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The latest in the
chain to "admit" a guilt comes Jack Straw. The British foreign secretary said,
"we made some quite serious mistakes" and that the Kashmir problem was a bad
"consequence" of Britain’s "colonial past." Such confessions are not considered
apologies, though tendering apologies are not a rare phenomenon in international
bourgeois politics and state-to-state relations.
Japan apologized to
China for its crimes committed against the Chinese people before and during the
Second World War and pledged that such a thing "will never happen again." The
French imperialists admitted that they had carried on wide spread human rights
violations against the Algerian people during the Algerian war of liberation.
When an ex-general recently defended his actions in Algeria and termed them as
the then "national" need of the French imperialist interests he was criticised
by the French rulers. Many a German Nazi criminals apologized for their crimes
during trials throughout the world. The most notorious apology has been one of
Japanese atrocities on Korean women whom they used during the WW2 as "comfort
women." The Australian government too has admitted to the "historical injustice"
done to the Australian aborigines. The white settlers had committed wholesale
mass murders of the Australian tribes in the wake of white occupation of the
continent.
No doubt, all these
apologies come to a naught when the situation changes and these become plain
lies. Seoul city is still a den of prostitution for the business executives and
the US soldiers. Blatant coercion has given way to the glitter of money. Neo-nazis
are on the rise throughout Europe and the governments are officially turning to
racist and fascist policies. Australia apologized to the aborigines but without
committing to return their lands. The Japanese paid for the agonies in Yens,
exchanging money with human dignity. The motto is: commit crime and pay money in
lieu of going through a punishment. Chinese revisionists opened their gates for
Japanese capital after "assurances" that Japan will never aggress upon China in
future. A revisionist ploy to convince the workers and peasants, who have strong
anti-Japanese imperialism feelings, that the Japanese imperialists have now
changed their character after the apology. This is another way of trading off
human tragedy with money.
The colonization of
Asia, Africa and Latin America was done by the Europeans through unlimited
bloodshed and mayhem of the indigenous people for centuries together. Columbus
‘discovered’ America in quest of Indian gold, spices and other riches and only
established himself in the Indies by exterminating the Red Indians and brutally
plundering the local populations. The quest for African gold, precious stones,
and slaves made Europeans the butchers of the African peoples. Spanish robbers
slaughtered and decimated the Inca tribes of the South American Continent to
freight back mountais of gold. Just a look at the state boundaries on the
African map tells a tale of arbitrary division of the continent that the
Europeans have bequeathed to the African regimes.
Korea: US Military Jury Acquits The Killers, Bush Apologises
In another case of
sham justice and phony apologies, news from Korea is worth mentioning. The
acquittal of two US military personnel for running over and killing of two
Korean girls in June 2002 has enraged the Korean people and they have demanded
that the US dismantle its military bases in South Korea and quit the southern
peninsula. Two military juries acquitted the accused Sergeant Mark Walker, the
driver of the armoured car involved in the killings, and Sgt. Fernando Nino of
the charges. Here we see the sham justice of military judicial system of the
US armed forces exonerating their own folk of a crime they committed. The US
armed forces around the world, network of its army bases, carry on their own
departmental enquiry system which is heavily based on bias towards the locals.
The enraged South Koreans demands a trial by the Korean courts while the
Korean ministry that had requested jurisdiction in the case, baulked and said
it respected the US military judicial system.
In South Korea, it
happens quite often that people, especially students, come out against the US
military presence, 37,000 strong, in the country and put up resistance against
their own stooge governments. This time too, amid a spate of protest
demonstrations the students firebombed the US army base at Yongsan, as a mark
of fury against the US and demanding that murderer army go back. Successive
South Korean governments have allowed the US army to maintain its bases in
South Korea to threaten North Korea since the Korean War in the early fifties.
In South Korea the anti-US sentiments are so strong that time and again, the
people have come out against the US Bases. Even coteries from the ruling
classes this time were forced to join the protests and tried to show that they
represented the anti-US sentiments present in the people. All the three
presidential candidate parties joined in the anti-US demonstrations. Though
the US court martial acquitted the US officers of any charges of homicide yet
the US president Bush was forced to tender an apology but stressing that the
US military presence in South Korea will continue. The apology in no way
satisfy the genuine demand and aspiration of the Korean people, and thus, is a
farce.
The people of the
colonized countries have many a times demanded in the UN forums that the
Europeans should apologise for their crimes against the people of the
ex-colonies. But the eighteenth and nineteenth century imperialism "had taken up
white man’s burden" and conquered the world to "civilize" the savages. So there
is no question of admitting to the crimes committed. For them, it was a
civilizing act in the service of humanity!
Now Jack Straw has
spoken in the times when the West (mainly the US and Britain) is again on a
worldwide campaign to teach jaahils what "democracy" and "the rule of
law" is in an act of a clash of civilizations between the civilized world and
the "still savage" people of the poor third world. Three centuries of colonial
imperialism and modern imperialism were insufficient to ‘civilize’ the
uncivilized so a new brutalizing war campaign is being undertaken in the times
of post-modernism and neo-liberalism for the said purpose. The white man has not
shed its "burden" in spite of the powerful battering it received from the
peoples of the colonies in the national liberation wars of the last century
after the WW2.
Straw came out from
under his hat and told the world that "a lot of the problems we are having to
deal with now… are a consequence of our colonial past." These problems,
incidentally (sic), are not present in the white settled Australia, New Zealand,
Canada and the United States of America but are spread over the poor and
backward Middle-East, Asia, Africa and Latin America. Again, the white man sees
as its burden only those people whom it suppressed and exterminated for
centuries. To be precise, he sees it in Palestine, Iraq, Syria, Egypt and others
in the Middle East; Sierra Leone, Zimbabwe, Namibia, Uganda, and others in
Africa; Afghanistan, Pakistan, Kashmir, Burma, etc., in Asia and God knows which
areas of the world he had in mind other than the Commonwealth countries when he
talked of "bad stories" coming out of these regions. He sulked and tried to
convince the readers that he and his government intends to set the history
right. He has spoken about his thoughts when already there is a talk going on in
the west that the big powers must spread out for a second phase of colonizing
the world so that a second lesson is taught to the barbarians in "democratic"
values, "liberalism" and "good governance." The word imperialism is so
"dreadful" to them that they dare not term globalisation as imperialist
globalisation. Blair even says, "I am not a liberal imperialist" because "there
is a lot wrong with imperialism."
Blair has embarked on
a worldwide exterminating campaign along with the big brother USA to pay "blood
price" to the USA in every butchery and still hates imperialism. These are
neo-liberal times and everything is "past-post-modern," even terminology,
thought and ideology too! In this age, the imperialists hate imperialism,
criminals hate crime, and exploiters hate exploitation. Every rascal is on a
lookout for a hermitage to meditate and experiment on how to make this world
more hellish for its inhabitants. The saviours want to bomb out every "evil" out
of existence through their own evil weapons of mass destruction.
The world will become
poorer if the Palestinians, Kashmiris, Iraqis, Colombians, and all others who
are oppressed are allowed to take things in their own hands. This will disturb
white man’s peace of mind even more and make him realise far more intensely that
his business of ‘civilizing’ the world, an unfinished agenda of the colonial
times, is far from complete.
So the imperialists
have went into morose over their past misdeeds and mistakes. It is particularly
true of the Nazis, Australians, the French, the Japanese, and the British. The
US has yet to offer regrets for Hiroshima, Vietnam, Palestine and countless
other crimes it committed throughout the world. Perhaps it is waiting for a more
opportune time for that. Presently, others are atoning for its mistakes telling
it not to repeat the mistake of 1991 Gulf War for leaving Saddam intact. It had
already been criticised for ‘leaving’ Afghanistan in the lurch after the
Russians left it. That mistake it has now been "corrected" by dismantling the
Taliban and replacing it with a stooge in the person of Hamid Karzai. The act of
"penance" in Iraq is next to come. Jack Straw’s dejection over Britain’s
colonial past has also another poisonous straw under the hat. The Kashmiris and
the people of this sub-continent must remain vigilant!
Jack Straw and Blair
hate to be called imperialists. They consider themselves on the "left" of
imperialists just as, in our country, Vajpayee ("Gujarat is a Blot on the
Nation") is on the "left" of Advani ("The saddest day in my life was December 6,
1993"), and Advani is on the "left" of Modi (" Pervert minds are communalising
Godhra issue")! This is today’s new no-ideology ideology, no-imperialist
imperialism, and no-reactionary reactionaries! For the gangsters, apologies come
in handy while they continue to indulge in more brutalities.
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