'Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely'. This reality check delivered by the famous 19th century historian Lord Acton is as relevant today as it was more than 100 years ago when Britain and other European powers ruled the world.

Acton's analysis was especially relevant to the colonies in Asia, Africa and Latin America, where the white man willingly embraced his burden of being as obnoxious as possible to the 'natives' he ruled. Beatings, torture and killings were routine in the colonies that were ruled from Britain and the rest of continental Europe.

Fortunately for the natives, the colonial powers were fatally weakened by the impact of two world wars and had to retreat from their highly lucrative colonies. Subsequently, the liberal intelligentsia in former colonial capitals expressed their collective regret for the rape, enslavement and exploitation of tens of millions of colonial subjects.

As the 20th century got underway, we were repeatedly assured that time had moved on, that the bad old ways of the 'burra sahib' had been abolished for good and that the world community had every right to expect more civilized norms of behaviour from the governments of the industrialised West.

How sad, therefore, to see that hooding, beating, sleep deprivation and other infamous interrogation techniques that were routinely used by colonial police more than a century ago have returned courtesy of British soldiers deployed seven years ago in Iraq.

Hoodings and beatings at the very least were used by British army interrogators when they rounded up an innocent Iraqi hotel receptionist, Baha Mousa, known to his friends as the gentle giant, who died in custody on September 15, 2003. He was detained at the time by soldiers from the Queen's Lancashire regiment. It turns out now that the 26-year-old receptionist was hooded for 24 out of the 36 hours he was detained. His body also sustained 93 injuries before he died.

The treatment meted out to Mousa invokes memories of earlier brutal killings, such as the Jallianwalla Bagh massacre in Amritsar, India, when soldiers under the command of Brigadier Reginald Dyer opened fire on a crowd of unarmed civilians.

Mousa represents only a single casualty compared to the hundreds who were killed in Jallianwalla Bagh. But, as more details emerge of how he died, questions are bound to be asked about other Iraqi civilians who died in areas controlled at the time by the British army.

Even worse, where Mousa is concerned, when questions were asked in the British parliament about his death, the Labour Armed Forces minister, one Adam Ingram, denied that British soldiers were involved in such unsavoury practises as hooding.

Seven years later the same Mr Ingram has been forced to admit that his original answer was misleading. Ingram, who blames his officials for misleading him, has told a London inquiry: 'It certainly would not have been within my power to remember everything that I had been informed in writing or verbally.' His is the sort of reply that would have done a colonial official proud.

South Asian artists sell for record sums
Sales of paintings by contemporary South Asian artists have achieved record prices at Christie's auctioneers in London. The painting that sold for the highest price, setting a world auction record, was by Paris-based Syed Haider Raza. His 1983 work, entitled Saurashtra, fetched £2,393, 250 and was bought by a private Indian museum.

Commenting on the sale a spokesman for Christie's said, 'The monumental work Saurashtra by Syed Haider Raza set a world auction record not only for the artist but for any modern Indian artist in history. We are thrilled that this work will return to India as a fitting tribute to the artist and a celebration of art from this region.'

Raza, born in Babaria in the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh, is a founder of India's Progressive Artists Group. He studied at the Nagpur School of Art and the JJ School of Art in Bombay before leaving for France after independence. Aged 88, he has settled in France and was married to the French artist and sculptor Janine Mongillat, who died in 2002.

Another South Asian painter whose work sold for record prices at the same auction is the late Francis Newton Souza. Like Raza, the Goa-born Souza was a founding member of the Progressive Artists Group from Bombay. And like Raza he too left his country of birth, setting first in London and then in New York. He returned to India shortly before his death in 2002.

Souza's Red Curse, dating from 1962, was sold to a European private collector for £881,500.

The peaks and troughs of Everest
The recent experiences on Mount Everest of two British climbers has proven once again the capricious nature of the world's tallest mountain that can dole out punishment and reward in equal measure.

Some 200 climbers have died on the mountain before and after Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay scaled the peak for the first time in 1953. The principal issue and obstacle for all climbers is the lack of oxygen at heights above 8,000 metres, where there is a third as much as at sea level.

Climbers have explained in the past how they can survive only a few hours with that amount of limited oxygen and the bodies of those who have succumbed still lie scattered around the upper slopes of this challenging environment.
Consider the case of the late Dr Peter Kinloch, an IT specialist for a British regional police force, who committed himself in 2005 to embark on the 'Seven Summits Challenge' of climbing the highest peak on every continent. Everest was his fifth intended summit this year and his aim was to use the opportunity to raise money for charity.

But, although he managed to reach the peak this summer, 28-year-old Kinloch was struck by blindness as he descended. The shortage of oxygen appears to have contributed to his loss of sight and co-ordination as he tried unsuccessfully to reach a safer area at a lower altitude. Three sherpas tried and failed over a period of eight hours to bring him down safely.

Two months earlier a young English woman from London had just the opposite experience when, despite whiplash and shooting pains in her spine, she managed to negotiate her way down safely from Everest's peak.

Bonita Norris, aged 22, radioed for help after experiencing the first signs of frostbite in the death zone above 26,000 feet. A graduate from one of London's universities, she praised her guide, Kenton Cool, and the emergency team of sherpas, saying, 'Would I have come down if I didn't have the team around me? It's very unlikely. I would most likely have suffered from exhaustion and the cold and died on the path.'

Like Kinloch after her, Norris also used the climb to raise money for good works, in her case an international foundation that supports children.

American double standards leave toxic taste
There is no obvious Asia dimension to the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico that the US has billed as the world's worst ecological disaster, threatening wildlife, damaging hundreds of miles of vulnerable coastline and potentially destroying thousands of jobs.

To date BP has committed some US$20 billion to pay for future claims, Congressional hearings, White House arm-twisting and the repeated public humiliation of BP's CEO, Tony Hayward, who has been subjected to an incredible level of personal abuse.

Yet for this magazine the sight of US politicians baying for Hayward's blood would invoke a great deal more sympathy if they had expressed similar sentiments in response to an even worse industrial/ecological disaster that took place 26 years ago in the Indian city of Bhopal.

Responsibility for that disaster, a leak of cyanide gas, rests squarely with a pesticide plant run by a US company, Union Carbide, which later became part of the Dow Chemical group.

At least 15,000 people are thought to have died in Bhopal as a direct result of the gas leakage, another 500,000 — according to campaigners pressing for fair compensation — are believed to suffer from health problems connected with the gas leak. Yet any attempt to seek real justice for the victims has come up against a wall of opposition from the US authorities.

It took only a matter of weeks for the White House to pressure BP to set up a compensation fund for victims of the oil leak, but 26 years after the gas leak, families of the Bhopal victims have yet to receive a single penny. All that the Indian government has managed so far to obtain by way of compensation is a paltry US$470 million. Much of that has still to be distributed.

Even more distasteful is the way the US authorities have protected Union Carbide chief executive Warren Anderson. In 1985, after some unpleasant arm-twisting by the US government, Anderson was allowed to leave India — escorted to his plane by Indian police — and has never been seen since then.
Unlike BP's Hayward, who has had the guts to stay in the public eye and face his detractors, Anderson all but disappeared. It was even rumoured that he had passed on until Indian journalists managed to track him down to his luxury home in New York state. But all this was to no avail. The US authorities have since then refused point blank to allow Anderson to be extradited to face criminal charges in an Indian court.

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