{"id":540,"date":"2022-06-28T11:44:46","date_gmt":"2022-06-28T09:44:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.dieferbers.de\/wordpress\/?p=540"},"modified":"2023-02-18T19:32:11","modified_gmt":"2023-02-18T18:32:11","slug":"todays-wounds-scars-the-impact-of-colonialism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.dieferbers.de\/wordpress\/2022\/06\/28\/todays-wounds-scars-the-impact-of-colonialism\/","title":{"rendered":"Today\u2019s wounds & scars: The Impact of Colonialism"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Uganda as well as Indonesia rank very low on the transparency international corruption perceptions index<\/a> with 144 and 96 respectively. The structural corruption<\/a>, patronage<\/a>, and nepotism<\/a> is visible every day from police checks on the road to natural resource deals with top politicians: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThese days, Indonesians have rather a low tolerance for real corruption, for pure, self-serving greed […] That other type of \u2018corruption\u2019 \u2013 the one that leads to bad appointments and bad roads \u2013 is complained about endlessly. And yet no one gets voted out of power for that kind of patronage (In the 2004 elections in South Sulawesi, eleven of the thirteen provincial parliamentarians who had previously been convicted of corruption were re-elected\u201d) That\u2019s because everyone continues to expect their Big Men to deliver to their clan.\u201d Pisani, Elizabeth. Indonesia, p.158. Granta Publications, London, 2014. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

And as you get more involved, the boundaries of corruption and \u201ca deal\u201d get very blurry, particularly in Indonesia, a nation that has been successful in trading since the 12th century. I have never seen so many \u201cMiddlemen\u201d helping to serve but also taking their proper share of \u201cthe deal.\u201d
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Our exceptional tour guide and multiple young entrepreneur, Nasser is very proud of Uganda\u2019s independence.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

Many of these power patterns came with colonialism<\/a> and imperialism<\/a>. European (and later Japanese) violence, massacres, and genocide in Indonesia and Uganda are still ignored in the west, but so much burned into their society’s DNA. Even after liberation in Indonesia (1945) and Uganda (1962) the violations patterns repeat. Former victims become perpetrators themselves, like the \u201cButcher of Uganda\u201d, Idi Amin<\/a> regime killed 100,000 to 300,000 citizens. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Fairventures is planting a symbolic tree in the Buganda king\u2019s garden Kampala<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Idi Amin’s torture chambers in Kampala on Mengo Hill<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

We visited one of Idi Amin’s torture chambers in Kampala on Mengo Hill after we planted a tree in the marvolus Buganda king\u2019s garden. The beauty and the cruelty are just a few steps apart. Andrew Rice\u2019s book \u201cThe Teeth May Smile, but the Heart Does Not Forget\u201d, Henry Holt & Co, New York, 2009, describes this ambiguity and their roots in European colonialism. The western greed for spice, gold, oil, and slaves caused so much human, social, and environmental damage. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

And it started very early. \u201cThe massacre of 1621<\/a> was led by Jan Pieterszoon Coen, the ambitious new Governor-General of the VOC, who had, as a young trader, witnessed the ambush and murder of his boss by the rulers of Banda twelve years earlier. He responded with genocide. His men killed anyone that they didn\u2019t think would make a good slave, then exported the rest, reducing the islands\u2019 population of 15,000 to a few hundred souls. The Gentlemen 17<\/a> told Coen off for his excessive use of force. They also paid him a bonus of 3,000 guilders.\u201d Pisani, Elizabeth. Indonesia Etc. (S.17). And the reason was to create a monopoly on nutmeg<\/a> trade for the Dutch East India Company<\/a>, the first shareholder company in the world. At that time military, trading, and business mixed, still visible in today\u2019s business English e.g. \u201cconquering new markets\u201d or the \u201cChief Executive Officer\u201d. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bribery, slavery, bounty hunting, and cruelty was there before in Indonesia and Uganda, but Europeans \u201cscaled\u201d it to completely new \u201clevels\u201d. Raoul Peck<\/a>\u2019s movie \u201cExterminate All the Brutes<\/a>\u201d <\/a>ruthlessly uncovers the deep-seated doctrines of white supremacy, denying other races life existence. 12.5 million Africans slaves<\/a> have been deported to the Americas and at the same time several million Americans were killed in the genocide of indigenous people<\/a>. Our history books need to be re-written. The most important \u201crevolution for liberation\u201d was 1791-1804 in Haiti <\/a>and not the French Revolution (1789)<\/a> nor the United States Declaration of Independence (1776)<\/a>.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Therefore, I try to avoid judging any of the difficult topics in Uganda and Indonesia because my own well-being has been built on this in-justice in place for more than 400 years.
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Uganda as well as Indonesia rank very low on the transparency international corruption perceptions index with 144 and 96 respectively. The structural corruption, patronage, and nepotism is visible every day from police checks on the road to natural resource deals with top politicians:  \u201cThese days, Indonesians have rather a low tolerance for real corruption, for … Today\u2019s wounds & scars: The Impact of Colonialism<\/span> weiterlesen<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,19,18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-540","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-allgemein","category-climate","category-sabbatical"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.dieferbers.de\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/540","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.dieferbers.de\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.dieferbers.de\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.dieferbers.de\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.dieferbers.de\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=540"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.dieferbers.de\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/540\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":556,"href":"http:\/\/www.dieferbers.de\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/540\/revisions\/556"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.dieferbers.de\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=540"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.dieferbers.de\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=540"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.dieferbers.de\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=540"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}