December 13, 1999
ACCRA, Ghana (PANA) - A fresh call was made Sunday in Accra urging the United Nations to fight for reparations for the past enslavement and colonisation of African people.
The call was made by the African World Reparations and Repatriation Truth Commission's co-chairman, Hamet Maulana, who said slave trade and colonisation were human rights abuses.
"The very signatories to the UN Charter on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, are in fact the nations who enslaved and colonised African people. These same nations have never offered an apology nor any form of compensation to African people, for the enormous harm and damage that they have done to Africa and its economies," Maulana said.
He was addressing a forum on why Africa is demanding in reparation 777 trillion US dollars from Western Europe, the Americas and institutions who participated and benefited from the Trans-Atlantic slave trade and colonialism.
"The damage done through slavery and colonialism of African people is truly the bane and woes of Africa's enormous problems today," he said.
He added that as the UN celebrates the 51st anniversary of the Human Rights Charter, the commission's "position is that enslavement and colonisation of African people is a human rights abuse, lest we forget".
Maulana said the commission is in progress of assembling an international team of lawyers to pursue "legal redress" through the courts to make "a just claim on behalf of African people who are victims of the slave trade and colonialism."
It feels that posterity is judging and filing an indictment against all African people today, for not having the consciousness and courage, to seek redress and compensation, from those nations and institutions who have devastated African economies and its cultural way of life.
Maulana urged Africans to take inspiration from the women of South Korea and the Philippines, who are in their mid 80s and are receiving compensation from Japan because they were used as comfort and sex slaves by Japanese soldiers in Second World War.
He also cited the example set by the German government which is settling a four-billion dollar claim from its slave labour camps victims of the war.
He appealed to Africans to support the commission in its just demand, adding that "if we Africans forget the atrocities committed against us in the past through slavery and colonialism, surely, our children will suffer tomorrow."
Josiah Aryeh, senior law lecturer at University of Ghana, Legon, said the universal declaration of human rights would be meaningless unless it is backed by a "genuine atonement for the blood of black men and women of Africa."
"If the world is serious it must recognise the sufferings inflicted on our peoples and continent without which any talk of human rights would essentially be a talk of limited rights to sections of humanity only," he added. "The suffering of the African must be recognised and steps taken towards restitution."