Sanctions by The Unpunished

The issue is very clear, as The Guardian(UK) reported on March 25: despite its scale, 85% of Britons today do not know the full extent of Britain’s involvement in the slave trade. Over three million people were forcibly shipped from Africa to the Caribbean by British enslavers. This historical amnesia is not an accident; it is the bedrock of a comfortable lie, a carefully curated narrative that allows Britain to built on or plunder, to present itself as a moral authority in global affairs. It is a form of selective blindness that refuses to acknowledge that the wealth and stability Britain enjoys today is the direct consequence of a history of systemic looting, enslavement and brutal subjugation. This wilful forgetting is not just academic issue – it is a fundamental moral failing, one that allows those who benefited from these crimes to sanction others for far lesser interactions while escaping their own reckoning.

- BY NILANTHA ILANGAMUWA

Colonial crimes have never been accounted for in any real sense. Those who continue to benefit from these historical injustices remain comfortable in their slumber. They will not talk about it, because the moment they do, the benefits they get will be threatened. They would rather place the burden of guilt on select others, as if justice were a scalpel, not a mirror. The hypocrisy of Western-led sanctions is not a simple contradiction; it is an intentional strategy of control. When Britain sanctions individuals in Sri Lanka under the guise of human rights violations, it is not doing so out of a commitment to justice. It is performing a political ritual, one designed not to ensure accountability but to reinforce a hierarchy, a world order where former colonial powers remain the arbiters of morality, and smaller nations remain the accused.

Labour MP Catherine West proudly announced the latest round of UK sanctions, stating, "Today, we have delivered sanctions targeting individuals responsible for human rights violations during the civil war in Sri Lanka. The UK government is committed to working with the new Sri Lankan government on human rights and seeking accountability." However, UK-based ex-journalist Frances Harrison was more candid about the real motivation behind these sanctions, acknowledging, "Yes - this was the result of a lot of hard work over many years by the Tamil community in the UK."