#artificial famine

[ohsalome]

Taken in Donetsk in 1932-33, this photograph shows a “kulak” woman and her small child being evicted from their home in winter, dispossessed of everything but a small wagonload of their belongings pulled by hand behind them. Photo by Marko Zhelizniak.

This is the people tankies would want you to believe had the Marie Antoinette level of luxury. I wonder how many carts like those would be required to transport everything an average western tankie owns.

[rhythmgamer]

My empathy is wack so I think I can handle it probably. Obviously I'll feel bad about what happened but I think I can handle most topics.

okay so. tw for massacres and artificial famine. answer will be under the cut

okay so. first of all there's a Wikipedia page about list of massacres in India. you can go to the colonial India section and look.

in particular, i want to draw your attention to the Jallianwala Bagh massacre. I'll copy paste the introduction from Wikipedia here.

"The Jallianwala Bagh massacre, also known as the Amritsar massacre, took place on 13 April 1919. A large, peaceful crowd had gathered at the Jallianwala Bagh in Amritsar, Punjab, British India, to protest the Rowlatt Act and arrest of pro-independence activists Saifuddin Kitchlew and Satyapal. In response to the public gathering, the temporary brigadier general R. E. H. Dyer, surrounded the protesters with his Gurkha, Baloch, Rajput and Sikh troops from 2-9th Gurkhas, the 54th Sikhs and the 59th Scinde Rifles of the British Indian Army.[4] The Jallianwala Bagh could only be exited on one side, as its other three sides were enclosed by buildings. After blocking the exit with his troops, he ordered them to shoot at the crowd, continuing to fire even as the protestors tried to flee. The troops kept on firing until their ammunition was exhausted.[5] Estimates of those killed vary from 379 to 1,500 or more people[1] and over 1,200 other people were injured of whom 192 were seriously injured.[6][7]"

this was like the turning point for Indian Independence movement. the sheer cruelty of the British soldiers at a peaceful gathering shocked the colonial world at that time. the perpetrator, General Dyer, was dismissed from service after this. no other punishment. none. in fact, wait!

this is what he got for massacring over a thousand unarmed people. yeah.

And this is just one incident. one incident of colonial British cruelty upon Indians because we were inferior to them.

oh, I haven't talked of the Bengal famine right?

quoting this article here:

"Policy lapses such as prioritising distribution of vital supplies to the military, civil services and others as well as stopping rice imports and not declaring Bengal famine hit were among the factors that led to the magnitude of the tragedy, historians have maintained."

again, towards the end,

"According to experts, following the Japanese occupation of Burma in 1942, rice imports stopped, and Bengal's market supplies and transport systems were disrupted. The British government also prioritised distribution of vital supplies to the military, civil servants and other "priority classes".

The policy failures began with the provincial government's denial that a famine existed. Humanitarian aid was ineffective through the worst months of the food crisis, and the government never formally declared a state of famine.

It first attempted to influence the price of rice, but these measures created a black market and encouraged sellers to withhold stocks."

so they literally caused a famine in Bengal. my home area. which caused the death of about 1-4 million people. i kid you not

And this does not even scratch the surface of what went on in colonial India

This is. not even 1% of what the British did to colonial India

they never teach you these things because they don't want you people to know the atrocities they'd committed in the past. they just want to paint the picture of a proud nation. no hate to you btw im just a bit mad that they do not teach y'all whatever wrong things they did to other countries. sigh

[ohsalome]

Taken in Kharkiv in 1933, this photograph is from the Innitzer Collection. It shows three starving women who are lying in their yard dying of hunger.

[ohsalome]

- Anne Applebaum. The Red Famine: Stalin's War on Ukraine

[ohsalome]

(Context missed from the screenshot: the soil in Qazaqstan varies greatly in quality, and the climate is similarly unpredictable. Qazaqs have adapted to this land by adopting seminomadic lifestyle, which Soviet russians denounced as "culturally backwards" and decided to force them into sedatary farms. They, of course, did not provide any scientific/agricultural/terraforming preparations and simply expected Qazaqs to provide cosmic harvests in a semi desert by a sheer power of faith in communism 😒)

Force nomadic cultures into a farm -> do not provide the water and food that cattle needs to survive -> the said nomads begin to starve and try to escape somewhere where they won't starve -> declare the people your policy forced into starvation "enemies of the state" and shoot them

🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬

[Book: Sarah Cameron - The Hungry Steppe: Famine, Violence and Making of Soviet Kazakhstan]

[ohsalome]

Taken in Kharkiv in 1933, this photograph is from the Innitzer Collection. It shows three adults laying on the side of the street in various stages of starvation and death. One is sitting against the fence, all of them are emaciated and in rags. Two pedestrians walk by on the street in this photograph seemingly oblivious to the dying individuals.

[ohsalome]

- Anne Applebaum. The Red Famine: Stalin's War on Ukraine

[ohsalome]

Sarah Cameron - The Hungry Steppe: Famine, Violence and Making of Soviet Kazakhstan