Man's Inhumanity to Man, Part I

Blaming the Mongolian Race

In Emma Larkin's wonderful volume [Finding George Orwell in Burma (New York: The Penguin Group, 2011)] she describes the long history of tyranny which has afflicted that nation for many centuries.  Sadly, the British--as colonial masters--were little better.  By the time Burma became a colony the doctrines of evolutionism were becoming more and more embedded in the colonial mind.  This led to a "natural" conclusion that primitive native people were not sub-human.

She cites a government report at the time:

In Burma we are dealing with a Mongolian race . . . and Mongolian races appear to have always found an element of cruelty in their punishments necessary.  [Op cit., p. 146.]

In other words, "we need to treat them in the only way these brutes understand".  George Orwell served as a policeman in Burma for a time.  During his time there in the early 1920's some 20,000 criminals were being locked up every year.  He describes the horror of British run jails in Burma in The Road to Wigan Pier:

The wretched prisoners squatting in the reeking cages of the lock-ups, the grey cowed faces of the long-term convicts, the scarred buttocks of the men who had been flogged with bamboos, the women and children howling when their menfolk were led away--things like these are beyond bearing when you are in any way directly responsible for them. [Ibid., p.46]

This is not to say, of course, that the British were any worse than the authoritarian rulers that preceded them.  Rather, it is to say they were as bad.
 In To the Golden Shore [Courtney Anderson, To the Golden Shore: The Life of Adoniram Judson (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 1956)] an account is given of how Judson and colleagues were arrested by the Burmese king on suspicion of collaborating with the British with whom the Burmese were currently at war.

They were placed in a prison where all were condemned to die (without trial) preceded by horrific tortures to persuade them to disclose the location of all their property to enable seizure as well as to "confess" to their crimes.

In a little while night fell, Father [the prison superintendent] entered with a couple of his assistants.  With jests and jokes, they lowered the long horizontal bamboo pole from the ceiling, passed it between the fettered legs of the prisoners, re-secured it at the ends, and hoisted it up with the aid of the block-and-tackle.  Gradually the feet of the prisoners rose into the air until only their shoulders and heads rested on the floor.  When Father made sure of the height--he told them he wanted to protect their lives--he wished them a good night's rest and departed.

The young guard trimmed the lamp, lit his pipe at the flame, and lit pipes for the other prisoners.  Everyone smoked to try to counteract that awful stench.  [Op cit., p. 305]

And, then, the direct torture.

The young man being examined was accused of robbing the house of a high-ranking personage.  He denied the charge and to Gouger [a fellow European prisoner] a fair judge of men, he had not the look of a robber.  But the magistrate considered his denial merely obstinacy.  To help the prisoner talk, he was seated on a low stool, and his legs tied together above the knees by a cord.  To executioners each took a long pole, inserted the pole between his legs, and began to lever them up and down in opposite directions.

Gouger, his eyes bulging with horror, expected to hear the thigh-bones snap.  But although the youth screamed in agony he still denied the accusation.  At length he fainted.  The guards threw cold water over him and thrust him back into his cell, promising even better for him tomorrow.  [Ibid., p. 309]

Adoniram Judson and his fellow prisoners endured two years of such suffering.  Eventually they were released because the British were winning the war and the Burmese king and counsellors feared repercussions if  anything happened to their European prisoners.

Burma has endured a long, ignoble history man's inhumanity to man.  But there are few depredations and depravities to match those suffered under the regime of the military government which has ruled Burma (or Myanmar) over the past fifty years.