VICTIMS AND PERPETRATORS
If the Holocaust is marked in history as one of its darkest moments along with the atomic bombs over Hirsohima and Nagasaki, let us not even for a moment believe that anyone had a monopoly over evil – not the colonisers from Spanish conquistadors and Portuguese plunderers, the slave runners from Africa to the Caribbean and USA, the men who imposed apartheid on South Africa, nor the human traffickers of today who take boat people across the seas in non-seaworthy craft.
THE GREAT HOLOCAUST Between 1933 and 1945 Hitler targeted Jews based on the belief that Germans were a superior race! Jews have been persecuted throughout history, but under Hitler six million of their men, women and children were systematically interned in concentration camps and gassed to death! This genocide came to be called the Holocaust!
THE JAPANESE atrocities across Asia too came to be called the ‘Asian Holocaust’. Millions were starved to death or sent to labour camps and died! One of their experiments that killed people was to infect them with bubonic plague and dissect them when they were still alive! This of course is apart from using women as sex slaves!
CHRISTIAN CRUSADES: The Spanish inquisitions, Portuguese plunders and Dutch divisiveness played a vital part in the impoverishment that was to come to many parts of Asia, Americas and Africa. The atrocities committed in the name of religion, Christianity in particular and in the name of civilization, has annihilated several cultures and practices.
THE DECIMATION of the indigenous people in Latin America invaded by Europeans is estimated to be seven times that of the Holocaust! In 1492 when the Europeans arrived there was a healthy population if indigenous people of 50 million and more! By 1600, there were only 3.5 million left! They plundered the silver and carted away 100 million kg! AFRICAN SLAVE-RUNNERS: The coasts of Liberia, Sierra Leone and allied countries were the theatre of human trade. The body shoppers would have a choice to buy the best in the markets as if they bought cattle. This was a common sight in Europe and later in America. Apart from exploiting the natural resources they cracked the very backbone of the countries by taking away the most valuable human resources to build the wealth of their own lands.
APARTHEID: ‘Apartheid’ was a consciously enforced all-White policy enforced by the government, even as the anti-Apartheid movement became global in the 20th century. South Africa had to face sanctions and the new government there after the first multiracial elections with universal adult franchise that brought Mandela to power, instituted the ‘Truth and Reconciliation Commission’ to uncover the “truths about human rights violations” that happened during the period of Apartheid.
POL POT GENOCIDE: The totalitarian dictator of Cambodia, later known as Kampuchea, Pol Pot, who ran a dictatorship with the Khmer Rogue forces, caused untold misery to the population including executions and gross negligence that resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people, until his (Pol Pot’s) death in 1998.
FOURTEEN CARIBBEAN nations are suing UK for its legacy of slavery in English speaking Caribbean, France for slavery in Haiti and Netherlands for Suriname. The lawsuits by Caricom (caribbean community( is seeking reparation and the case is to be heard by the Hague.
IN RECENT TIMES, the most significant reparation demanded is the $ 1bn demanded by Guatemala from Johns Hopkins University that deliberately infected Guatemalan men, women and children with syphilis and gonorrhoea in order to study the efficacy of penicillin in the 1940 and 50s.