[djimi]

Oorspronkelijk geplaatst door tomm

... westerse monsters en dieven ...

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For nine generations, the island was divided between two warring factions, the House of Auatubu and the House of Teabike, until in 1892 HMS Royalist (1883) arrived to proclaim that the island was now a British Protectorate.

This saved Auatubu from massacre; the day before, they had been badly defeated by Teabike.

A very old lady, plaiting a sleeping mat twenty-five years later, described the situation:

"In those days death was on the right hand and on the left. If we wandered north, we were killed or raped. If we wandered south, we were killed or raped. If we returned alive from walking abroad, our husbands themselves killed us, for they said that we had gone forth seeking to be raped. That was indeed just, for a woman who disobeys her husband is a woman of no account, and it matters not how she dies. Yet how beautiful is life in our villages, now that there is no killing and war is no more... Behold my son and my grandson! These would have died with me that day at Nea if the warship had not arrived. And these -she pointed out her great and great-great-grandchildren- would never have been born.
We live because the Government of Kuini Kabitoria (*) brought peace to us, and here I sit plaiting this mat to be buried in because of the kindness of that woman, with all my generations around me to wrap me in it when I die."

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(*) Kuini Kabitoria = Queen Victoria

bron: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarawa


Ik zou wel eens willen weten aan hoe véél gelijkaardige 'situaties' - van "Azteken" tot en met "Zoeloes" - door 'westerse monsters en dieven' een einde werd gemaakt.