2011 UN International Day of Remembrance for Victims of Slavery and Transnational Slave Trade

April 4, 2011 - PRLog -- DATE 25th March 2011

In commemoration of the 25TH March United Nations International Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Slavery and Trans-Atlantic Slavery, the Council for Afrika International advocates for urgent overhaul of strategies, policies, structures, United Nations Committees to arrive at new approaches, models and paradigms to catalyse the total eradication of slavery and enslavement from human civilisation once and for all. Slavery, enslavement and the continued adverse effects of the Trans-Atlantic Slavery Trade on Africans, Diaspora Africans and the African Continent are unnecessary human-made evils, driven by hate, bigotry and parochialism, without which the world would be a far better place of peaceful co-existence and fulfilment of human purpose on earth.

According to Dr Koku Adomdza, President of the Council for Afrika International, “Like on all other justice matters with which we are active, we believe that the world must move radically beyond ‘remembrance’ to proactive action, put an emphatic end the enduring tentacles and adverse effects of slavery and the Transatlantic Slave Trade. This is beyond ‘enough is enough’ situation. Again we have studied the UN’s program for this remembrance occasion and it is so pathetically lifeless, reflective of institutional apathy and lack of preparedness to take appropriate actions, proportionate to the critical nature of the adverse effects of slavery and Transatlantic Slave Trade, which are experienced by Africans worldwide and the marginalisation of the African Continent. It no way reflects the crises that the majority of Africans and the African Continent are in.

“In March 2011, we see that global leadership is ready to take decisive action from some perspectives but not on matters that relate to the total restoration of the dignity of Africans nor safeguarding the integrity and sovereignty of the African Continent; often in conclusion with a minority of misguided persons of African descent who lack loyalty to the martyrdom of the pioneers of African Liberation, whose blood have made it possible for them to occupy high positions contemporarily. See, crucially, we must not forget that this is a bloody tragic genocide against the African people, for which many were brutalised to their deaths and the early martyrs who revolted against the ruthless slave trade machinery were severely crushed. Similarly, some 2billion Global Africans are affected by the enduring adverse effects of slavery and the Transatlantic Slavery in contemporary times.

“In contemporary times, precisely as a result of the continued vibrancy of the causes – the supremacist ideology, afrophobia and anti-Africanism etc, Africans and Diaspora Africans continue to be adversely affected economically, politically, socially and so on. Yes, the Slave Trade Act was abolished, but the enslavement of the African people was never abolished, because the causes were never successfully tackled. This clarity by global leaders is imperative to restore justice to the global African community, bring healing to the descendants of both perpetrators and victims.    

“Through relentless propaganda and promotion of deceptive free but unfair market economics, free but unfair trade, free but unfair industrialisation policies, free but unfair investment policies, backed by the IMF and World Bank, Africa’s imperative industrialisation and manufacturing ability was undermined in the immediate post independence era, which reduced Africa to a vast captive market for Global North’s industrialised goods and services; which in turn asphyxiates local industrial enterprise and entrepreneurial efforts.  Critically, this model has suffocated the end vision of political independence i.e. economic prosperity, perpetrated the African Holocaust, blights circa 2 billion Africans world-wide and requires radical review to bring relevance to 25th March as International Day of Victims of this genocide.

“Two centuries of the abolition of the Slave Trade Act and half a century of self-rule in Africa, have failed to dismantle the structures, infrastructures and superstructures of slavery, economic marginalisation of Global Africans and the African Continent. These facts, demonstrate that anti-slavery requires more than legislation, but the smashing up of all the citadels and tentacles of slavery to bring meaningful liberation and restoration of freedom and justice to Africa and its people globally.

“Keep in mind that 21st Century Africa is a creation of the same unethical global economic disorder that engulfed the world during the 400 years of cartel slavery, into a continent enslaved to Global North’s industrialised goods in which both the rich and poor have become willing and unwilling economic enslavement victims, including a scenario where the political and economic elites of Africa and Global Africans on other continents actively indulge, instead of promoting made in Africa goods; the majority of whom deposit their vast wealth in foreign banks. The same finance resource gets recycled into investment capital, then repackaged as astronomically high interest loans or conditional largesse to the African countries which further impoverish Africans.

“On the other hand majority Africans are abjectly impoverished, economically disengaged and marginalised though located in their own countries and continents of birth, where African citizenship have become meaningless. Though Africa is still richly endowed in natural resources regardless of centuries of grotesque exploitation, majority Africans cannot afford basic needs for themselves nor their dependants – poor educational, health, housing, food facilities where the hospitals are structures for the receipt of death certificates.

“The continued entrenchment of the long-term adverse effects of slavery and Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade are partly due to the passive or active collusion of some Africans in Leadership, who in their rise to positions of authority tragically disconnect from the cravings of justice that are unleashed on the African Continent, to their fellow Africans, and Diaspora Africans; unlike the selfless sacrifices of pioneer African Abolitionists in the face of relative adversity, to hand us the rights we enjoy in contemporary times.

“Emphatic failure of neo-colonialist economic [under] development models in Africa has entrenched and worsened the economic enslavement of the African people and entangled the African Continent in deeper indebtedness to the degree of mortgaging the prospects of future generations for decades. This obscene reality requires creative and radical actions by African and Global Leadership with deliberate haste! Redress Actions include the following:

1.   Global North’s Monopoly of Industrial, Technological, Scientific, Medical, Pharmaceutical, Engineering advancement and knowhow
2.   Record Natural Resource Haemorrhage out of Africa at cheap prices
3.   Expert Human Capital Haemorrhage out of Africa consequent to hardship associated with impoverishment and abject drudgery
4.   Financial Capital Haemorrhage at a frightening $1.06 Trillion per annum from Africa to the Global North
5.   Virulence and vibrancy of supremacist afrophobic ideology against Africa and Africans that underpin the existing global world system; the same bigotry that was in vogue during the Transatlantic slavery which have withstood the anti-racist, anti-colonialist, anti-poverty and liberation struggles

"Afrika International urges African and global Leadership to get courageous and busy in rejecting all failed models and embrace creative measurable programs of action, not excluding a renewed consensus on Reconstruction for Reparations i.e. charging the full cost of Africa’s reconstruction to former slave-trading countries.  This is the only way, the chains of slavery, enslavement and adverse effects of the Transatlantic Slave Trade could be practically abolished.”

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The first victims-led, change inspired, ethics-driven think and doing tank dedicated to the demise of afrophobia, afrophobism and antiafrophobism i.e. Dehumanisation, discrimination and marginalisation against global africans and the african continent