2008-07-14 11:10:39 - There was an incident sometime back in Palestine where a father was trying to protect his young son from a cross-fire, shielding him with his body behind a small road block but his son was struck by a bullet and was killed. This was repeatedly telecast over CNN. That was another incident to show how vulnerable youngsters are.

I was feeling sleepy and went to bed. The deep sleepy mood somehow made me reflect on the early 1970 incidents where Mao-wing influenced insurgents started their revolution in the Island.

The revolution was crushed by the world’s first woman Prime Minister Mrs. Srimavo Bandaranaike’s government with heavy casualties. At that time I was still a child and was told often

not to go outside the gate of our residence, the army was interrogating people. But I couldn’t understand who the army was and why they were questioning and frisking people. I had seen the army much later on and it had taken so many years to realize that the country was faced with various problems.

I suddenly recalled Marita’s conversation when I asked her about the collapse of the Berlin Wall with the end of the cold war and how she felt. She told me that she was only a six or seven year old child and she could hardly be expected to remember anything. The pathetic part is that children everywhere in the world are pushed towards war and victimized, while natural disasters are from time to time shaking the world and a number children are being victimized and become helpless. Man-made disasters affect them mentally, thus creating a generation of imbalanced citizens.



It is an irony that in this space age man is unable come to terms within the earth. It is no surprise if a star wars is waged by humans from outer space in the future.

The man-made terror in Bosnia in the recent history of the world beggars description and also the harm they have caused to the children at large. Mothers were raped in front of their children in their own homes. The children, who have gone through these horrific experiences, will be turning into social criminals against humanity some day or will be wandering as time-bombs to explode at an appointed.

Marita showed self-pity at how all Germans have to bear a bad name caused by the mistakes of men gripped by political ambitions and power–hunger.

Even in the expedition of finding the new world of America, a lot of indigenous women had been affected. Also in the history of European colonization in Africa, Asia and Australia many of the native and indigenous women have been violated in front of their children. The major fact, which, we have forgotten, is that most of the invading forces in the historical past and the colonial era committed mass rape of women to celebrate or complete their victory.

The facts should be only a bitter past to remember but should not be allowed to repeat itself in human history. But what is striking is that such violations are still happening under various guises in some far corner of the world even now.

Not only the British colonial rulers but even other European colonial invaders did the same in the Americas, Asia and Africa but ironically the Europeans, Africans and Asians also committed the same atrocities for centuries by raping women, destroying valuables and killing all those who have confronted them within their own territories. The weaker sex, the women were always their target as a weapon to avert a war or a reward to appease their victors from time immemorial.

The aboriginal women in Australia were forced by the then British troops into marriages, rape, and subject to various other humiliations. The children of those illegitimate relationships experienced horror thereafter. How those children have been separated from their mothers and their immediate family members and put into special camps came to mind after I had sometime back watched a well documented film “Rabbit-Proof Fence” which is based on the story of those of mixed parentage of the aboriginal mothers and the white fathers.

The real life story was of the tragedy of three children who could be distinguished by other children in the territory and have been taken to the camp they ran back to their mothers and the hardships they faced thereafter. On the way home, one of the sisters being abducted by the forces of the region was a harrowing scene.

The malicious practice of abducting cross-bred children from their mothers was abolished only in 1971 and Australia’s black chapter of violating children’s rights was brought to an end and the hardships of the mixed aboriginal children which was worse than the well documented “Rabbit proof fence” was also abolished.

Source: Rajkumar Kanagasingam, author of "German Memories in Asia".

germanmemoriesinasia.blogspot.com/