It has come to pass that we know the Colonial Master British, as government of Singapore, blatantly drugged their British Subjects Singaporeans for drug money.
This was a criminal case of a government against their Subjects, citizens, and such crime has no dateline and can be re-open anytime.
The white British aka Australia Kevin Rudd government apologized for the atrocity of the crime against the native indigenous people http://www.australia.gov.au/about-a...ople/apology-to-australias-indigenous-peoples
Time to confront the British to face up to their crime and atrocity against the Overseas Chinese in Singapore and SEA region.
I wanted to visit these Government-licensed opium shops and opium dens. A friend lent me two servants, as guides. We three got into rickshaws and went down to the Chinese quarter, where there are several hundred of these places, all doing a flourishing business. It was early in the afternoon, but even then, trade was brisk. The divans were rooms with wide wooden benches running round the sides, on which benches, in pairs, sharing a lamp between them, lay the smokers. They purchased their opium on entering, and then lay down to smoke it. The packages are little, triangular packets, each containing enough for about six smokes. Each packet bears a label, red letters on a white ground, "Monopoly opium."
Coming fresh from a tour of the opium-dens of Singapore, I must say that item caused some mental confusion. It must also be confusing to the Chinese. It must be very perplexing to a Chinese sailor, who arrives in Liverpool on a ship from Singapore, to find such a variation in customs. To come from a part of the British Empire where opium smoking is freely encouraged, to Great Britain itself where such practices are not tolerated. He must ask himself, why it is that the white race is so sedulously protected from such vices, while the subject races are so eagerly encouraged. It may occur to him that the white race is valuable and must be preserved, and that subject races are not worth protecting. This double standard of international justice he must find disturbing. It would seem, at first glance, as if subject races were fair game-if there is money in it. Subject races, dependents, who have no vote, no share in the government and who are powerless to protect themselves-fair game for exploitation.
New Markets
As China tightened her borders, Britain pinned her hopes on her other Asian colonies. Opium production in the Straits Settlements (Singapore, Penang, Malacca, Labuan) rose from 353,938 pounds in 1916 to 370,688 pounds in 1920, in spite of Britain’s promise at the Hague Convention to limit opium sales. In 1918, 60% of Britain’s Asian income was derived from opium sales. In 1925, opium accounted for 48% of Singapore’s revenue, and 100% of North Borneo’s. At the 1923 Opium Conference, Mr. Campbell admitted that the British Indian government was determined to maintain high levels of both internal consumption and export, and that they,
“controlled the production, distribution, sale, possession – every possible practical question which could arise in connection with opium—in the strictest possible manner—They had built up a complicated and highly efficient administrative system which started from the time the poppy seed was put into the ground, and did not relinquish control of the drug until it was in the hands of the consumers, or till it was actually exported.”
Some wits noted wryly that the Crown did all but light the addicts’ pipes.
When Indians begged Britain to abandon the opium policy, Britain responded that her opium monopoly was a humanitarian service to India (as it had been to China), and that to end the trade would be “a mockery; to many millions it would be sheer inhumanity.”
History teaches us that men and nations behave wisely once they have exhausted all other alternatives.
Abba Eban, Israeli politician
This was a criminal case of a government against their Subjects, citizens, and such crime has no dateline and can be re-open anytime.
The white British aka Australia Kevin Rudd government apologized for the atrocity of the crime against the native indigenous people http://www.australia.gov.au/about-a...ople/apology-to-australias-indigenous-peoples
Time to confront the British to face up to their crime and atrocity against the Overseas Chinese in Singapore and SEA region.
I wanted to visit these Government-licensed opium shops and opium dens. A friend lent me two servants, as guides. We three got into rickshaws and went down to the Chinese quarter, where there are several hundred of these places, all doing a flourishing business. It was early in the afternoon, but even then, trade was brisk. The divans were rooms with wide wooden benches running round the sides, on which benches, in pairs, sharing a lamp between them, lay the smokers. They purchased their opium on entering, and then lay down to smoke it. The packages are little, triangular packets, each containing enough for about six smokes. Each packet bears a label, red letters on a white ground, "Monopoly opium."
Coming fresh from a tour of the opium-dens of Singapore, I must say that item caused some mental confusion. It must also be confusing to the Chinese. It must be very perplexing to a Chinese sailor, who arrives in Liverpool on a ship from Singapore, to find such a variation in customs. To come from a part of the British Empire where opium smoking is freely encouraged, to Great Britain itself where such practices are not tolerated. He must ask himself, why it is that the white race is so sedulously protected from such vices, while the subject races are so eagerly encouraged. It may occur to him that the white race is valuable and must be preserved, and that subject races are not worth protecting. This double standard of international justice he must find disturbing. It would seem, at first glance, as if subject races were fair game-if there is money in it. Subject races, dependents, who have no vote, no share in the government and who are powerless to protect themselves-fair game for exploitation.
New Markets
As China tightened her borders, Britain pinned her hopes on her other Asian colonies. Opium production in the Straits Settlements (Singapore, Penang, Malacca, Labuan) rose from 353,938 pounds in 1916 to 370,688 pounds in 1920, in spite of Britain’s promise at the Hague Convention to limit opium sales. In 1918, 60% of Britain’s Asian income was derived from opium sales. In 1925, opium accounted for 48% of Singapore’s revenue, and 100% of North Borneo’s. At the 1923 Opium Conference, Mr. Campbell admitted that the British Indian government was determined to maintain high levels of both internal consumption and export, and that they,
“controlled the production, distribution, sale, possession – every possible practical question which could arise in connection with opium—in the strictest possible manner—They had built up a complicated and highly efficient administrative system which started from the time the poppy seed was put into the ground, and did not relinquish control of the drug until it was in the hands of the consumers, or till it was actually exported.”
Some wits noted wryly that the Crown did all but light the addicts’ pipes.
When Indians begged Britain to abandon the opium policy, Britain responded that her opium monopoly was a humanitarian service to India (as it had been to China), and that to end the trade would be “a mockery; to many millions it would be sheer inhumanity.”
History teaches us that men and nations behave wisely once they have exhausted all other alternatives.
Abba Eban, Israeli politician
