Slavery Is Criminal” — President Mahama Declares at UN, Tables Reparations Motion for Vote Today

President John Dramani Mahama has challenged the global community to confront the full horror of the transatlantic slave trade and embrace reparative justice as a pathway to healing, in a spirited appeal to an assembly of global figures.







Speaking at the United Nations Headquarters in New York yesterday at the UN High-Level Special Event on Reparatory Justice, President Mahama began his eight-page address with a provocative declaration: "There is no such thing as a slave".




Explaining his assertion, President Mahama stated: "There were human beings who were trafficked and then enslaved by people who believed they could own those human beings as chattel, as their personal property".




He emphasised that the distinction was critical, indicating: "Not if you acknowledge an individual's humanity; not if you respect an individual's basic right to dignity".




President Mahama described the transatlantic slave trade as a system "designed to deny African people their humanity", premised on a racial hierarchy "with no basis in fact or science".




"When discussing slavery and its resulting institutions and practices, we must always start by reclaiming racial equality, the dignity of Africans, the humanity of our ancestors who were enslaved and, as a matter of course, our own humanity," he said.




Tabling motion, voting today




The President’s speech preceded the expected formal tabling of the motion at the event and the subsequent vote on the subject, both today.




While the call for reparatory justice for slavery and the slave trade had been pushed by various actors across the ages, none had ever come this close to receiving the ultimate attention at this level of a global conference.




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For this purpose, President Mahama was named the African Union Champion on Reparations.




Rationale




President Mahama said the resolution offered the global community an opportunity “to collectively bear witness to the plight of the 18 million men, women and children whose homes, communities, names, families, hopes, dreams, futures and lives were stolen from them over the course of four centuries”.




He affirmed that the resolution was a pathway to healing and reparative justice, and a safeguard against forgetting the history of slavery and the slave trade.




The President recounted the cruelty under which several Africans were captured, underscoring the need to recognise the suffering of Africans.




“Violence begins with language; when words are used as weapons, or to codify abuse; when people are called names. Regardless of their state of dress when they were captured, enslaved Africans were always stripped of their clothing while being kept in the dungeons of the fortresses that had been built by the Europeans.




“They were forced, with their limbs chained and shackled, onto the cargo hold of a ship.




They remained naked, packed like sardines, during the months-long journey through the Middle Passage,” he said.




While slaves were ultimately taken successfully to other parts of the world, it did not come without a fight by some who chose to end it all by jumping overboard to face certain death, while some ships also sank with chained slaves on board, President Mahama narrated.




He said: “10 to 15 per cent of enslaved people died in the Middle Passage.




Whenever a ship did arrive at its destination, the enslaved people, still naked, were taken to the market, where they were inspected and appraised, like livestock.




“They were then placed on an auction block in front of an audience of potential buyers and sold to the highest bidder,” he added.




The purchase of slaves also established the master-slave relationship, with slaves forced to take the names of their owners, while others were simply described as “boy or girl” or given derogatory names such as the “N-word”.




Destinations




Further on the slavery statistics, the President indicated that roughly six million enslaved Africans were trafficked to Brazil, which is the fifth largest nation in the world, stretching 4,400 kilometres from north to south and 4,320 kilometres from east to west.




Also, almost two million enslaved Africans were trafficked to Jamaica, which was the most profitable of all the sugar-producing locations.




The island is 235 kilometres long and between 34 and 84 kilometres wide, depending on a measurer’s location, President Mahama said.




“About 500,000 enslaved Africans were trafficked to America. From the early 17th century, when the first ship arrived, to the mid-19th century, when chattel slavery was abolished, America grew from three colonies to an independent nation with 36 states.




“Over 450,000 enslaved Africans were trafficked to Barbados, an island that is 34 kilometres long and 23 kilometres wide,” President Mahama added.




Meanwhile, before the trafficking of enslaved Africans, the President explained, plantation labour in Barbados came from white indentured servants, who were usually Irish, white folks who were eventually granted freedom and also difficult to recapture when they ran away, as they could blend with the larger white population.




Racial equality




President Mahama encouraged all to start by reclaiming racial equality, the dignity of Africans, and the humanity of ancestors who were enslaved when discussing slavery and its resulting institutions and practices.




He indicated that while people would sometimes try to put a disclaimer on slavery by insisting that contemporary social norms could not be used to judge the actions and events that took place in past eras, it was a wrong assertion.




“Just because everybody is doing something doesn’t make it right.




Slavery is wrong now, and it was wrong then.




For as long as Africans have been trafficked and enslaved, there have been abolitionists who have spoken up against it,” he said.




Vote




President Mahama called on leaders of the African Union member states to back the motion and bring justice to the enslaved Africans who suffered cruelty between the 14th and 18th centuries.




“I hope all of you will vote tomorrow to speak truth to power so that together we can pass this historic resolution and finally acknowledge the full horror of these transgressions against the humanity of the 18 million human beings who were enslaved,” he stated.



Source : Graphiconline.com