闭目养神
如果你不幸进来了，你会失望。如果在这里，你学到点什么，或有什么感受，那更是浪费你的时间了，咳，咳！
我发这贴是针对刘晓波的一个观点，即中国要进步需要被西方殖民三百年云云。这个观点当然是错误的，我想刘也只是说说而已。但他这话却留下很严重的误导，即让人觉得做殖民地也不算差。我自己就曾被误导，错误地认为中国近代史上的苦难皆因为中国是个半殖民地，因而只有掠夺，鲜有管理和建设。但是殖民地则虽有掠夺，但有管理和建设。
看完这个印度人的控诉，我才知道原来并非如此。印度的贫穷皆因为这两百年的殖民侵略。如果中国真的被殖民三百年，我们还将会被留下个什么摊子，不敢想象。我把印度国大党的议员Shashi Tharoor在演讲全文贴在最下面，有兴趣的，没完全听明白的可以找到下面去阅读。
谢谢。
下面是转帖：
正方代表之一，来自印度国大党的议员Shashi Tharoor在演讲中指出，到19世纪末，印度成为英国商品的最大商场，还为英国人提供了就业机会和工资，而印度经济占全球经济的比例则由27%下降到4%。
("He tore through the myths of any 'benevolence' by British colonisers, and eloquently demolished the arguments routinely made to whitewash the excesses of the island nation's colonial past.
He dismissed all notions that the British were trying to do their colonial enterprise 'out of enlightened despotism', referring to Winston's Churchill conduct in 1943 as 'simply one example of many that gave a lie to this myth'."
"No wonder that the sun never set on the colonial empire," he said, "because even God couldn't trust the English in the dark."
"It is a bit rich to oppress, enslave, kill, torture, maim people for 200 years and then celebrate the fact that they are democratic at the end of it. We were denied democracy, so we had to snatch it, seize it from you.")
到目前为止，他的发言视频在YouTube上浏览次数超过238万，41461人赞，787人踩:
反方代表之一，据他自己的公开简历，从香港来英国念大学，现为牛津大学在读数学博士。发言中他置疑道，如果支付赔偿，赔款应该给谁呢？领导者贪污了怎么办？到目前为止他的视频，在YouTube上有130人赞，347人踩:
最终的结果是185对56票， 正方赢得了这场辩论。 见附上的新闻报道：
Oxford Union finds Britain should pay slavery reparations
Written by Ruth Akinradewo, in Oxford
01/06/2015 02:00 PM
THE OXFORD Union - the debating society founded by members of Oxford University nearly 190 years ago - is known to be on good terms with controversy.
A debate on Thursday (May 28) made no attempt to break with tradition, posing the question: does Britain owe reparations to her former colonies over the damage caused?
It didn’t take just the debate to begin a polemic.
The Union bar was criticised for promoting a cocktail special called 'The Colonial Comeback' alongside an image of two black hands in shackles.
An apology was promptly given by the treasurer, revealing the committee had not been aware of the promotion claiming bar staff appeared to be responsible.
It was in this rather tense environment that the speakers took to the floor to debate the official proposition: 'This House Believes Britain Owes Reparations to her Former Colonies.'
The first speaker, student Henna Dattani, quickly painted the grim portrait of the matter at hand, beginning with a harrowing description of a woman in Kenya being tortured in front of her son in 1954.
She argued reparations "go far beyond cash payments", and are centred on recognising past injustices and redressing the moral imbalance brought on by colonisation.
Postgraduate student Alpha Lee followed for the opposition.
Without failing to recognise the atrocities of colonialism, he suggested that mandating Britain to pay reparations would prompt countries to blame their shortcomings on colonialism rather than work hard to get themselves back on their feet.
And who would the money go to? What if leaders embezzle the pay-outs?, Lee asked.
With this moment came more drama.
Two students got to their feet raising a large poster with the words: 'Who will speak for ME? #RhodesMustFall'.
The hashtag refers to Cecil Rhodes, the notorious imperialist who continues to be held in high esteem by the university.
Earlier this year, protests against a statue on a South African university campus led to its removal.
Across the room two others were holding another banner, stating: 'Brutality should not be DEBATED'.
So out of place was this act of silent protest that a bouncer attempted to remove those standing from the room.
But after one protester clarified the Union’s rules do not condemn non-auditory and non-violent protest, they were allowed to continue.
First-year student Ssuuna Golooba-Mutebi spoke next.
Of Ugandan origin himself, he pointed out that the claim that Britain colonised Africa to provide it with roads, education and language was fallacious: the continent had flourished with many languages, kingdoms and intellectuals long before colonisation.
He also identified that Britain continues to benefit from the financial capital it amassed from the natural resources of other countries, as well as from the slave trade.
Ssuuna’s contribution was met with a resounding applause.
The same cannot be said of Sir Richard Ottaway, the chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee who began his speech by claiming: "We have moved on from colonialism”, and made other remarks, including that "some objected" to their colonial oppression, and that "there was sacrifice on both sides".
The Honourable Aloun Ndombet-Assamba, Jamaica’s High Commissioner to the UK since 2012, quickly set about dismantling Ottaway's notion of the “legacy we left behind” in referring to the raping of land and the torture of slaves, and then went on to list conceivable measures of non-monetary reparations: atonements for cultural damage; psychological rehabilitation and debt cancellation, alluding to Cariom’s 10-point plan.
Caricom - an organisation of 15 Caribbean nations and dependencies established in its current form in 2001 - is currently working on a landmark legal case to sue European countries for reparations.
American historian William Roger Louis, who specialised in the British Empire, spoke against the motion, citing the rise of Nazi Germany after the country had been crippled by post-First World War as evidence that 'reparations have often led to a desire for more'.
When the floor was opened up to Union members to give their opinions, sparks flew.
One student was heckled for suggesting that black enslavement was no different to the suffering experienced by white Irish Catholics. Another claimed colonisation has only affected those who lived through that period.
The Indian former Under-Secretary General of the UN Dr Shashi Tharoor concluded for the side in favour of the motion; unearthing statistics such as that India's share in the world’s wealth had downscaled from 23 per cent pre-colonisation to less than four cent by the time Britain left.
He added: "It’s a bit rich to enslave, maim and torture people for 200 years and celebrate that they’re democratic at the end of it."
Professor John MacKenzie, historian of imperialism, in stating that he had expected a "cool, clean debate, rather than one of emotion" was met with disapproval from the audience.
It was perhaps not surprising then that the results of the debate showed a decided triumph for the proposition speakers, with the motion 'This House Believes Britain Owes Reparations to its Former Colonies' winning by 185 to 56 votes.
Ruth Akinradewo is a second-year student at Oxford University, where she is studying French and Italian. She is also a writer and posts on her own blog The Change Channel
http://www.voice-online.co.uk/article/oxford-union-finds-britain-should-pay-slavery-reparations
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Madam President and gentlemen, ladies of the house
I standing here with eight minutes in my hands in this venerable and rather magnificent institution, I was going to assure you that I belong to the Henry VIII School of public speaking - that as Henry VIII said to his wives 'I shall not keep you long'. But now finding myself the seventh speaker out of eight in what must already seem a rather long evening to you I rather feel like Henry VIII's the last wife. I know more or less of what expected of me but I am not sure how to do it any differently.
Perhaps what I should do is really try and pay attention to the arguments that have advanced by the Opposition today. We had for example Sir Richard Ottaway suggesting - challenging the very idea that it could be argued that the economic situation of the colonies was actually worsened by the experience of British colonialism.
Well I stand to offer you the Indian example, Sir Richard. India share of the world economy when Britain arrived on it's shores was 23 per cent, by the time the British left it was down to below 4 per cent. Why? Simply because India had been governed for the benefit of Britain.
Britain's rise for 200 years was financed by it's depredations in India. In fact Britain's industrial revolution was actually premised upon the de-industrialisation of India.
The handloom weaver's for example famed across the world whose products were exported around the world, Britain came right in. There were actually these weaver's making fine muslin as light as woven wear, it was said, and Britain came right in, smashed their thumbs, broke their looms, imposed tariffs and duties on their cloth and products and started, of course, taking their raw material from India and shipping back manufactured cloth flooding the world's markets with what became the products of the dark and satanic mills of the Victoria in England
That meant that the weavers in India became beggars and India went from being a world famous exporter of finished cloth into an importer when from having 27 per cent of the world trade to less than 2 per cent.
Meanwhile, colonialists like Robert Clive brought their rotten boroughs in England on the proceeds of their loot in India while taking the Hindi word loot into their dictionary as well as their habits.
And the British had the gall to call him Clive of India as if he belonged to the country, when all he really did was to ensure that much of the country belonged to him.
By the end of 19th century, the fact is that India was already Britain's biggest cash cow, the world's biggest purchaser of British goods and exports and the source for highly paid employment for British civil servants. We literally paid for our own oppression. And as has been pointed out, the worthy British Victorian families that made their money out of the slave economy, one fifth of the elites of the wealthy class in Britain in 19th century owed their money to transporting 3 million Africans across the waters. And in fact in 1833 when slavery was abolished and what happened was a compensation of 20 million pounds was paid not as reparations to those who had lost their lives or who had suffered or been oppressed by slavery but to those who had lost their property.
I was struck by the fact that your Wi-Fi password at this Union commemorates the name of Mr Gladstone - the great liberal hero. Well, I am very sorry his family was one of those who benefited from this compensation.
Staying with India between 15-29 million Indians died of starvation in British induced famines. The most famous example was, of course, was the great Bengal famine during the World War II when 4 million people died because Winston Churchill deliberately as a matter of written policy proceeded to divert essential supplies from civilians in Bengal to sturdy tummies and Europeans as reserve stockpiles.
He said that the starvation of anyway underfed Bengalis mattered much less than that of sturdy Greeks' - Churchill's actual quote. And when conscious stricken British officials wrote to him pointing out that people were dying because of this decision, he peevishly wrote in the margins of file, "Why hasn't Gandhi died yet?"
So, all notions that the British were trying to do their colonial enterprise out of enlightened despotism to try and bring the benefits of colonialism and civilisation to the benighted. Even I am sorry - Churchill's conduct in 1943 is simply one example of many that gave light to this myth.
As others have said on the proposition - violence and racism were the reality of the colonial experience. And no wonder that the sun never set on the British empire because even god couldn't trust the English in the dark.
Let me take the World War I as a very concrete example since the first speaker Mr. Lee suggested these couldn't be quantified. Let me quantify World War I for you. Again I am sorry from an Indian perspective as others have spoken about the countries. One-sixth of all the British forces that fought in the war were Indian - 54 000 Indians actually lost their lives in that war, 65 000 were wounded and another 4000 remained missing or in prison.
Indian taxpayers had to cough up a 100 million pounds in that time's money. India supplied 17 million rounds of ammunition, 6,00,000 rifles and machine guns, 42 million garments were stitched and sent out of India and 1.3 million Indian personnel served in this war. I know all this because the commemoration of the centenary has just taken place.
But not just that, India had to supply 173,000 animals 370 million tonnes of supplies and in the end the total value of everything that was taken out of India and India by the way was suffering from recession at that time and poverty and hunger, was in today's money 8 billion pounds. You want quantification, it's available.
World War II, it was was even worse - 2.5 million Indians in uniform.
I won't believe it to the point but Britain's total war debt of 3 billion pounds in 1945 money, 1.25 billion was owed to India and never actually paid.
Somebody mentioned Scotland, well the fact is that colonialism actually cemented your union with Scotland. The Scots had actually tried to send colonies out before 1707, they had all failed, I am sorry to say. But, then of course, came union and India was available and there you had a disproportionate employment of Scots, I am sorry but Mr Mckinsey had to speak after me, engaged in this colonial enterprise as soldiers, as merchants, as agents, as employees and their earnings from India is what brought prosperity to Scotland, even pulled Scotland out of poverty.
Now that India is no longer there, no wonder the bonds are loosening. Now we have heard other arguments on this side and there has been a mention of railways. Well let me tell you first of all as my colleague the Jamaican High Commissioner has pointed out, the railways and roads were really built to serve British interests and not those of the local people but I might add that many countries have built railways and roads without having had to be colonalised in order to do so.
They were designed to carry raw materials from the hinterland into the ports to be shipped to Britain. And the fact is that the Indian or Jamaican or other colonial public - their needs were incidental. Transportation - there was no attempt made to match supply from demand from as transports, none what so ever.
Instead in fact the Indian railways were built with massive incentives offered by Britain to British investors, guaranteed out of Indian taxes paid by Indians with the result that you actually had one mile of Indian railway costing twice what it cost to built the same mile in Canada or Australia because there was so much money being paid in extravagant returns.
Britain made all the profits, controlled the technology, supplied all the equipment and absolutely all these benefits came as British private enterprise at Indian public risk. That was the railways as an accomplishment.
We are hearing about aid, I think it was Sir Richard Ottaway mentioned British aid to India. Well let me just point out that the British aid to India is about 0.4 per cent of India's GDP. The government of India actually spends more on fertiliser subsidies which might be an appropriate metaphor for that argument.
If I may point out as well that as my fellow speakers from the proposition have pointed out there have been incidents of racial violence, of loot, of massacres, of blood shed, of transportation and in India's case even one of our last Mughal emperors. Yes, may be today's Britains are not responsible for some of these reparations but the same speakers have pointed with pride to their foreign aid - you are not responsible for the people starving in Somalia but you give them aid surely the principle of reparation for what is the wrongs that have done cannot be denied.
It's been pointed out that for the example dehumanisation of Africans in the Caribbean, the massive psychological damage that has been done, the undermining of social traditions, of the property rights, of the authority structures of the societies - all in the interest of British colonialism and the fact remains that many of today's problems in these countries including the persistence and in some cases the creation of racial, of ethnic, of religious tensions were the direct result of colonialism. So there is a moral debt that needs to be paid.
Someone challenged reparations elsewhere. Well I am sorry Germany doesn't just give reparations to Israel, it also gives reparations to Poland perhaps some of the speakers here are too young to remember the dramatic picture of Chancellor Willy Brandt on his knees at Warsaw Ghetto in 1970.
There are other examples, there is Italy's reparations to Libya, there is Japan's to Korea even Britain has paid reparations to the New Zealand Maoris. So it is not as if this is something that is unprecedented or unheard of that somehow opens some sort of nasty Pandora box.
No wonder professor Louis reminded us that he is from Texas. There is a wonderful expression in Texas that summarises the arguments of the opposition 'All hat and no cattle'.
Now, If I can just quickly look through the other notes that I was scribbling while they were speaking, there was a reference to democracy and rule of law. Let me say with the greatest possible respect, you cannot to be rich to oppress, enslave, kill, maim, torture people for 200 years and then celebrate the fact that they are democratic at the end of it.
We were denied democracy so we had to snatch it, seize it from you with the greatest of reluctance it was considered in India's case after 150 years of British rule and that too with limited franchise.
If I may just point out the arguments made by a couple of speakers. The first speaker Mr. Lee in particular conceded all the evil atrocities of the colonialism but essentially suggested that reparations won't really help, they won't help the right people, they would be use of propaganda tools, they will embolden people like Mr Mugabe. So, it's nice how in the old days, I am sorry to say that either people of the Caribbean used to frighten their children into behaving and sleeping by saying some Francis Drake would come up after them that was the legacy, now Mugabe will be there - the new sort of Francis Drake of our time.
The fact is very simply said, that we are not talking about reparations as a tool to empower anybody, they are a tool for you to atone, for the wrongs that have been done and I am quite prepared to accept the proposition that you can't evaluate, put a monetary sum to the kinds of horrors people have suffered.
Certainly no amount of money can expedite the loss of a loved one as somebody pointed out there. You are not going to figure out the exact amount but the principle is what matters.
The fact is that to speak blithely of sacrifices on both sides as an analogy was used here - a burglar comes into your house and sacks the place but stubs his toe and you say that there was sacrifice on both sides that I am sorry to say is not an acceptable argument. The truth is that we are not arguing specifically that vast some of money needs to be paid. The proposition before this house is the principle of owing reparations, not the fine points of how much is owed, to whom it should be paid. The question is, is there a debt, does Britain owe reparations?
As far as I am concerned, the ability to acknowledge your wrong that has been done, to simply say sorry will go a far far far longer way than some percentage of GDP in the form of aid.
What is required it seems to me is accepting the principle that reparations are owed.
Personally, I will be quiet happy if it was one pound a year for the next 200 years after the last 200 years of Britain in India.
Thank you very much madam President.
