1. Balanta govern by common consent, recognizing “natural law” and reflecting their Great Belief spirituality.
2. Mesintu violate natural law and Great Belief by instituting Cult of Horus at Edfu and establishing the earliest form of ecclesiastical law/jurisdiction
3. Middle Kingdom Egypt violates natural law by establishing seru, kenbet and djadjat courts.
4. Romans violate natural law by establishing ius civile Quiritium (Roman civil law)
5. English violate natural law by establishing English common law
6. The Church violates natural law by establishing canon law.
7. Balanta defined as “extra ecclesiam” under canon law.
8. Pope Innocent IV acknowledges that the law of nations had supplanted natural law in regulating human interaction, such as trade, conflict, and social hierarchies. Similarly, the prince replaced the father, as the ‘lawful authority in society’ through God’s provenance, manifesting his dominium in the monopoly over justice and sanctioned violence.
9. Since the pope’s jurisdiction extended de jure over infidels (i.e. extra ecclesiam), he alone could call for a Christian invasion of an infidel’s domain. Even then, however, Pope Innocent IV maintained that only a violation of natural law could precipitate such an attack. By adhering to the beliefs of their gods, infidels and pagans did not violate natural law. Thus, such beliefs did not provide justification for Christians to simply invade non-Christian polities, dispossess its inhabitants of their territory and freedom, or force them to convert. Pope Innocent IV’s theological contribution resided in the fact that he accorded pagans and infidels dominium and therefore the right to live beyond the state of grace. However, The Papal Bull Dum Diversas issued by Pope Nicholas V, June 18, 1452, stated,
“we grant to you full and free power, through the Apostolic authority by this edict, to invade, conquer, fight, subjugate the Saracens and pagans, and other infidels and other enemies of Christ, and wherever established their Kingdoms, Duchies, Royal Palaces, Principalities and other dominions, lands, places, estates, camps and any other possessions, mobile and immobile goods found in all these places and held in whatever name, and held and possessed by the same Saracens, Pagans, infidels, and the enemies of Christ, also realms, duchies, royal palaces, principalities and other dominions, lands, places, estates, camps, possessions of the king or prince or of the kings or princes, and to lead their persons in perpetual servitude, and to apply and appropriate realms, duchies, royal palaces, principalities and other dominions, possessions and goods of this kind to you and your use and your successors the Kings of Portugal.”
10. Portugal’s invasion of Balanta territories violated natural law; violated canon law, violated the right of dominion of extra ecclesiam, violated the law of nations and was a breach of the principle of terra nullius (land that is legally deemed to be unoccupied or uninhabited) AT THE TIME OF INVASION.
11. Portuguese acts of warfare in the territory of the Balanta violated the ius gentium to enslave a defeated population because , the Portuguese do not act in accordance to existing definitions of conquest and Balanta never practice slavery, and thus could not be party to any legal code regarding slavery that depended on “reasoned compliance with standards of international conduct.” Balanta found such conduct – slavery-unreasonable and abhorrent.
12. Portuguese violated natural law by equating status with sovereignty and then refusing to recognize that for the Balanta, the family is the sole effective social and political unit and thus sovereignty rested with the head of the family. Thus, the Portuguese wrongfully determined that Balanta were rootless and sovereignless and thus eligible for enslavement according to their own definitions and legal code.
13. The English, Portuguese and Spanish Christian rulers violate natural law by contriving new forms of personhood called “corporations” subject to fictitious corporate or statutory laws while at the same time designating some groups, including the Balanta, as corporate-less beings with no protective shield of a culturally sanctioned corporate status. Christian authorities could compel corporate-less beings to adhere to Christian laws and customary norms thereby forsaking their own legal traditions and customs.
14. The English violated natural law, the law of nations, and the Treaty of Tordesillas when they invaded the territory of the Balanta.
15. The Portuguese and the English violated natural law by issuing charters and forming charter, proprietary and royal colonies to establish jurisdiction in the Americas.
16. Every “slave code” in the America is thus intended to remove the Balanta identity and knowledge of the Balanta natural law culture and replace it with the corporate-less collective “strawman” identity designated as “negro” and “slave” and the individual “strawman” identity that is registered via a birth certificate so that Balanta will only know his rights, duties and responsibilities as defined by the corporation(s). For example, the Lords Proprietors made certain that the Negro’s status was fixed and distinctive. Carolina’s Fundamental Constitutions, drafted in 1669, stated explicitly,
“(Article 101) Every Freeman of Carolina shall have absolute Authority over his Negro Slaves, of what opinion or Religion soever.”
All the slave codes, however, had certain provisions in common. In all of them the colour line was firmly drawn, and any amount of African heritage established the race of a person as black, with little regard as to whether the person was slave or free. The status of the offspring followed that of the mother, so that the child of a free father and a slave mother was a slave. This is the reason for the birth certificate - it is the mechanism that establish’s an individual’s classification/status in American law.
17. Only 22% of Balanta held in captivity in Cacheu were adult males. That means that the vast majority of Balanta that were captured were women and children. Thus, the majority of Balanta that were brought to the Americas had never completed their Balanta age-grade initiations which is described as “opening the doors’ of maturity and wisdom in the Balanta community.” Never having been initiated in the Balanta legal culture, and suffering the brainwashing of the Portuguese and English criminals through a systematic campaign of terrorism, within two generations Balanta lost all knowledge of their natural law way of life. This was done intentionally to keep them mentally enslaved by identifying themselves through the perspective of corporate statutory designations such as “negro”, “black”, and “citizen” with an onerous amount of restrictions, penalties, punishments and fines in violation to their fundamental freedoms of choice and action under natural law.
Index of Federal Slave Codes
18. The fundamental legal question facing the Balanta is this: did the 14th amendment release them from any corporate or statutory legal jurisdictions and return them to their previous status that was governed by natural law? Will the United States Government recognize this? The issue has been put forward thusly:
US SPONSORED PLEBISCITE FOR AFRICAN AMERICAN SELF DETERMINATION
No African who was taken captive and transported against his will to the Americas ever renounced their tribal identification and status vis-à-vis their original "citizenship". From 1444 up until Emancipation, all Africans held in slavery were not considered citizens of in the country of their captivity. The legal status of Africans in America after the Emancipation is undetermined. According to Imari Abubakari Obadele (founder of the Republic of New Africa):
"We are not American citizens... the Fourteenth Amendment, in an attempt to bestow citizenship upon the African newly freed from slavery, incorporated the rule of jus soli, 'all persons born or naturalized in the United States and of the state wherein they reside.' A sound principle of international law, the rule of jus soli was obviously intended to provide American citizenship for persons born in the United States through what might be termed 'acceptable accidents' of birth. Thus, a person born in the US as a result of his parents' having come to this country voluntarily -- through emigration and settlement or vacation travel or business -- could not be denied citizenship in the country of his birth. He might have dual citizenship, gaining also the citizenship of his parents, but he could not be left with no citizenship. His birth in the US under such conditions would meet the test of an "acceptable accident."
By contrast, however, the presence of the African in America could by no stretch of justice be deemed 'an acceptable accident' of birth. The African, whose freedom was now acknowledged by his former slavemasters through the Thirteenth Amendment, was not on this soil because he or his parents had come vacationing or seeking some business advantage. Rather the African -- standing forth now as a free man because the Thirteenth Amendment forbade whites (who had the power, not the right) to continue slavery -- was on American soil as a result of having been kidnapped and brought here AGAINST his will.
What the rule of jus soli demanded at this point -- at the point of the passage of the slavery-halting Thirteenth Amendment -- was that America not deny to this African, born on American soil, American citizenship -- IF THE AFRICAN WANTED IT. This last condition is crucial: the African, his freedom now acknowledged by persons who theretofore had wrongfully and illegally (under international law) held him in slavery by force, was entitled as a free man to decide for himself what he wanted to do -- whether he wished to be an American citizen or follow some other course.
The rule of jus soli, in protecting the kidnapped African from being left without any citizenship, could operate so far as to impose upon America the obligation to offer the African (born on American soil) American citizenship; it could not impose upon the African -- a victim of kidnapping and wrongful transportation -- an obligation to accept such citizenship. Such an imposition would affront justice, by conspiring with the kidnappers and illegal transporters, and wipe out the free man's newly acquired freedom.
Thus, the Fourteenth Amendment is incorrectly read when its Section One is deemed to be a grant of citizenship: it can only be an offer. The positive tone of the language can only emphasize the intention of the ratifiers to make a sincere offer. On the other hand, the United States government, under obligation to make the offer. also had the power to create the mechanism – a plebiscite-- whereby the African could make an informed decision, an informed acceptance or rejection of the offer of American citizenship. Indeed, Section Five of the Fourteenth Amendment makes clear that Congress could pass whatever law was necessary to make real the offer of Section One. (Section Five says, 'The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.)
The first 'appropriate legislation' required at that moment -- and still required - was that which would make possible for the now free African an informed free choice, an informed acceptance or rejection of the citizenship offer.
Let us recall that, following the Thirteenth Amendment, four natural options were the basic right of the African. First, he did, of course, have a right, if he wished it, to be an American citizen. Second, he had a right to return to Africa or (third) go to another country -- if he could arrange his acceptance. Finally, he had a right (based on a claim to land superior to the European's, sub- ordinate to the Indian's) to set up an independent nation of his own.
Towering above all other juridical requirements that faced the African in America and the American following the Thirteenth Amendment was the requirement to make real the opportunity for choice, for self-determination. How was such an opportunity to evolve? Obviously, the African was entitled to full and accurate information as to his status and the principles of international law appropriate to his situation. This was all the more important because the African had been victim of a long-term intense slavery policy aimed at assuring his illiteracy, dehumanizing him as a group and depersonalizing him as an individual.
The education offered him after the Thirteenth Amendment confirmed the policy of dehumanization. It was continued in American institutions . . . for 100 years, through 1965. Now, again following the Thirteenth Amendment, the education of the African in America seeks to base African self-esteem on how well the African assimilates white American folk-ways and values Worse, the advice given the African concerning his rights under international law suggested that there was no option open to him other than American citizenship. For the most part, he was co-opted into spending his political energies in organizing and participating in constitutional conventions and then voting for legislatures which subsequently approved the Fourteenth Amendment. In such circumstances, the presentation of the Fourteenth Amendment to state legislatures for whose members the African had voted, and the Amendment's subsequent approval by these legislatures, could in no sense be considered a plebiscite.
The fundamental requirements were lacking: first, adequate and accurate information for the advise given the freedman was so bad it amounted to fraud, a second stealing of our birthright; second, a chance to choose among the four options: (1) US citizenship, (2) return to Africa, (3) emigration to another country and (4) the creation of a new African nation on American soil.
On the other hand, the United States government still has the obligation under Section Five of the Fourteenth Amendment to ‘enforce' Section One (the offer of citizenship) in the only way it could be rightfully 'enforced' -- by authorizing US participation in a plebiscite. By, in other words, a reference to our own will, our self-determined acceptance or rejection of the offer of citizenship. There are further important ramifications. A genuine plebiscite implies that if people vote against US citizenship, the means must be provided to facilitate whatever decision they do make. Thus, persons who vote to return to Africa or to emigrate elsewhere must have the means to do so. . . .
Now then, we repeat: an obvious and important ramification of the plebiscite is that there must exist the capability of putting its decisions into effect. If the decision is for US citizenship, then that citizenship must be unconditional. If it is for emigration to a country outside Africa, those persons making this choice must have transportation resources and reparations in terms of other benefits, principally money, to make such emigration possible and give it a reasonable chance of success. If the decision is for a return to some country in Africa, the person must have those same reparations as persons emigrating to countries outside Africa PLUS those additional reparations necessary to restore enough of the African personality for the individual to have a reasonable chance of success in integrating into African society in the motherland. If, finally, the decision is for an independent new African nation on this soil, then the reparations must be those agreed upon between the United States government and the new African government. Reparations must be at least sufficient to assure the new nation a reasonable chance of solving the great problems imposed upon us by the Americans in our status as a colonized people."
ORIGIN OF LEGAL ISSUES CONCERNING BALANTA PEOPLE IN THE UNITED STATES