Since 1948, successive regimes have continued to condone and practice torture and killings as a systemic weapon. Despite being party to international conventions against torture, these regimes have been condoning, using and/or tolerating the use of torture, ill-treatment and killing of individuals to this day
Lionel Bopage
Colonialism in Sri Lanka
( February 26, 2018, Melbourne, Sri Lanka Guardian) During the period 1505-1948, the Portuguese, the Dutch and the British colonized in varying degrees the land the native people inhabited. The objective of the Crown, the State and the Church was to establish their socio-economic and political power over the natives and to transfer their allegiance from a local to a foreign sovereign. To achieve this, the natives had to be alienated from their traditions and mores including culture, identity, language and beliefs. In this process, colonial rulers and their elite used diverse manipulative strategies and tactics, of persuasion, inducement, persecution, discrimination, and destruction. They carried out their acts by enacting oppressive proclamations, decrees and laws both overt and covert, such as the use of force, repression, fraud, allurement, deportations and killings.
