Several years ago, Britain’s former Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, said that her former colonies should be grateful to Britain for leaving in place during her colonial days, excellent concepts and institutions that have now benefited the local citizens of those countries. Then there were the Rhodesians (or white Zimbabweans) who had suffered under a reversal of the racial discrimination that were long practiced pre-Mugabe days by British colonialism and Ian Smith’s UDI white government; in bitterness at their adverse fortunes which had been previously meted out to the natives, they averred that under them, the natives had more food and order. Likewise with many white South Africans and their western sympathisers.
Now, Japan’s rightwing Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Aso also claimed credit for Japan’s 50 years of colonialisation of Taiwan, that have allowed the island to enjoy high education standards, leading to Taiwan’s prosperity today. He said:
"Thanks to the significant improvement in educational standards and literacy (during colonization), Taiwan is now a country with a very high education level and keeps up with the current era. This is something I was told by an important figure in Taiwan and all the elderly people knew about it. That was a time when I felt that, as expected, our predecessors did a good thing.”
A good thing eh? Banzai!
Hmmm, "... by an important figure in Taiwan and all the elderly people knew about it." A lot of testimonial claims that remain unsubstantiated and unidentified. Taro Aso has been disgracefully indulging in typical 'good ole days' rationalization by nostalgic imperialists or self-white-washing oppressors!
Of course, he said all that that to a Japanese audience in western city of Fukuoka, as had then Zimbabweans said to themselves and their sympathizers in some western countries, where more receptive ears abound. As the sole woman in that group of self-indulging colonialists, Margaret Thatcher was the only one with the balls to tell it straight to Britain’s former colonies.
This fantasized rationale has not been unlike some Zionist sympathizers who ooh and aah about how more beneficial the Arabs have been living under the Israelis.
These people could never understand human dignity, and that the free spirit of people militates against such shameful subordination. Many of us believe it’s better to a hungry free person than a well fed slave, unless one wants to be a kept dog. Afterall, haven’t the Europeans been talking these last few days about ‘freedom’?
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