alive - its tearing the passion of revenge to tatters and to rags - all this would appear but silly if under the pathos of tragedy there were not distinctly perceptible the tricks of comedy. The London Times overdoes its part, not only from panic. It supplies comedy with a subject even missed by Molière, the Tartuffe of Revenge. What it simply wants is to write up the funds and to screen the Government. As Delhi has not, like the walls of Jericho, fallen before mere puffs of wind, Jolin Bull is to be steeped in cries for revenge up to his very ears, to make him forget that his Government is responsible for the mischief hatched and the colossal dimensions it has been allowed to assume.
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1857/09/16.htm
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