U r very right Saiks, I think it is high time to protest or do something
agains this problem our fellow black bro. and sis. are going through.
>From: Saikou Samateh <[log in to unmask]>
>Reply-To: The Gambia and related-issues mailing list
><[log in to unmask]>
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: Re: Between Tripoli and Banjul
>Date: Thu, 19 Oct 2000 20:14:15 +0100
>
>Bro,
>Just look at Sudan and Mauritania,the way black people are treated in these
>countries,in our own age ,is among the most depressing events taking place
>daily in our continent.Remember ethnic cleansing in Mauritania,with more
>than 50 % of its population been Black African,have been going on for a
>long time now.And as you rightly pointed out,not a single African leader is
>marking it a political issue.Here too we have African leaders,like our own
>government,who do not even want to know of the suffering of our black
>brothers and sisters in these countries,instead they are more concern with
>the "check "diplomacy.Mauritanian diplomacy in the Gambia can easily lead
>one to believed that they are concern with the educational development in
>our country,whiles denying black people in their own country everything
>that can make life easy for them and even to the extend of deporting them
>to Senegal claiming that they are migrants,many of these people could be
>found in refuge camps in Senegal and remember in this very
>country,Mauritania,lies the ruins of the Capital of one of the great
>African empires,the Ghana Empire.Sudanese have even been running an aid
>agency in the Gambia,whiles depriving millions of black people living in
>that country their basic human rights,they are been starved,they are been
>murdered etc.Arab racism is an issue,that our black brothers and sisters in
>these countries(Arab dominated African Countries)have been struggling for
>decades to put on the political agenda of our Continent.There are few of
>us out side these countries who are aware of the suffering of our poeple
>living in these Racist countries and our leaders will not even want to
>know.How many Gambians are aware of the fact that more than 50% of the
>population in Mauritania are Black Africans.My first encounter with racism
>was in a so-called Arab country and in Africa.
>Yes you are very right,there are People who claimed to be Pan
>Africanist,and have done everything to deny Arab genocide and racism in the
>continent,their understanding of the African past is either corrupted or
>not deepen.Arab racism should be equally our concern as white racism,that
>is why it is the duty of all of us to make the voices of our struggling
>brothers and sisters in these countries be heard.
>
>For Freedom
>Saiks
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Hamjatta Kanteh
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Sent: Wednesday, October 18, 2000 5:29 AM
> Subject: Between Tripoli and Banjul
>
>
> Here is a very depressing report from the Economist on the Libyan
>massacre of Black African immigrants in the recent spate of ethnic
>cleansing that Libyan RACISTS perpetrated on BLACK folks whilst sparing
>their ARAB cousins. It is interesting, that whilst we are busy condemning
>Jews for killing Palestinians [Arabs or Muslims] the same ethnic cleansing
>goes un-condemned in our own backyard. Interesting because the contempt
>that most Jews, at any rate in Israel, hold Palestinians is the same
>contempt that Black immigrants in Arab lands face each day. Ask anyone who
>has had the misfortune of going to Arab lands as an immigrant. Stories of
>human rights abuses, racism, slavery and the rest of the norms we thought
>the we had left with the 20th. century, abound in plenitude. Interesting
>again because when it comes to Arab racism and the history of how black
>people suffered from the hands of Arabs, we seem afflicted with historical
>amnesia; witness Pan Africanists discoursing slavery: Slavery for them is
>European marauders forcibly snatching off Africans to work in far-distant
>lands not equatable or even juxtaposable to the equally and morally
>disgusting Arab perpetration of slavery in the past and even to a lesser
>degree slavery in this supposedly modern age. If the stories we keep
>hearing from people who have been unfortunate enough to land themselves in
>Arab lands and from media outlets are true - as i have no doubt they are -
>then i will be very bold in contending that Black folks, at any rate in the
>modern age have had better treatment from White folks than from Arabs. It
>is a matter of every reality that the decency and respect that Blacks have
>earned in the West can never be equated with the pernicious and terminally
>incorrigible racial discriminiation Arabs feed our Black brothers on a
>daily basis. Read the attached report from the Economist and find out for
>yourself.
> Less visibly, and indeed, ironically, Black African leaders were not
>seen doing Jammeh-style rabid condemnation and indeed, largely mute on this
>massacre of their brothers and sisters in the hands of Arab racists in
>Libya. As the Economist reported, "Some African governments - the
>benefactors of the colonel's pan-African policy - have kept their critisism
>mute, amid allegations that ministers have pocketed Libya's offer of
>compensation." In effect they had already been bought by the cheque book
>diplomacy of the evil and tyrannous Gaddafi masquerading as a Pan
>Africanist. Where is our own Jammeh [another benefactor of Libyan cheque
>book diplomacy and the guy who went after the British for the murder of
>Biram Sey]? Busy reading trying to read his monthly Swiss Bank accounts
>statements of which no doubt Libyan bribery abounds? So, literally he had
>sold the life of any Gambian that has either died or sustained injuries in
>the hands of Libyan racists. Where is that indefatigible Jammeh mental
>wet-nurse and legendary pen pusher, Sidat "if the price is right" Jobe?
>Still drunk and snoring from the effects of his ill-gotten and corruptible
>influence in this morally degrading gov't? One thing we can be rest
>assured, is that Jammeh and his intellectual bandits wouldn't raise a voice
>in disgust at the callous murder of Black African immigrants in Libya
>recently. The devil in Tripoli has paid for the silence of the devil in
>Banjul.
> I, must pause however, to refute the Economists labelling of Gaddafi's
>policy towards Africa as Pan Africanist. Whatever else we choose to call
>Gaddafi's policy towards Black African countries, only a political naivete
>would call it Pan Africanist. As the Economist, in that very report subtly
>hinted at, Gadaffi policy towards Black Africans has been that of using
>them to further his own selfish ends. All Africans have to show for
>Gadaffi's morally and politically corrupt policy towards Black Africans is
>Liberia, Sierra Leone, Casamance, Gambia and Bissau. In virtually all the
>countries he had acted or intervened as a benefactor, it had either ended
>in a vicious cycle of civil wars or never-ending brutalisation and
>repression as the Sierra Leone and the Gambia evince as case studies in the
>latter and former attributes respectively.
> I can only hope sincerely that we will take heed and never flinch from
>condemning Arab racism as we are prone to when we hear reports of White
>racist acts of repression. And that, that most politically correct African,
>SA's president, Thabo Mbeki, would in the coming year call another tedious
>racist conference, this time focussing attention on the equally morally
>repugnant and stultifying Arab racism.
> Hamjatta Kanteh
>
> *****************************************
>
> LIBYA and AFRICA
>
> FROM THE ECONOMIST October 14th. - 20th. 2000
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Planeloads of bodies, dead and alive, flew back to West Africa from
>Tripoli this week, after Libya's worst outbreak of anti-foreigner violence
>since the expulsion of Italians and Jews in Muammar Qaddafi's coup in 1969.
> Survivors told of pogroms.
>
>
>
> Emeka Nwanko, a 26-year-old Nigerian welder, was one of hundreds of
>thousands of black victims of the Libyan mob. He fled as gangs trashed his
>workshop. His friend was blinded, as Libya gangs wielding machetes roamed
>the African townships. Bodies were hacked and dumped on motorways. A
>Chadian diplomat was lynched and Niger's embassy put to the torch. Some
>Nigerians attacked their own embassy after it refused refuge to nationals
>without proper papers - the vast majority.
>
>
>
> Libyans sheltering Africans were warned that their homes would be next.
>Some of Libya's indigenous 1m black citizens were mistaken for migrants,
>and dragged from taxis. In parts of Benghazi, blacks were barred from
>public transport and hospitals. Pitched battles erupted in Zawiya, a town
>near Tripoli that is ringed with migrant shantytowns. Diplomats said that
>at least 150 people were killed, 16 of them Libyans. The all-powerful
>security forces intervened by shooting in the air.
>
>
>
> African migrants, unfairly blamed for the disaster, were detained en
>masse. They once numbered over 1m but diplomats say that they have mostly
>disappeared from the streets, and are in hiding or in camps pending
>expulsion. Over the past forthnight, hundreds of thousands of black
>migrants have been herded into trucks and buses, driven in convoy towards
>the border with Niger and Chad, 1600km (1000 miles) south of Tripoli, and
>dumped in the desert.
>
>
>
> Migrants from countries without land likes to Libya, including 5,000
>Nigerians and nearly the same number of Ghanaians, are being airlifted out.
> Hundreds more are languishing in three scrubland camps ringing Tripoli
>airport waiting for flights. There is no medical care for the black
>Africans, many of whom have broken limbs or stab wounds.
>
>
>
> Anti-black violence had been simmering for months, fired by an economic
>crisis. Colonel Qaddafi heads Africa's richest state in terms in income
>per person. This year oil will earn him $11 billion. But Libyans, feeding
>their families monthly salaries of $170, see the money squandered on
>foreign adventures, the latest of which is the colonel's pan-African
>policy. As billions flowed out in aid, and visa-less migrants flowed in,
>Libyans feared they were being turned into a minority in their own land.
>Church attendance soared in this Muslim state. So did crime and AIDS.
>
>
>
> A history of racism fanned the flames. Libyans were slave-trading until
>the 1930s and, under Italian rule, they saw themselves as Mediterranean,
>calling Africans "chocalatinos". Black-bashing has become a popular
>afternoon sport for Libya's unemployed youths. The rumour that a Nigerian
>had raped a Libyan girl in Zawiya was enough to spark a spree of ethnic
>cleansing.
>
>
>
> Some African governments - the benefactors of the colonel's pan-African
>policy - have kept their critisism mute, amid allegations that ministers
>have pocketed Libya's offer of compensation. Nigeria's minister for
>co-operation, Dapo Sarumi, has described the deportees as "an
>embarrassment". Chad and Sudan have made robust protests. But President
>Jerry Rawlings of Ghana was alone in taking action. He flew to Tripoli on
>October 7th and brought 250 Ghanaian workers home the next day.
>
>
>
> Libyans will be hoping that they have just ousted the migrants, but have
>also ousted Qaddafi's hated pan-African policy. Only last month, in front
>of 11 African leaders, he was preaching open borders and single currency.
>The United States of Africa was due to be declared in his home-town of
>Sirte next March. It is now hard to see African heads of state rushing
>back to Libya.
>
>
>
> Observers detect yet another U-turn in the offing. As his Africa policy
>unravels, Colonel Qaddafi is back befriending the Arabs, with visits this
>week to Jordan, Syria and even his old foe, Saudi Arabia. In their rampage
>on migrant workers, the Libyan mob spared Arabs, including the 750,000
>Egyptians. Now that the UN's sanctions have gone, the African states who
>dared break the air boycott have served their purpose. The more
>lily-livered Arab states, who shunned Libya, can now perhaps be forgiven,
>under the latest banner, Arab-African unity.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
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