“Today, there is no other mechanism in existence which permits a group to internationalize their struggle except the UN. All minority movements go there - if for no other reason than the UN is the crossroads where the world meets and makes decisions which come to represent the moral and legal authority of world opinion. As a pivotal arena of public opinion and thereby political power, the UN forces states to be concerned about its views. No state (nor indeed any serious liberation movement) questions its value.”
- Dr. Y. N Kly
On June 18, 1452, Pope Nicholas V issued the Apostolic Edict known as the Dum Diversas. This document declared total war against the people living on the African Continent. Every person captured and trafficked from their homeland on the African continent and enslaved in the Americas, and their descendants, are thus “prisoners of war”.
In 1841 the decision in United States v The Libelants and Claimants of the Schooner Amistad declared that AfroDescendant prisoners of war owe no allegiance to any Nation's laws and retain the right of return to their ancestral homelands. Page 841 of its decision states that,
“The law of nature and the law of nations find us effectively to render justice to the African . . . and in a case like this, where it is admitted that the African . . . owe no allegiance to (any Nations laws) their rights are to be determined by the law which is of universal obligation - the law of nature. . .
The presumption of law is, always, that the domicile of origin is retained until the change is proved . . . The burden of proving the change is cast on him who alleges it. . . .The domicile of origin prevails until the party has not only acquired another, but has manifested and carried into execution an intention of abandoning his former domicile and acquiring another as his sole domicile. As it is the will or intention of the party which alone determines what is the real place of domicile which he has chosen, it follows that a former domicile is not abandoned by residence in another if that residence be not voluntarily chosen. Those who are in exile, or in prison, as they are never presumed to have abandoned all hope of return, retain their former domicile. That these victims of fraud and piracy - husbands torn from their wives and families - children from their parents and kindred - neither intended to abandon the land or their nativity, nor had lost all hope of recovering it, sufficiently appears from the facts on this record. It cannot, surely be claimed that a residence, under such circumstances of these helpless beings . . . changed their native domicile.”
On July 2, 1864, an Act of Congress authorized the treasury agents to seize land and lease for one year all captured and abandoned estates and to provide for the welfare of former slaves. Property was declared abandoned when the lawful owner was opposed to paying the revenue. Certain tracts of land in each district were set apart for the exclusive use and working of the freedmen. These reservations were called Freedmen Labor Colonies and were under the direction of the superintendents. Schools were established, both in the Home Colonies and in the labor colonies. This new system went into operation the winter of 1864-1865. The treasury agents, in many cases, became corrupt, and these regulations remained in force only until the Freedmen’s Bureau was organized in 1865.
At the conclusion of the United States Civil war, the United States government upheld the Amistad decision and provided for voluntary, compensated repatriation back to Africa. It also decided to create New Afrikan self governing territories (colonies). On January 12, 1865 the United States Secretary of War Edwin McMasters Stanton and United States Army General William Tecumseh Sherman met in Savannah, Georgia with a New Afrikan government council of twenty people representing the new class of free persons. In response to General Sherman’s Fourth request to “State in what manner you would rather live - whether scattered among the whites or in colonies by yourselves, the spokesperson for the black Government council, Garrison Frazier answered: “I would prefer to live by ourselves, for there is prejudice against us in the South that will take years to get over; but I do not know that I can answer for my brethren.” The record shows that Mr. Lynch said he thinks they should not be separated but live together. All the other persons present, being questioned one by one, answer that they agree with Brother Frazier. As a result of these negotiations, the closest thing that New Afrikans had to a plebiscite to determine their will and aspirations as free men, General Sherman issued Special Field Order Number 15.
Forty-thousand New Afrikans were settled under General Sherman’s Special Field Order 15 dated 16 January 1865. Similar centers of the New African nation under New African Governments were established in Mississippi. Captain John Eaton, named Superintendent of Negro Affairs by General Ulysses Grant in 1862, had, by July 1864, settled 72,500 members of the new class “in cities on plantations and in freedman’s villages,” almost all of whom, Superintendent Eaton reported, were ‘entirely self-supporting.’ Davis Bend, Mississippi was occupied by the Union Army in December 1864. Here a New African government was established with all the property under its control and with districts under New African sheriffs and judges and other officers. Again, as on the east Coast, the center of New African Government in Mississippi remained under the protection of the United States Army and ultimately subject to United States law, like many of the Indian nations. But also, like the East Coast centers of the New African nation, these communities were established on land that was in territorial status, and they were composed of persons who, like the residents of the Thirteen Colonies, possessed the inalienable right to liberty. Thus, by word and action, did the American government recognize the fledgling New African nation and the right of the new class, in exercise of its inherent liberty, to independent Statehood.
The status of the New Afrikan self-governing territories and voluntary, compensated repatriation was removed through a United States official campaign of fraud and terrorism resulting from the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. As noted by Imari Obadele,
“Just as soon as the United States Government recognized the inalienable rights of the new class of free men - namely the right to seek admission, as citizens, to the American community; the right to return home, to Africa; the right to general emigration and the right to set up an independent State of its own; segments of American society began to narrow the options for the new class which it, the American community, as a matter of political action, would accept.
As early as December 1863 the United States Secretary of the Interior suggested that the new class of free men should not be sent away because they were needed in the United States Army. Also, in April 1865, General Butler replied to President Lincoln’s request for logistical information that ‘using all your naval vessels and all the merchant marine fit to cross the seas with safety, it wil be impossible for you to transport to the nearest place that can be found fit for them - and that is the Island of Domingo - half as fast as Negro children will be born here.’
In the report of the United States Congress’ Joint Committee of Fifteen, 18 June 1866, the Congress explains how this difficult logistical problem - meaning that the new class would stay in the United States and largely in the South - helped determine, from the viewpoint of the American community, that the new class should be given the vote and United States citizenship. The new class, as voters, could be counted upon to support the United States government in power, whereas that segment of the American community until recently denominated the Confederacy could be counted upon to oppose the government in power. If the new class remained voteless, as they were during slavery, when each slave was counted as only three-fifth a man in the basis of representation, their numbers as free men would nevertheless give the former Confederacy a huge increase in members in the House of Representatives and the Electoral College, because now, even if voteless, the free man would be counted as five fifths, instead of three-fifths, a man. Said the Committee: ‘The increase of representation necessarily resulting from the abolition of slavery was considered the most important element in the questions arising out of the changed condition of affairs, and the necessity for some fundamental action in this regared seemed imperative.’ Thus, the American community - reacting to its own need for black labor and reacting to what it believed to be a difficult logistical problem in emigration and reacting to a fear of increased political power for the Confederates - determined to limit the liberty of the new class of men, in the political arena, to the single option of the United States citizenship.
The Fourteenth Amendment, passed by Congress in June 1866 and ratified by the States in July 1868, was, then, the consecration of a campaign of war and fraud by the American community against the new class, wrongfully and illegally to prevent the new class from exercising the full range of political liberty that belonged to it. The new class was not to be barred from accepting membership in the American community - indeed, the Fourteenth Amendment attempted to order the new class into the American community - although that membership would be limited politically and socially. The new class would not be prevented from emigrating in small numbers and at its own expense. But it would be prevented - under this illegal campaign consecrated by the Fourteenth amendment - from establishing independent sovereignty over a land mass in what the American community deemed to be the actual and potential land of the United States. But the campaign was - and is- an illegal application of the Fourteenth Amendment.”
By 1917, Cyrl V. Briggs had reiterated Garrison Frazier’s petition to establish self-governing New African colonies, calling for “Colored Autonomous States”. This seemed to be the appropriate application of President Woodrow Wilson calls for self determination under his “14 Points”. By the time of the Paris Peace Conference and in its aftermath in 1919, the League of Nations decided to use Scientific Colonialism as the foundation of its Mandates System.
The Mandates system was applied to the former German and Ottoman colonies after the war. The broad outlines of which territories were to be included in the Mandates System had been clear after the Peace Conference, but no specific territories could be considered Mandates until the administering states had signed agreements to these selections. At the Paris Peace Conference the Supreme Council established the Committee on New States and for The Protection of Minorities. All the new successor states were compelled to sign minority rights treaties as a precondition of diplomatic recognition. The new treaties gave minorities the right to appeal directly to the League (and later, the UN General Assembly). Both W.E.B. DuBois and Marcus Garvey, as well as William Trotter, petitioned for self determination and independent statehood at the Paris Peace Conference. The League of Nations replied that a procedure required the United States to sign a special treaty agreeing to the international protection of its internal minorities. The question of the New Afrikan/AfroDescendants non-self governing territories and status as an internal colony of the United States was ignored. By mid-1920, the UNIA’s Declaration of Rights stated that “we as a race of people declare the League of Nations null and void as far as the Negro is concerned, in that it seeks to deprive Negroes of their liberty.”
In 1928, Harry Haywood helped develop the Black Belt Thesis: Self Determination for a subjugated black national territory in the United States. Three years later, in 1931, Marcus Garvey set sail for London to file a petition to the League of Nations which accused the United States and the nations of Europe of violating the human rights of African Americans and other African peoples. Eleven days after Garvey set sail, Detroit-area UNIA President Earl Little (Malcolm X’s father), who was responsible for collecting signatures for the petition, was discovered dying on the trolley tracks near his home. Nevertheless, in 1933, a New Afrikan National Movement for the Establishment of a 49th State was established. And a year later, W.E.B. DuBois resigned from the NAACP and drafted the statement, “A Negro Nation Within A Nation”.
In 1945, the United Nations was founded. According to the UN Charter, Chapter XI, Article 73 regarding Non-Self Governing Territories, the United States was obligated to assume responsibility for the administration of the former self-governing New Afrikan territories that reverted to non-self governing territories as a result of President Lincoln’s assassination and subsequent US government campaign of fraud and terror limiting the newly-freedmen’s political rights. Alternatively, the United States government could have declared these New Afrikan territories as trust territories, under UN Charter, Chapter XII Article 77.1.c trusteeship system (see below). Had the United States done so, then these New Afrikan territories - namely, the Black Belt - could have been subject to the Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples (GA resolution 1514 (XV) of 14 December 1960). The question of self-determination, self-government and independence for New Afrikan/AfroDescendant peoples in the United States would thus have been handled by The Special Committee on Decolonization, or C-24 established in 1961 by General Assembly (GA) as its subsidiary organ devoted to the issue of decolonization, pursuant to GA resolution 1654 (XVI) to
Examine the application of the Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples (GA resolution 1514 (XV) of 14 December 1960; and
To make suggestions and recommendations on the progress and extent of the implementation of the Declaration.
This is the issue that Malcolm X tried to bring before the World Court before his assassination in 1965. This is the case that still must be decided.
Thanks to the statement submitted by Siphiwe Baleka, the newly launched Permanent Forum on People of African Descent (PFPAD) has been made aware of this issue and a recommendation entered that PFPAD, under its mandate, request a special advisory opinion from the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to substantiate our status as prisoners of war under the Geneva Convention and as a people occupying non-self governing territories foremerly recognized by United States legislation desiring a plebiscite to determine the political destiny of New Afrikan people.
According to the New York Times,
“From the 15th century to the 20th century, European powers colonized huge portions of every continent except Antarctica. Starting in 1776 in North America, the people living in those colonies began to rebel against their colonizers with the goal of establishing their own independent countries. For the next two centuries, more than a hundred new sovereign nations were created around the world as one colony after the other declared its independence.” [See Times]
“The Mandates System broke down in the late 1930s, though the Mandates remained a topic of debate throughout the war. The post-Second World War colonial settlement was fundamentally conservative. Although Britain and France gave some Mandated territories de jure independence (particularly territories in the Middle East), they did not consider granting independence to the rest. The supervisory system of the Mandates survived the war, however, unlike other League expert bodies like the Minorities Commission. . . .
[A] group of US State Department officials, UN bureaucrats and African American activists were able to include petitioning into the UN Charter in the face of resistance from colonial powers. New post-colonial states in the United Nations took up the appeals of petitioners and turned them into sovereign complaints in the Trusteeship Council. Eventually, disputes over the African Mandates led to petitioning coming to the notice of the ICJ in the 1950s. Petitioning in the B and C Mandates was often more controversial than other kinds of appeals, as petitions came primarily from sub-state actors, as opposed to state representatives or those who claimed statehood. With no state or nation advocating for them (as in other tribunals in the League), League officials recognized that these petitioners came to the PMC in an individual capacity, complicating a system that had been designed to serve and facilitate negotiations between sovereign states. . . .
As Robin Kelley has argued, African American historians were thinking beyond the state from the nineteenth century onwards, in part because their citizenship within the state was often so tenuous. It was the very ‘statelessness’ of these petitioners writing about Africa that made their appeals to the League so controversial. The ‘state’ had failed African American petitioners to the League. Black international activism after Reconstruction and through the interwar years was an exercise in trying to leapfrog the state to access alternative spaces to push for emancipation. Especially with the reinvigoration of racial terror at the end of the First World War across the United States, with the support of the government in Washington, black activists had more reason than ever to look to alternative forums to bring claims against racial exclusion and oppression. . . .
Rayford Logan, Ralph Bunche and W.E.B. DuBois used the precedent of petitioning the Mandates System (of the League of Nations) to argue that the United Nations Charter needed an effective system of human rights petitioning to protect people, especially non-white people, from their own governments.”
During this period, many independent states came into existence. The question must be asked: why does the international community not support independence for African Americans?
List of National Independence: 1896 - 1918
1896: Ethiopia
June 12, 1898: The Philippines
January 1, 1901: Australia
May 20, 1902: Cuba
November 3, 1903: Panama
June 7, 1905: Norway
September 26, 1907: New Zealand
May 31, 1910: South Africa
November 28, 1912: Albania
December 6, 1917: Finland
February 24, 1918: Estonia
November 11, 1918: Poland
December 1, 1918: Iceland
List of National Independence: 1919 -1923
August 19, 1919: Afghanistan
December 6, 1921: Ireland
February 28, 1922: Egypt
October 29, 1923: Turkey
List of National Independence: 1929 - 1943
February 11, 1929: The Vatican City
September 23, 1932: Saudi Arabia
October 3, 1932: Iraq
November 22, 1943: Lebanon
Summary
African American people, known as AfroDescendants in internationl forums, are prisoners of the declared Dum Diversas War.
AfroDescendants owe no allegiance to any Nation’s laws.
At the end of the Civil War, the United States legislated voluntary, compensated repatriation and ceded territory for New Afrikan self-governing territories in pursuit of independence.
The assassination of President Lincoln led to a campaign of fraud and terror to deny New Afrikan’s right to return to their homeland, reduce the status of the recently established self-governing territories, and deny the full recognition of the New Afrikan’s political rights.
Cyril Briggs, W.E.B. DuBois and Marcus Garvey advocated for New Afrikan self-government and independence, the latter two petitioning the League of Nations for justice and for self determination. The United States, however, refused to sign a special treaty agreeing to the international protection of its internal minorities
The United States failed its sacred trust obligation under the UN Charter Chapter XI Article 73 to promote New Afrikan well-being and to “develop self-government, to take due account of the political aspirations of the peoples, and to assist them in the progressive development of their free political institutions.” It further failed to declare New Afrikan territories as trust territories, under UN Charter, Chapter XII Article 77.1.c trusteeship system.
The United States continues to violate the human rights, and in particular, the political rights, of New Afrikan/AfroDescendant peoples by continuing the campaign of fraud and terror limiting their political rights only to citizenship in the United States when it should be honoring its commitments to voluntary repatriation with compensation and recognition of New Afrikan self-governing territories made at the conclusion of the Civil War.
The Permanent Forum of People of Afrikan Descent (PFPAD) can request a special advisory opinion from the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on the New Afrikan status as prisoners of war under the Geneva Convention and the necessity of holding a plebiscite to determine their collective political destiny.
CONCLUSION: The United States territory is an acquisition of legal title by conquest that has been rejected as anachronistic and contrary to the Charter of the United Nations. Afro Descendant/New Afrikan presence on said territory is the result of a declaration of total war and the subsequent “Trans Atlantic Slave Trade” that has been acknowleged as a crime against humanity both now and then. Territorial acquisitions or other advantages gained through the threat or wrongful use of force cannot have legal effect, because international law cannot confer legality upon the consequences of wrongful acts incompatible with the Charter. In such cases, there should be full restitution. To claim that our status is “American citizen” is to confer legality on an acquisition of territorial legal title by conquest, a crime against humanity, and a campaign of fraud and terror by the government of the United States of America (after the assassination of President Lincoln and the 14th Amendment).
NEW AFRIKAN STATEMENTS ON OUR COLONIAL STATUS
Mary McLeod Bethune, a last-minute addition to the NAACP’s consultant team in San Francisco, spoke forcefully on how the UN Conference had painted in ‘bold relief’ that ‘common bond’ between African Americans and the colonial peoples. If anything, Bethune remarked, the UNCIO had made it very clear that the ‘Negro in America’ held ‘little more than colonial status in a democracy.’ The similarities were appallingly clear. The fight for colonial self-determination paralleled the battle to overturn the South’s racist voting restrictions. The efforts to revise the UN’s ‘domestic jurisdiction’ clause matched the assault on the states’ rights philosophy of the South. And the dissatisfaction with a trusteeship plan that denied colonies the right to lay their grievances before an international tribunal mirrored the opposition to America’s separate and unequal system of justice.
Harold Cruse: Revolutionary Nationalism and the Afro-American (1962): “From the beginning, the American Negro has existed as a colonial being. His enslavement coincided with the colonial expansion of European powers and was nothing more or less than a condition of domestic colonialism. Instead of the United States establishing a colonial empire in Africa, it brought the colonial system home and installed it in the Southern states. When the Civil War broke up the slave system and the Negro was emancipated, he gained only partial freedom. Emancipation elevated him only to the position of a semidependent man, not to that of an equal or independent being. . . .The Negro is not really an integral part of the American nation beyond the convenient formal recognition that he lives within the borders of the United States. . . The only factor which differentiates the Negro's status from that of a pure colonial status is that his position is maintained in the "home" country in close proximity to the dominant racial group. . . . Of course, the national character of the Negro has little to do with what part of the country he lives in. Wherever he lives, he is restricted. His national boundaries are the color of his skin, his racial characteristics, and the social conditions within his subcultural world.. . . Unlike the situation in the colonial area, the Negro could not seize the power he wanted nor oust "foreigners. . . . Their rejection of white society is analogous to the colonial peoples' rejection of imperialist rule. The difference is only that people in colonies can succeed and American Negro nationalists cannot . The peculiar position of Negro nationalists in the United States requires them to set themselves against the dominance of whites and still manage to live in the same country.”
The Provisional Government of the African American Captive Nation (PG-AACN) Declaration of Self-Determination of the African American Captive Nation by “Chief” Oseijeman Adefunmi President; Robert F. Williams, Prime minister; Abdul Rahman, First Deputy Prime Minister; Audley Moore, Second Deputy Prime Minister:
“Be it further resolved that all the land south of the Mason-Dixon line where our people constitute the majority, be partitioned to establish a territory for Self-Government for the African nation in the U.S.A.; and Be it further resolved that the United States Government take full responsibility for training our people for self-government in all of its ramifications, and Be it finally resolved that the Provisional Government of the African American Captive Nation be recognized by the Government of the United States as of now.”
Malcolm X:
“Every nation in Asia gained its independence through the philosophy of nationalism. Every nation on the African continent that has gotten its independence brought it about through the philosophy of nationalism. And it will take black nationalism -- that to bring about the freedom of 22 million Afro-Americans here in this country where we have suffered colonialism for the past 400 years.”
“America is just as much a colonial power as England ever was…what do you call second-class citizenship? Why, that's colonization. Second-class citizenship is nothing but 20th (century) slavery. How you gonna to tell me you're a second-class citizen? They don't have second-class citizenship in any other government on this Earth. They just have slaves and people who are free! Well, this country is a hypocrite! They try and make you think they set you free by calling you a second-class citizen. No, you're nothing but a 20th century slave.”
-Malcolm X, The Ballot or the Bullet
Max Stanford:
“There are two conflicting views; the first sees our people as citizens denied their rights and believes that they will be assimilated or integrated by revolution, reform, or other means into the White American way of life; which means exploitation of non-white peoples. The other sees our people as a nation within the boundaries of another nation, a nation in captivity striving to obtain independence, self-determination, or national liberation. . . . By the proportion of the population - in the South especially - AfroAmericans constitute a nation within a nation.”
Donald Freeman:
“Further the conference [1964 AfroAmerican Student Movement conference at Fisk University] maintained that the federal government's refusal to enforce the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments renders AfroAmericans slaves or a colonized Black Nation, not American citizens, thus relegating them to a position analogous to that of Afro-Asian and Latin American nations under Western imperialism.”
Eldridge Cleaver, Head of the International Section of the Black Panther Party, stated,
“We have, in the United States, a ‘Mother Country Working Class’ and a ‘Working Class from the Black Colony. We also have a Mother Country Lumpenproletariat and a Lumpenproletariat from the Black Colony. Inside the Mother Country, these categories are fairly stable, but when we look at the Black Colony, we find that the hard and fast distinctions melt away. This is because of the leveling effect of the colonial process and the fact that all Black people are colonized, even if some of them occupy favored positions in the schemes of the Mother Country colonizing exploiters.
Kathleen Cleaver, Minister of Information for the Black Panther Party stated,
“There was an explanation for why our housing was bad, our education was poor, our political power was limited. And that explanation was that we were held as colonial subjects within the United States. It’s not a perfect explanation. It’s an analogy to situations in Africa and in Asia that we could see that ‘fit’ us. Therefore, colonialism had been denounced by the United Nations and people were entitled to their independence and they were justified in breaking out of that type of control. That was the basic American history.”
Huey P. Newton, founder of the Black Panther Party, stated,
“Police in our community couldn’t possibly be there to protect our property because we own no property. They couldn’t possibly be there to see that we receive the due process of law for the simple reason that the police themselves deny us the due process of law. And so it is very apparent that the police only in our community not for our security but the security of the business owners in the community, and also to see that the status quo was kept intact. . . . In America, black people are treated very much as the Vietnamese people or any other colonized people because we’re used, we’re brutalized. The police in our community occupy our area, our community as a foreign troop occupies territory.”
Imari Obadele made an explicit connection to our colonization and African national liberation movements:
“For no less than they have We boldly shed the nationality of our colonizer and gone to contest for independent land. . . .“ and “The essential strategy of our struggle for land is to array enough power ( as in jiu-jitsu, with a concentration of karate strength at key moments) to force the greatest power, the United States, to abide by international law, to recognize and accept our claims to independence and land. The purpose of this strategy can be further simplified: it is to create a situation for the United States where it becomes cheaper to relinquish control of the Five States than to continue a war against us to take back or hold the area.” - from Foundations of A Black Nation
In A Suggestion Towards the Framework of A Reparations Demand And A Set of Legal Underpinnings, Imari Abubakari Obadele Chairperson, the People’s Center Council (National Legislature) of the Provisional Government Republic of New Afrika And Associate Professor of Political Science, Prairie View A&M University, Texas writes,
“It is relevant to the charge of war against the United States that We were still an occupied and oppressed nation in this period between the Civil War and 1968. We were a colony living on territory claimed by the United States, subject until 1968 to a body of legislation and court decisions which defined our subordination to the White nation and facilitated the White nation’s economic and cultural exploitation of us, and our social degradation.”
Ramon Gutierrez writes in Internal Colonialism: An American Theory of Race (2004),
“The tangible results of the Civil Rights Movement remain evident through heightened levels of political representation, patterns of voting participation, and economic upward mobility for some, swelling the ranks of the Black rich and middle class leaving behind a much larger permanent underclass that has continued to fall further and further behind. The theory of internal colonialism was elaborated in the United States for them.”
Albert H. Dyson, Office of the General Counsel, Dept. of Defense, Chokwe Lumumba, Chairman, New Afrikan Peoples Organization, Brooklyn, N.Y., Nkechi Taifa-Caldwell, Minister of Justice, Republic of New Afrika, Washington, D.C., for Dr. Mutulu Shakur. - 690 F. Supp. 1291 (1988) UNITED STATES of America,
v. Marilyn BUCK, Defendant. UNITED STATES of America v. Mutulu SHAKUR, Defendant. Nos. 84 Cr. 220-CSH, SSS 82 Cr. 312-CSH. United States District Court, S.D. New York. July 6, 1988.
“As is the case with every colonial experience, the New Afrikan Nation as a colony has no independent economic structure. The vast majority of the population of New Afrika, however, has at all points in history been contained within the same imperialist economic structure, and has shared the misfortune of suffering discriminatory treatment within it. Indeed it is appropriate to say in the case of New Afrika, as in the case of most colonies, that New Afrikans as a National population are an underclass frozen at the bottom of the American economy.”
Nkechi Taifa, in Black Power, Black Lawyer: My Audacious Quest for Justice, writes,
“In one of my college papers, ‘The Political Economy of the Black Ghetto,’ titled after a book of the same name by William Tabb, I argued, ‘A colonial relationship presently exists between the Black ghetto and the larger society, having many similarities with the same oppressive dependence that exists between many underdeveloped countries and industrial nations.’ My paper’s conclusion was that the ‘Black ghetto was also a colony whose situation closely paralleled the political and economic relationships existing between many Third World nations and the industrially advanced countries.’”
Finally, it should be noted that the US Givernment’s response to Imari’s and Gaidi’s Obadele’s Article Three Briefs was:
The government’s response, the Brief in Support of Motion to Quash Indictment for Lack of Jurisdiction Under Article III, U.S. Constitution Brought by the Defendant states,
‘Every element of the limits of Sec. (b)(2) clearly exist, with the exception of Obadele showing that he is a person of foreign nationality. That question, however, is a matter of law and requires a decision upon the issue of whether black folks now within the United States have ever been converted, in accordance with settled principles of universally established law, into United States citizens, and divested altogether of their original foreign African nationality.’
The matter of our “conversion” is the substantive issue to be taken up at the ICJ….
A valid and legitimate question is: What is our status under international law? The immediate follow-up question is, How was/is this status determined? An honest assessment of the second question will show that any such status was obtained without the informed consent of our people and thus, invalidates the answer to the first question and finally provokes the recognition that our people themselves must determine their status through the exercise of free choice. This is the rational basis for the plebiscite. Our strategy should provoke the United Nations, through the ICJ, to make an advisory judgment on our status and force it to the conclusion that it cannot be determined, under the spirit and letter of the UN Charter ( Article 76) and principles of international law, without conducting a plebiscite.
_____________________________________________________________________________
UN Charter, Chapter XI, Articles 73-74 regarding Non-Self Governing Territories
Article 73
Members of the United Nations which have or assume responsibilities for the administration of territories whose peoples have not yet attained a full measure of self-government recognize the principle that the interests of the inhabitants of these territories are paramount, and accept as a sacred trust the obligation to promote to the utmost, within the system of international peace and security established by the present Charter, the well-being of the inhabitants of these territories, and, to this end:
a. to ensure, with due respect for the culture of the peoples concerned, their political, economic, social, and educational advancement, their just treatment, and their protection against abuses;
b. to develop self-government, to take due account of the political aspirations of the peoples, and to assist them in the progressive development of their free political institutions, according to the particular circumstances of each territory and its peoples and their varying stages of advancement;
c. to further international peace and security;
d. to promote constructive measures of development, to encourage research, and to cooperate with one another and, when and where appropriate, with specialized international bodies with a view to the practical achievement of the social, economic, and scientific purposes set forth in this Article; and
e. to transmit regularly to the Secretary-General for information purposes, subject to such limitation as security and constitutional considerations may require, statistical and other information of a technical nature relating to economic, social, and educational conditions in the territories for which they are respectively responsible other than those territories to which Chapters XII and XIII apply.
Article 74
Members of the United Nations also agree that their policy in respect of the territories to which this Chapter applies, no less than in respect of their metropolitan areas, must be based on the general principle of good-neighborliness, due account being taken of the interests and well-being of the rest of the world, in social, economic, and commercial matters.
Chapter XII, Articles 75-85: International Trustees
Article 75
The United Nations shall establish under its authority an international trusteeship system for the administration and supervision of such territories as may be placed there under by subsequent individual agreements. These territories are hereinafter referred to as trust territories.
Article 76
The basic objectives of the trusteeship system, in accordance with the Purposes of the United Nations laid down in Article 1 of the present Charter, shall be:
a. to further international peace and security;
b. to promote the political, economic, social, and educational advancement of the inhabitants of the trust territories, and their progressive development towards self-government or independence as may be appropriate to the particular circumstances of each territory and its peoples and the freely expressed wishes of the peoples concerned, and as may be provided by the terms of each trusteeship agreement;
c. to encourage respect for human rights and for fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, sex, language, or religion, and to encourage recognition of the interdependence of the peoples of the world; and
d. to ensure equal treatment in social, economic, and commercial matters for all Members of the United Nations and their nationals, and also equal treatment for the latter in the administration of justice, without prejudice to the attainment of the foregoing objectives and subject to the provisions of Article 80.
Article 77
1. The trusteeship system shall apply to such territories in the following categories as may be placed thereunder by means of trusteeship agreements:
a. territories now held under mandate;
b. territories which may be detached from enemy states as a result of the Second World War; and
c. territories voluntarily placed under the system by states responsible for their administration.
2. It will be a matter for subsequent agreement as to which territories in the foregoing categories will be brought under the trusteeship system and upon what terms.
Article 78
The trusteeship system shall not apply to territories which have become Members of the United Nations, relationship among which shall be based on respect for the principle of sovereign equality.
Article 79
The terms of trusteeship for each territory to be placed under the trusteeship system, including any alteration or amendment, shall be agreed upon by the states directly concerned, including the mandatory power in the case of territories held under mandate by a Member of the United Nations, and shall be approved as provided for in Articles 83 and 85.
Article 80
1. Except as may be agreed upon in individual trusteeship agreements, made under Articles 77, 79, and 81, placing each territory under the trusteeship system, and until such agreements have been concluded, nothing in this Chapter shall be construed in or of itself to alter in any manner the rights whatsoever of any states or any peoples or the terms of existing international instruments to which Members of the United Nations may respectively be parties.
2. Paragraph 1 of this Article shall not be interpreted as giving grounds for delay or postponement of the negotiation and conclusion of agreements for placing mandated and other territories under the trusteeship system as provided for in Article 77.
Article 81 The trusteeship agreement shall in each case include the terms under which the trust territory will be administered and designate the authority which will exercise the administration of the trust territory. Such authority, hereinafter called the administering authority, may be one or more states or the Organization itself.
Article 82
There may be designated, in any trusteeship agreement, a strategic area or areas which may include part or all of the trust territory to which the agreement applies, without prejudice to any special agreement or agreements made under Article 43.
Article 83
All functions of the United Nations relating to strategic areas, including the approval of the terms of the trusteeship agreements and of their alteration or amendment shall be exercised by the Security Council.
The basic objectives set forth in Article 76 shall be applicable to the people of each strategic area.
The Security Council shall, subject to the provisions of the trusteeship agreements and without prejudice to security considerations, avail itself of the assistance of the Trusteeship Council to perform those functions of the United Nations under the trusteeship system relating to political, economic, social, and educational matters in the strategic areas.
Article 84
It shall be the duty of the administering authority to ensure that the trust territory shall play its part in the maintenance of international peace and security. To this end the administering authority may make use of volunteer forces, facilities, and assistance from the trust territory in carrying out the obligations towards the Security Council undertaken in this regard by the administering authority, as well as for local defense and the maintenance of law and order within the trust territory.
Article 85
The functions of the United Nations with regard to trusteeship agreements for all areas not designated as strategic, including the approval of the terms of the trusteeship agreements and of their alteration or amendment, shall be exercised by the General Assembly.
2. The Trusteeship Council, operating under the authority of the General Assembly shall assist the General Assembly in carrying out these functions.
9:00 am: Welcome & Opening Remarks
Prof. Gregory Shaffer, President, American Society of International Law
Prof. Verence Shepherd, Centre for Reparations Research, University of the West Indies
9:20 am: Opening Address
Judge Patrick Robinson, member, International Court of Justice
9:50 am: Keynote Address
Sir Hilary Beckles, Vice-Chancellor, The University of the West Indies
10:35 am: Discussion of the Legal Framework for Repraations
Judge Patrick Robinson, member, International Court of Justice
11:15 am: Calculation of Compensation for Trans-Atlantic Chattel Slavery
Dr. Coleman Bazelon, The Brattle Group
Dr. Alberto Vargas, The Brattle Group
12:15 pm: LUNCH BREAK
1:30 pm: First Discussant’s Panel
Dr. Mamadou Hébié, Associate Professor of International Law, Leiden University, Grotius Centre for International Legal Studies
Prof. Adrien Wing, Bessie Dutton Murray Professor, University of Iowa College of Law
* Participants in discussant panels will present their comments, observations, and responses to the topics covered in the Brattle presentation, encompassing both compensation and satisfaction as remedies for the multiple breaches of international law arising from trans-Atlantic chattel slavery and its consequences.