1. IS THE CLAIM FOR REPARATIONS TOO LATE AND OUT OF TIME?
After 2000 years the Jewish People claimed a homeland. In 1838 Britain passed the Abolition of Slavery Act. In the year 2000, the passage of 162 years is a very short time in human history. The United States of America, the Land of Liberty, fully supports the Jewish People – the Black Peoples of Africa and those of African descent are overwhelmingly deserving in their legitimate claim for reparations. The claim is derived from the enormous crime committed against humanity - The Atlantic African Slave Trade. There is no Statute of Limitations on a Great Crime.
The consequences of the Atlantic African Slave Trade are evident from evidence of discrimination, underdevelopment, psychological consequences, and economic disadvantage through a historical lack of generational accumulation of wealth, coupled with institutionalised mechanisms of oppression. The crimes of kidnapping and murder were known in the slave trading nations at the time of the Atlantic African Slave Trade. While morality speaks from a higher level, adequate precedents exist in law for establishing the claim as legally justifiable.
2. WHAT LAWS CAN SUPPORT THE CLAIM FOR REPARATIONS?
The effect of the Geneva Conventions is to establish universal jurisdiction. Under Article 6 of the 1956 Supplementary Convention on the Abolition of Slavery, the slave trade, and institutions and practices similar to slavery, and enslavement of a person, shall be a criminal offence.
The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide 1948, second article of the Convention, defines genocide as:
(a) Killing members of the group
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group
(c) Inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction
(d) …
The war of persecution and enslavement advanced against the Black Peoples of Africa and their resources by a state such as Great Britain demands that states qua states, and/or groups within states, be justly compensated, when one considers the implications for modern international criminal law from an expansive consideration of the words in the Nuremberg judgment:-
“That international law imposes duties and liabilities upon individuals as well as States has long been recognised … individuals can be punished for violations of international law. Crimes against international law are committed by men, not by abstract entities, and only by punishing individuals who commit such crimes can the provisions of international law be enforced.”
But nothing is cast in stone, as the field of international criminal law is continually expanding. It cannot be said that where state policy is such as to have advanced a crime against humanity, from which vast wealth was derived for the benefit of identifiable state entities, such state and/or states ought not to be held accountable. Nuremberg represented an ad hoc tribunal to address ex post facto a grave crime against humanity. When world opinion is sufficiently awakened and aroused, there is nothing prohibiting the establishment of such an ad hoc tribunal to address the crime of the Atlantic African Slave Trade, along with its manifest consequences today.
The Attorney-General of the Government of Israel vs. Eichmann was a case of the state against an individual, and it is not inconceivable that the state itself can be held accountable for having actively facilitated and enduringly benefited from the crime against humanity. Changing priorities in the world community over time can ensure this, when consensus is built as to what is a crime and from whence should account be made. Where the Nuremberg tribunal spoke of “crimes against humanity” a definition arose, including: murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation, and other inhumane acts.
It is urged that the United Nations be used as a venue through which, upon the precedents of the Nuremberg and Tokyo models, an ad hoc tribunal can be established to address this yet unaddressed issue on the international agenda, of reparations for the Atlantic African Slave Trade and its horrendous consequences.
Moreover, historically derived claims on behalf of groups of people who suffered injustice have been accepted as legitimate. The Aborigines in Australia, the Mauris in New Zealand, the Inuit (Eskimos) compensated by the Canadian government, are but some examples - and, not to forget, the Native Americans in the United States of America.
The nations which were the prime movers and major beneficiaries in the slave trading as instituted, organized and viciously executed for and on their behalf, to their enormous economic benefit, should apologise and pay just reparations for the crime as orchestrated by those nations.
3. WHICH NATIONS ARE TO MAKE PAYMENT?
Payment is to be made by the major slave trading nations, such as Britain, Spain, Portugal, France, The Netherlands, and the United States of America, which advanced by way of the tremendous economic impetus in having utilised centuries of unpaid slave labour. No honest person would contend that nothing was gained economically by way of having human beings for centuries provide unpaid slave labour, to nations such as Britain or the United States of America, which benefited immensely in accumulating wealth. A group of people remains lost in consequential disadvantage, namely the Black Peoples of Africa and the descendants of slaves, who, to this day, remain discriminated against, socially ostracised, and economically oppressed (sometimes with acquiescence and support from institutions managed by the same nations which had traded slaves in the Atlantic African Slave Trade). There is today considerable consistency in transferred, historically derived oppression as continued under institutional arrangements.
4. WHICH INSTITUTIONS OPPRESS PEOPLE AS REFERRED TO ABOVE?
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) can be singled out as an institution which has imposed dire consequences in the terms and conditions of lending, and is a perfect example of the institutional arrangements used to oppress people and create unpayable debts burdening some countries, inclusive of countries with majority populations of descendants of slaves. Debt burdens in some countries are up to 60% and more of national budget in debt repayment.
The recent protests in Seattle, Washington, Australia, and Prague are but an honest and heartfelt expression of world opinion by people of conscience. Many people are fully cognisant of the oppression which unfair terms of trade, contrived devaluations of currencies, and other forms of economic oppression imposed on people, and imposed quite significantly, against certain countries on the continent of Africa, and likewise against people of African descent in the Diaspora, have had. In actuality, millions of people everywhere across the globe are affected.
5. HOW CAN REPARATIONS BE MADE TO PEOPLE OF AFRICA AND THE AFRICAN DIASPORA?
Immediate debt cancellation is one way of assisting countries by way of freeing of a large percentage of funds in the debt problem, where sums can more gainfully be applied to pressing issues such as development of agriculture, provision of medicine, health care, and alleviation of housing problems, instead of being absorbed in the impossible demand for payment of unpayable debts. Real “aid” and massive support in the aforementioned areas of need, coupled with provision of education, technological transfers, and other areas of human need, are constructive and productive measures which can urgently be advanced. These are means of doing justice, as against perpetuating injustice against the Black Peoples of Africa and the African Diaspora.
In so doing justice, humanity itself is aided through real assistance for millions of disadvantaged persons across the globe, who might finally start benefiting from much needed global institutional change. Reparations can serve a dual purpose for the Black Peoples of Africa and the African Diaspora, as well as serve as a catalyst for effecting change against oppression affecting other groups across the world.
6. IS THERE REAL EVIDENCE OF THE DISADVANTAGE REFERRED TO AT 5 ABOVE, AND IF SO, WHAT SOLUTION IS SUGGESTED?
Yes, there is real evidence – any honest human being can look at the world today and the conditions of the majority of humanity. It is an inescapable conclusion that lender countries’ terms of lending have produced profound adverse results, as are clearly evident over decades, following upon centuries of exploitation and oppression. There can be no humane excuse for continuation with institutionalised mechanisms of literal servitude under debt burdens. The former slave trading nations now lending the very wealth accumulated via the mechanisms operating in the modern international financial system, can be, and ought to be obliged to change.
A single small step towards wider changes would be an apology for the heinous crime of the trade in human beings as was occasioned as a distinct historical criminal commercial enterprise, wherein, unlike any other example in modern history, millions of people were placed in conditions of unpaid servitude, as "chattels" to the lasting benefit of the nations which were organisers and prime movers in the criminal enterprise.
7. WHAT USE IS AN APOLOGY?
An apology is an admission of wrong. The Atlantic African Slave Trade was a major crime against humanity, initiated by European nations against the Black Peoples of Africa. The nations which were organisers and prime movers of people in this criminal enterprise, having enriched themselves, should properly apologise. It can only honestly be concluded that when Prime Minister Anthony Blair of Britain, after approximately 150 years, apologised for Britain’s role in the Irish Potato Famine, he was saying that he accepted that his nation had done wrong, and he wanted, in effect, a measure of atonement with the Irish people. What then should serve to inhibit a man who has acted in this way from giving an apology to the People of Africa and the African Diaspora for the part which Britain played in the largest criminal enterprise occasioned against humanity during the past 500 years?
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