Issue of compensation from colonialists - a response

BY JANAKA Perera

HAVING read Gaston Perera's article, titled, The International Conference on the Portuguese Encounter - a summing up, in the Daily News of January 12, I feel that his negative reference to my article on the Portuguese encounter in the Daily News of Dec. 30 needs a response for the reader's benefit.

He says that my article was misleading because I did not attend the conference and did not give it full coverage but only highlighted the issue of compensation from Portugal.

I did attend the inaugural sessions but there was no need for me to cover the confab in its entirety since my idea was to do a general write-up on the anniversary and some of the topics discussed and related issues.

It is specifically for this reason that I began my article by focusing (a) Lascorin Commander Don Cosme Kulatunga Wickremasinghe's address to his kinsmen stirring them to rebellion against the Portuguese in 1630 and (b) on India's military action in Goa that ended Portuguese colonialism in South Asia less than 50 years ago.

A newspaper article on a historical event is not necessarily meant to be an academic exercise. A journalist uses for a headline and focuses on the most significant and eye-catching point in a news story or feature article.

In the case of the relevant BMICH conference, the fact remains that a member of the Portuguese Encounter Group, Attorney-at-Law Senaka Weeraratane (whom I interviewed) raised the issue of compensation and strongly emphasised the need for Portuguese to repent or "at least to make restitution for the sins of their forefathers."

As for my ex-colleague J.B. Muller I do not dispute most of the points he cited in his article, 'Canela, the Portuguese, and The Portuguese Encounter' (Daily News January 4, 2006). I agree with him on the cruelties of the Dutch and the British colonial rulers.

He however says Don Juan Dharmapala willed the Kotte Kingdom to the Portuguese through and by a legal document. It is the 'legality' of this very document that Attorney-at-Law Senaka Weeraratne, a participant in the conference, questioned in the context of the ancient Sinhala law.

When he raised the matter of compensation from the Portuguese, it was to me the most important issue from a journalist's viewpoint. It is for this reason that I used it as a headline for my Dec. 30 article in Daily News. In fact former Cultural.

Affairs and National Heritage Minister Vijitha Herath rightly called for the return of artifacts and archaeological treasures that the Portuguese robbed from this country.

Six years ago, I reported in the now-defunct Weekend Express, the Uva Provincial Council exploring the possibility of seeking compensation from the British Government for the destruction caused in Wellassa in the course of suppressing the 1818 Uva rebellion.

The Uva PC's focus on compensation followed ageing World War II slave labour victims' demands for compensation from German and Japanese companies. If I recall right the German Federal Republic paid compensation to Israel for Nazi war crimes.

The Jews will never let their people forget the memory of the holocaust - an atrocity that neo-Nazis and Islamic fundamentalists deny.

In Germany, denying the holocaust is punishable by law. Beijing never lets Tokyo forget or ignore the atrocities the Japanese Imperial armed forces committed in China from 1931 to 1945.

Whether or not Portugal will compensate Sri Lanka for crimes committed during their 150-year rule is not the point. The real issue is make people see the colonial era in its proper perspective, instead of trying to rationalise it.

Ours is perhaps the only country that removed history as a separate subject from the school curriculum and replaced it with so-called social studies. As the ancient dictum goes, we learn the past in the light of the present and the present in the light of the past.

This debate is closed - Editor