Posted on 02/05/2005 3:36:54 AM PST by HAL9000
Addis Ababa - The African Union plans to relaunch attempts to gain reparations for the countless Africans who were abducted from the continent and sold into slavery over the centuries, the pan-continental body said.In a statement released late on Friday from its headquarters in Addis Ababa, the African Union said its executive Commission would push the issue, and would also call on African parliaments to do so.
"In the coming months the Commission will relaunch a committee on repairing the damage caused by slavery," said spokesperson Adam Thiam.
He added that the AU was calling on African countries to take measures to outlaw slavery like those adopted by France in May 2001. The new French law classifies both slavery and the slave trade as a crime against humanity.
Talks on the issue took place on the sidelines of celebrations in Ethiopia to mark what would have been the 60th birthday of the late Jamaican singer Bob Marley.
Marley's supporters, the Rastafarians, have in the past pushed a demand for the main western nations involved in the slave trade and slavery - notably Britain, France, the United States, Spain and Portugal - to pay reparations.
Of course the Islamic world, which took far more slaves from Africa and continues the practice today, is not mentioned at all.
Fee, fie, foe, fum,
We smell the cash of Christendom.
Nor are the Africans who sold many of their own into slavery, nor are the arabs traders who facilitated the transfers into slavery going to be attacked. Nor is modern slavery such as that which takes place in communist Cuba, or in places like Sudan (they're only Christians anyway)going to be attacked.
They should ask reparations of everyone involved, but I believe they mean getting reparation from the US. If they mean getting reparations from all the Arabs and Africans that collected and sold their brothers into slavery, but I don't think they mean them. Hell, why worry about reparations when they still have slavery going on right now. Maybe a good place to start would be the UN.
I wonder if they will be sending a bill to the Arabs.
Dear African Union,
Read this from Reuters: GENEVA (Reuters) - Some 880 slaves, said to have been abducted in southern Sudan by government-backed raiders, have been freed, but tens of thousands are still held in Darfur and elsewhere, a Swiss-based group said on Friday
Seeing as Africa is still involved in the slave trade today, why should Western nations pay you a dime? Let us not forget, it was your tribal leaders who rounded up people to sell to the slave traders.
Denny Crane: "There are two places to find the truth. First God and then Fox News."
This is like "aggressive panhandling" on an international scale.
The ones that got the money were their own people, so they need to pay themselves. Reparations come from the seller, not the buyer.
But if they want the west to pay, then send the bill to Jeff Davis and the CSA.
Why not? It worked for Jesse for years..
I was struck, the last time I was in Africa, how devoid of enterprise or production the whole place is.
But at least fifty people asked me, "When is America going to send money?"
Africa invents nothing, develops nothing, and produces nothing. It could do all of those things, but until it does, it will remain a catastrophe.
I don't see them attempting to confiscate the wealth of the descendants of Tippu Tip, a notorious East African slave trader. Oh sorry, he was African.
Regards, Ivan
HULLLOOOO? do these people know that there are slaves being held in africa TODAY???? they are called CHRISTIANS!! if i am not mistaken, i believe there are more slaves being held in africa today than any time in history.
This was a dead issue in the US until Chase bank had to stir it all up again by apologizing and offering scholarships. Which of course were not good enough. There is not enough coin or bling in the world to make the reaparations pimps happy.
When are thes companies going to learn that to apologize makes you a target. Of course slavery was (and is today) morally wrong. Thats why the civil war was fought in the US. But by law, it was legal, so there is no legal basis for any judgement against any company that made money from it. Thats all facts from when it was happening. But if you bring it forward to today, it is even more of a dead issue. There is not one single person in the US today that has owned a slave or who has been a slave. Case closed.
If these people have a fight, they have a fight with Arabs and Africans that are selling and keeping slaves today. Get the money from them but don't look to the US for a dime. Take your shakedown someplace thats buying it. We are not.
Reparations imply that some harm was done. Let's see - slaves were bought/sold a couple centries ago. Said purchased slaves were brought to US soil where in 1865 they were freed by proclamation.
Granted there existed for some time discrimination and such, but overall I believe that very few slaves that were bought ended up WORSE overall here than had they stayed in the place they came from.
Desendants of slaves today are hundreds of times better off; economically, health wise, access to higher learning, etc.
Had their anscestors NOT been bought as slaves only the very luckiest of the survivors would today be in a similar position.
There is no question slavery was wrong. But what economic harm was done? Perhaps someone who is not a polically correct weenie should really look at how slaves in the US were treated - I imagine some slave owners were brutal, but perhaps most treated slaves with many elements of dignity so as to get the most work from them - a beat horse don't race very well, and the most successful plantation owners probably treated these slaves with more compassion than is being presented today.
The alternative could have been inter-tribal warfare, starvation, disease, and a continuous struggle to survive - which descendant of a slave today is in that position or worse?
Enough of this "reparations" crap already.
Exactly. My relatives on both my moms and my dads side came over after the civil war and slavery. But I would end up paying one way or another..
Let's wait until the AU does something to stop the current slave practices on the African continent, by Africans.
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