“Self Determination is our right, Separation with all our might, Reparations is our fight.”
“The prayers of African Americans for justice and reparations have been rejected by the U.S. Government and, seemingly, the United Nations. Because the struggle seems hopeless, the African American population has reached a state of extreme anxiety. We observe that some leaders are considering changing their tactics because of the failure of peaceful and legal means of solving the problem. We believe that African Americans may decide to use extreme measures and thereby gain the attention of the world community. We fear that the U.S. Government may respond with imprisonment of African American leaders.”
— The Honorable Silis Muhammad, written statement to the United Nations, 1997
“The Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that recognition of the inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world. Here, at the beginning of the histories of the so-called African-Americans, the enslaved Africans brought to America were defined in the same terms as the ‘cattle’ belonging to Anglo-American rulers. Thus, our rights were those of their ‘cattle’: ours were not human rights. Yet we were then-and are, still, members of the human family. Our inalienable rights were distorted so completely, that we are damaged goods, still. We are lost from our original inherent culture, religion and language. America cannot lawfully force us to accept the choices which she deems to be our inalienable rights; nor can she force us and our progeny to abandon the hope for the reclamation of our own. One hundred thirty four years of forced assimilation has not abrogated the desire to know, and to be ourselves. Today, we have no permanent national recognition, as a result of slavery. We have been identified as slaves, Niggers, Negroes, Coloreds, Black-Americans and today we are so-called African-Americans. Thus, we are to this day a revolving nation, suspended within a nation: rent from our roots, as a result of slavery and its lingering effects. We are detached, still, from our inalienable rights. To this extent, the very foundation upon which freedom, justice and peace among nations is established is for us non-existing; our inalienable rights are extinct! Recognition of inalienable rights, for us, is a faith hoped for. And this poses a threat to peace for the United States of America, for the Americas and potentially for Europe. Why? It is a threat because of the despair of the many; which will endlessly be ignited to loathing and, or rioting. It will be ignited, lawlessly, by the perpetual humanitarian desires of the few: if the fever, or this abnormal situation, is not reversed by the few humanitarians who aim lawfully and by sanctions to efficaciously stamp out violations of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. . . . African-Americans have looked toward and exhausted all remedies made available by the majority government, although, it is viewed as the oppressor. . . . We wish to address the question of whether we choose to reclaim or recapture our original culture, language, religion and identity, or whether we choose to assimilate into the majority culture of America. Upon this matter we have never enjoyed the freedom of choice. We pray to the Commission on Human Rights for the right to make our choice within the protection of a United Nations Forum.”
- The Honorable Silis Muhammad written statement to the 55th session of the UN Commission on Human Rights
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Mr. Muhammad’s abbreviated list of United Nations (UN) interventions delivered in advancement of Afrodescendant human rights and reparations for plantation slavery is listed below:
1994 Petition for Reparations to the UN under 1503 Procedure - Mr. Muhammad delivered a 1503 communication to the UN WOrking Group on Communications on behalf of African Americans. Although it was received, it was not heard nor was it responded to by the UN.
1997 Written Statement to the UN - Mr. Muhammad recommended a forum so that African-American human rights grievances, that formed the basis of a petition submitted, can be expressed systematically, as well as officially recorded, evaluated and remedied. [Siphwe Note: Here then is the vision that first called for the Permanent Forum on People of African Descent (PFPAD)].
1998 Written and Oral Statments - Mr. Muhammad urged the Commission on Human Rights to assist African Americans in their efforts to recover from official U.S. policies of enslavement, apartheid, and forced assimilation. Mr. Muhammad prayed that the human rights of African Americans be recaptured politically and amicably, rights to self-determination rectified, and the damages sustained be awarded in great measure in order to accomplish the cathartic cleansing mentally, emotionally, and physically of 400 years of long-suffering. Mr. Muhammad prayed that the U.S. Government not be given tacit approval of the UN to subvert the opening of a forum wherein African-AMerican grievances can be expressed systematically and officially recorded, evaluated and remedied.
1999 Written and Oral Statements - Mr. Muhammad requested recognition of the African American choice of human rights and inalienable rights. He requested the crime of plantation slavery, and its lingering effects, be rectified - which was, and is still, a crime against African Americans and against humanity. Mr. Muhammad asked the U.N. to establish a forum for the purpose of restoring African American human rights, their political being, and their status as a people. Mr. Muhammad urged recommendation that the Sub-Commission pass a resolution recognizing slavery and the slave trade as a crime against humanity. He urged the writing of a working paper as a way to begin analyzing African American’s situation. Mr. Muhammad urged African American inclusion in the Declaration on the Rights of Persons Belonging to National or Ethnic, Religious and Linguistic Minorities, or a new declaration be written for African Americans. Mr. Muhammad asked the International Labor Organization to look into America’s privately owned prisons.
2000 Written and Oral Statements - Mr. Muhammad asked that the U.S. pay reparations to the so-called African Americans, since the U.S. cannot restore the “mother tongue” of African Americans if ever it wanted to. Mr. Muhammad recommended the U.S. be held liable, at the least, for the last 51 years, plus the additional years which are needed to resolve this issue. He asked that the UN place a reparation sanction upon America if the identity and language of minorities and Peoples are to be preserved. Mr. Muhammad asked that a precise dollar amount be given at a future date, if warranted, and that he stated that he would ask for the release of a number of African-American human rights victims who have been unjustly incarcerated in federal and state penitentiaries. Finally, Mr. Muhammad asked the UN to impose a sanction on the U.S. in the form of exemption from all taxation upon our people for as longa s this issue is in the hands of the UN.
World Conference Against Racism Written and Oral Statements - Mr. Muhammad recommended that the World Conference Against Racism declare a decade to consider the issues of slave descendants, including whether “LOST FOND Peoples” is the term that best identifies slave descendants.
Regional Seminars for Afrodescendants Oral Statements - Mr. Muhammad put forth the name Lost Found Peoples as a name in order to gain human rights protection for slave descendants, but the name Afrodescendants was agreed upon by unanimous consent.
2001 Written and Oral Statements - Mr. Muhammad urged UN intervention to protect and assist African-American leaders within a forum as they seek to determine the damage they have sustained and the means of reparation needed in order to bring them back to life as a People. Mr. Muhammad prayed for the Commission on Human Rights to hear the African American demand for the right to choose to reconstitute, and reconstruct lost ties, since no international instruments, arbitrations, mechanisms or laws requiring the recognition of minorities that can restrain ethnic conflict during 2001. Attorney Harriet AbuBakr, Mr. Muhammad’s wife, asked the Working Group on Minorities to cause minority protection to develop in accord with the African American needs for resurrection.
2002 Written and Oral Statements - On behalf of African Americans, Mr. Muhammad asked the Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights to acknowledge the decision that African Americans be recognized as Afrodescendant Minorities. Mr. Muhammad also recommended that the Commission on Human Rights pass a resolution requesting that the Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights place African Americans on its agenda, alongside Indigenous Peoples and Minorities. Mr. Muhammad also put forth a prayer for official recognition of a self-chosen collective identity and reparations for African Americans.
2003 Written and Oral Statments - Mr. Muhammd requested official recognition of new minorities, urged the establishment of an International Year for Minorities, requested support for the efforts of the Working Group on Minorities, and recommended that the Working Group on Minorities organize a second Regional Seminar for Afrodescendant Minorities. Attorney AbuBakr asked the Working Group on Minorities to validate Afrodescendants self-chosen identity in its documents, and use any other means available to place the fact of the existence of Afrodescendants before the UN and the world.
2004 Written and Oral Statements - Mr. Muhammad called upon the UN to grant Afrodescendants protected collective human rights. Mr. Muhammad also asked the Sub-Commission to make a commitment to minorities that their interventions will be heard. Mr. Muhammad requested the recognition, protection and assistance of the Commission on Human Rights, and the authorities of the UN.
2005 Written and Oral Statements - Mr. Muhammad recommended santions against all governments that have deprived Afrodescendants, for every day Afrodescendants have been so denied human rights. He also requested assistance to Afrodescendants in efforts to have a self-chosen identity recognized and protected by the entire UN and by the governments under which Afrodescendants live.
2006 Written and Oral Statements - Mr. Muhammad requested formal UN recognition of slave descendant’s self-chosen name, Afrodescendants, and requested restoration of slave descendants to the human families of the earth.
2008 Oral Statment - Mr. Muhammad requested that the UN Working Group on Minorities assist Afrodescendants to establish education for Afrodescendants in their original (mother) tongue.
2014 Open Letter to U.S. President Barack Obama - Mr. Muhammad sent a letter to U.S. President Obama, Congress, General Dempsey, and the Pope of Rome requesting reparations for Afrodescendants.
MY CONNECTION TO SILiS MUHAMMAD
Though I have yet to meet him, I feel a strong connection to the Honorable Silis Muhammad. And that’s because in 1997, I was tasked with studying and submitting a petition to the UN under its 1503 procedure by a former student of Malcolm X, Dr. Y.N. Kly. Although petitioning the United Nations was nothing new - W.E.B. DuBois and Marcus Garvey had petitioned the League of Nations, and William Patterson, Paul Robeson and Queen Mother Audley Moore had already petitioned the United Nations, the 1503 procedure was new. In my studies, I came across Silis Muhammad’s 1994 1503 Petition. As far as I know, my 1997 Petition of the Nkrumah-Washington Community Learning Center On Behalf of their Members, Associates and Afro-American Population Whose International Protected Human Rights Have Been Grossly and Systematically Violated By the Anglo-American Government of the United States of America and Its Varied Institutions was the second such petition submitted under the United Nations 1503 Procedure. And hence my collegial connection to the Honorable Silis Muhammad.
But the connection goes a bit deeper. The Honorable Silis Muhammad is a man, a leader, ahead of his time, fighting for our liberation in the international arena with very little acknowledgement or support. Even today his work is under-appreciated in the various movements and I was guilty of overlooking Mr. Muhammad’s contributions to the reparations movement when I compiled this history of the modern reparations movement.
When a national/international forum entitled “Revitalizing the Reparations Movement” was convened at Chicago State University on Saturday, April 19, 2014, incredibly the Honorable Silis Muhammad was not there!
The exclusion of Mr. Muhammad’s work and legacy is unfair. I feel this same way about my own work, begun in earnest in 2003.
Like Mr. Muhammad, in the mid to late 1990’s, my focus was on the United Nations as an arena for the reparations struggle. However, Let us recall that in 1996 the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations granted consultative status to the Rastafari Movement who were represented by Ras Bongo Spear and Ras Boanerges. In 1998, at the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, Ras Bongo Spear and Ras Boanerges asked: “What is the responsibility of the nations to Africans in the diaspora with respect to the age-old quest for Repatriation?” Said the Rasses, “Our advice from that committee and from the UN Office of Human Rights . . .. was simple:
“The United Nations as an organization of states cannot at this time in any serious way entertain the issue of repatriation without the consent of the African states and the African Governments to which we want to go in Africa. So we were directed to seek the support of African governments with respect to the acquisition of land. And after that, the matter can be brought up again to the United Nations and the issue of [settlement] can take place.”
As a young, devout Rastafari youth, I then switched my focus to repatriation and the Organization of African Unity (OAU). In 2003, I went to Ethiopia, and as a credentialed journalist for the Rastafari Speaks newspaper, attended the 1st Extra-Ordinary Summit of the Assembly of the African Union in Addis Ababa. It so happened that, like Malcolm X at the Organization of African Unity (OAU) in 1964, I was the only Afrodescendant at the African Union when the decision was made to invite and encourage the African Diaspora in the African Union through the Article 3q amendment that was adopted while I was there. As the de facto representative of the Afrodescendants at this pivoral moment in history, I felt a deep sence of responsibility and obligation. Ultimately, I became the Director of the African Union 6th Region Education Campaign, working in this new arena of the African Union. At the time as well as now, much of my work went unreported and thus, un-recognized. It was my job to make the importance of the new AU 6th Region known and elevate the struggle to have Afrodescedants’ Right to Return to their ancestral homelands recognized.
So at the time that Silis Muhammad was championing the cause of Afrodescendants at the United Nations, I was championing the cause at the African Union.
It is no coincednce that at this next pivotal moment in our history, when Burkina Faso President Ibrahim Traore and the Alliance of Sahel States is leading the fight against neocolonialism and imperialism in Africa, that the Afrodescendant Nation led by the Honorable Silis Muhammad and myself are playing key leadership roles in the Friends of President Ibrahim Traoré In the West Delegation. Some things are just a matter of destiny.
Oral Statement to the Forum on Minority Issues, First Session,
Agenda Item VI: The Relationship Between Desegregation Strategies,
Cultural Autonomy and Integration in the Quest for Social Cohesion, December 2008
Greetings Madam Chair, Madam Gay McDougall, Experts, Country Representatives, Scholars and Minorities:
One of the purposes of this Forum is the identification of challenges and problems facing minorities and States. We, Afrodescendants, want for ourselves and for our children an education, especially now at our inception as an internationally recognized human family. We want an education in our original (mother) tongue. UN scholars state that language, not just any language, but one's "mother tongue" is intimately bound with identity. Thus, the right to such an education is an identity right.
Article 1, Section 1.1 of the Declaration on the Rights of Persons Belonging to Minorities indicates States shall protect and promote the identity of minorities. The United States of America, mainly, as well as other States, have breached this United Nations obligation. Since the abolition of slavery until now, Afrodescendants have been denied self-identity: education in our mother tongue. It is the very dignity we are without. The former slave-holding States have a duty to protect not only the existence but the national, ethnic, cultural, religious and linguistic identity of Minorities.
Mr. M. Cherif Bassiouni stated, in his final report to the 56th session of the Commission on Human Rights, that economic compensation for victims of gross violations of human rights should be provided for any assessable damage resulting from violations of international human rights and humanitarian law: (b) lost opportunities, including education. Since we were forcibly deprived of our mother tongue due to slavery and its lingering effects, we want compensation from those States, especially the United States, responsible for denying us an education intimately bound with identity. Afrodescendants claim the right to compensation for violations of international law, articulated in the Declaration on the Rights of Minorities as well as Article 27 of the ICCPR, due to lost opportunities, including education.
In conclusion, we suggest that the regional forums for Afrodescendants, started under the auspices of the former Working Group on Minorities, be continued so that Afrodescendants can discuss practical, acceptable and adaptable solutions to the unique problems we face.
Thank you.
Mr. Silis Muhammad
OPEN LETTER TO PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA 2014
President Barack Obama/President of the United States,
U.S. Congress, General Martin E. Dempsey, Joint Chief of Staff and The Pope of Rome
Silis Muhammad
CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER
THE LOST-FOUND NATION OF ISLAM
TO: President Barack Obama, President of the United States
U.S. Congress
General Martin E. Dempsey, Joint Chief of Staff
Pope of Rome
FROM: Silis Muhammad
RE: THE BLUEPRINT: OUR PLAN FOR AMERICA AND ITS AFRODESCENDANTS
DATE: January 15, 2014
The peoples and Governments of the world are well aware of the duplicity of the United States Government as it calls for Human Rights and democracy while continuing, to this day, systematic discrimination against and disenfranchisement of its Afrodescendant population--the inheritors of the legacy of plantation slavery (the so-called African Americans). While we recognize that moral leadership is the tone that the United States Government wishes to convey to the world, it as failed to take the key moral action that would begin to repair the ongoing wrong that has existed since the very inception of this government. Does anyone recognize the significance of this key to peace?
I am Silis Muhammad, Chief Executive Officer of the Lost-found Nation of Islam. If we could summon the hatred our ancestors had for this Caucasian American Government and bring that condition to bear on the shoulders of this generation of Afrodescendants the resulting wrath would be like unto a blaze of fire, the size of which would engulf the United States. It would burn for 1,000 years! The evil done to the Black man by the American government far surpasses the evil done by any other Government, especially the Governments of France, Germany, Great Britain, and Canada.
We are determined to leave America, not less than 144,000 of us, Arfodescendants. We, the children of plantation slavery, were subsumed by the thirteenth and fourteenth amendments of the Constitution of the United States of America, which does not, in the least, express our will. We want no part of the prophesied imminent doom of America.
We want the United States, in cooperation with the International Monetary Fund, to arrange for forgiveness of all debts owed by St. Kitts and all other members of CARICOM, who would welcome, with full citizenship, appropriate numbers of educated and industrious Afrodescendants from the United States. We are asking for sea-going and air-going ships or vessels and freeway, highway, bridge, and road building materials and equipment. We are asking for equipment to cultivate land. We need materials and machinery with which to make clothing, shoes, and furniture and we need materials and equipment to for putting in infrastructure. We want housing, apartments, and multi-story building materials and equipment. In addition, we ask for the cost of a one-way ticket to whatever islands that would accept us as full citizens. Whether the Government of America will or will not give this, we, not less than 144,000 of us, are determined to leave America and live amongst our own kind.
The American Government gives billions of dollars to Israel each year. It has committed to giving Haiti $20-million per year for the next four years, for food. In addition, she gives to Haiti and other countries her surplus old clothing, foods, and machinery. Will she give to her ex-plantation slave children our request of her? Abraham Lincoln stated, "keep them here as our underlings."
We, today, observe daily that we are treated and kept as underlings here in America. The images of how we are looked upon by this Caucasian American Government are yet on our minds and in our lives today.
The killing of Travon Martin in 2013 is a prime example, of which the world is well aware. Yet, perhaps the greatest example of the systematic immorality of the United States Government is her claim to the largest prison population in the world--prisons filled with Black men and women due to discriminatory policing, prosecution, and laws. There is no justice here. We are subjected to an ongoing slavery system--slavery by another name. The world can see that you are not our brothers and neither are we yours.
The ex-slave masters of the CARICOM countries have departed and left the Governments in the hands of their ex-slaves. What has this American Government given to her plantation slave children besides a subservient position as her underlings?
Psychiatrists and those in other related sciences say if a husband hits or beats his wife, his wife is to leave him immediately. Has the American government not done far worse to us, Afrodescendants? We have been whipped until blood gushed from our backs, boiled while yet alive until dead, and hung from trees: to say nothing of the cruelest of inhumane treatments. The loss of our mother tongue, culture, and religion renders us a spiritually dead nation. . These are losses of Human Rights as defined by Article 27 of the ICCPR of the United Nations.
We, the Lost-Found Nation of Islam, have been in the International community since 1989. Our first written statement to the U.N. was in 1993. Our first oral statement to the U.N. was in 1998. Our last statement and appearance in the U.N. was in 2006. We spoke to the Commission on Human Rights, the Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights, and the Working Group on Minorities and had significantly gained their attention. But the American Government along with the British Government , the Governments of all slave-holding countries and other countries whom Britain and America provide support, shut down the Commission on Human Rights, the Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights, and the Working Group on Minorities--every U.N. group whose attention we had gained. In its place, they created the Human Rights Council.
We spent nine years in the U.N. only to learn that we did not exist as a Nation of people, with God-given human rights. As Americans, we were classified along with Caucasian Americans in the United States. We had achieved a unified name and identity that Black people from 19 countries agreed upon, in 2002--Afrodescendants. God-given Human Rights are: the right to speak your own mother tongue in community with others who speak your mother tongue; the right to practice your own culture in community with others who practice your culture; and the right to practice your own religion in community with others who practice your religion Our Human Rights were lost during plantation slavery. This American government made us a debased people. This is why this letter is presented to the President of the United States and the United States Government. We are determined to achieve ethnogenesis.
The following is a statement of American history. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. wrote "The Truth Behind 40 Acres and a Mule," on pbs.org's '100 Amazing facts About The Negro'.
January 16, 1865, Union General William T. Sherman issued Special Field Order No. 15, upon approval of President Lincoln: "The islands from Charleston, South Carolina, the abandoned rice fields along the rivers for thirty miles back from the sea, and the country bordering the St. Johns River, Florida, are reserved and set apart for the settlement of the negros now made free by the acts of war and the proclamation of the President of the United States (Abraham Lincoln).
400,000 acres of land--a strip of coastline stretching from Charleston, South Carolina, to the St. Johns River in Florida, including Georgia's Sea Islands and the mainland thirty miles from the coast--would be redistributed to the newly freed slaves.
For the first time in the history of this nation, the representatives of the Government had gone to these poor debased people to ask them what they wanted for themselves.
Baptist minister Ulysses L. Houston, one of the group that had met with Sherman led 1,000 Blacks to Skidaway Island, Georgia where they established a self-governing community with Houston as the "Black governor." And by June, 40,000 freedmen had settled on 400,000 acres of "Sherman Land." By the way, Sherman later ordered that the army could lend the new settlers mules; hence the phrase "40 acres and a mule."
What happened to this astonishingly visionary program, which would have fundamentally altered the course of American race relations?
Henry Louis Gates, Jr. goes on to say:
Andrew Johnson, Lincoln's successor and a sympathizer with the South, overturned the Order in the fall of 1865, and, as Barton Myers sadly concluded, 'returned the land along the South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida coasts to the planters who had originally owned it--to the very people who had declared war on the United States of America.'
The Honorable Elijah Muhammad, along with 450,000 followers, from 1960 until the day of his death in 1975, repeatedly asked this Government to establish a state or territory of our own. The American Government turned a deaf ear. Is there not a moral-minded Caucasian in America's Government today? In 1865, we have in evidence at least two moral-minded statesmen: the United States President, Abe Lincoln, and General Sherman. They, at least, possessed enough moral insight to inquire of the new allegedly free Blacks what it is they wanted: "To live scattered amongst Whites or to live separate?" "Land" was the Black soon-to-be governors answer. Moreover, the Black soon-to-be governor stated, "there is a prejudice against us in the South. We would rather live in a separate territory." To date, the majority of Black people everywhere in the United States still experience this prejudice.
Is the Government of the United States incapable of the moral fortitude that it would take to grant to not less than 144,000 souls our humble request? Is there not one white man in the Government today, who has the wisdom, moral fortitude, and leadership ability of General Sherman and Abraham Lincoln? Ease the souls of my people, as well as make clean the souls of white people, by correcting your nation's wrongs. You claim that your nation has has changed, but our lawyers, doctors, teachers, and people feel your nation's prejudices even today.
To quote my daughter, Amira Arshad Muhammad, who is an attorney: "We are the peace that the world has been waiting for." You know what is right to do; just do it. Nature equips you from birth with the knowledge of what is right and what is wrong. You know more about our history than the majority of us do, for it was your government that placed us in plantation slavery, debased us, and made us your underlings. Men and governments advance in age and in wisdom. Has your government advanced in wisdom, or does it lag behind?
______________________________________
Silis Muhammad
Servant of Allah
BELOW, IN CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER, ARE MY COMPILED “BEST HITS” OF THE HONORABLE SILAS MUHAMMAD
The 1503 Petition for Reparations for African Americans was delivered to the UN in 1994
“Understanding that to be a people, a group of persons must not only subjectively see themselves as a single people, but also objectively be seen, through speech and action, to be participating or be able to participate in the creation or recreation of their own distinct social world. . . . And further recognizing that for the many African-Americans whose ancestors were victims of gross violations, passage of time has no attenuating effect, but on the contrary has increased post-traumatic stress, deteriorated social, material, etc., conditions requiring all necessary special rights as well as compensation and rehabilitation measures. We may conclude that as long as the effects of past gross violation and resulting damage can be demonstrated as the cause of present developmental problems, it would be difficult to produce an acceptable argument for statutory limitations since that would amount to the denial of the fundamental human right to a remedy for past injustices. Therefore, in concern for future generations and our search for an end to war and violence, we must uphold human rights for African-Americans, because in this era of scattered low-intensity violent conflicts, only justice can effectively supersede war. . . . The use of African names and African languages was widely prohibited. The official U.S. policy of forced assimilation (referred to in the U.S. as "integration," despite its incongruousness with customary usage of that term) actually began during the enslavement period with the concerted efforts to stamp out any use or recognition of the African cultural heritage in America. This aspect of official policy was to be sufficiently successful in the areas of language and religion as to produce, from the many African cultures, a new one: African-Americans. . . . That this struggle is finally reaching its culminating stages is evidenced by the submission of this Petition to the United Nations, which constitutes the African-American demand for international inquiry into its long history of gross human rights violations, and remedy in the form of self-determination, reparations, and institution of minority rights, which given the historical precedents, may require significant degree of (internal) self-determination. . . . Individual manifestations of the general phenomenon will continue as confirmation of the general disrespect for the human rights of the formerly enslaved minority, until the phenomenon itself can be eliminated or neutralized--which cannot occur, The Nation of Islam feels and historical evidence substantiates (see Appendix H), until African-Americans are able to exercise their right to self-determination and receive reparations for past and on-going gross human rights violations. The Nation of Islam and most African-Americans believe that this will require third party intervention, such as the U.N. Sub-Commission’s willingness to provide the political, legal and conceptual leverage, the fora and the legal framework required by the oppressed formerly enslaved minority to convince the U.S. government to open a sincere dialogue on the inalienable human rights of the minority to lawfully demand self-determination with reparations for past and on-going gross human rights violations--chiefly, the receipt of compensation for past and on-going gross violation to the full extent necessary to achieve self-determination and minority rights as provided by Article 27 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which the U.S. has ratified. . . . Mr. Secretary-General and Members of the Sub-Commission:
The U.S. government, in line with the U.S. Courts, continues to promote forced assimilation through the concept that all minority needs and rights can be subsumed within the concept of non-discrimination and equality (or sameness) before the law--this despite the fact that historical evidence strongly contradicts such a notion, and that judicial enforcement of non-discrimination in the U.S. has become formal and de-contextualized, disallowing appropriate consideration for historical injustices and present special needs. The courts further restrict satisfaction by requiring "intent to discriminate," and refusing consideration to those who are not "immediate victims". . . . All statistical evidence (Appendix H) indicates that a policy of non-discrimination alone is insufficient to permit the African-American minority to achieve equal status with the majority, but rather, under the guise of aiding them, serves to continue their victimization. While a multi-national state may argue that treating all people (majority as well as formerly enslaved minority) the same, legally and institutionally, regardless of their different histories and circumstances, somehow leads to a new society in which oppressed or formerly enslaved minorities, at some time in the future, will achieve equal-status, sameness or equality with the majority, this line of reasoning more frequently serves merely to justify or mask majority domination, and often exploitation, of national minorities. Even the most superficial analysis reveals that treating such minorities as if they were the same as the majority in a majority-ruled multi-national society does not permit minority needs to be legitimately known or expressed, let alone addressed. . . . The U.S. government should not be given the tacit approval of the U.N. to continue to ignore past gross violations without compensation, nor to continue present gross violations against its national minorities. Surely, Members of the Sub-Commission, it is not your position nor that of the U.N., while situated in New York and surrounded by more than one million oppressed national minority members, to ignore their desperate plight, and at the same time assist U.S. human rights efforts in other countries. Surely, Mr. Secretary General and Sub-Commission Members, your position and that of the U.N. cannot be that in the U.S. only "white Americans" have internationally protected human rights, and that what is done to African-Americans does not count. . . . The African-American people do not believe that an honest, truly useful and equitable solution can be achieved without a significant degree of U. N. assistance. African-American history is filled with attempts at trying to achieve a sincere dialogue with the majority Government. All attempts to achieve domestic remedies have failed. In 400 years, African-Americans have not even come close to achieving equal-status relations with the Anglo-American majority ethnarchy which controls and runs the U.S. government as it sees fit, claims and distributes socio-economic resources as it sees fit, and ignores the human rights of African-Americans when it sees fit, etc. Now African-Americans want their human rights, demands for equal status, self determination, and compensation for past and on-going gross violations to be heard and redressed, and are requesting U.N. assistance. . . . If the U.S. government is sincere about dealing honestly and candidly with human rights problems of its African-American population, then it should not object to this time-honored process of third party (U.N.) assistance, mediation, conciliation or arbitration.”
Oral Statement to the Sub-Commission for the Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities
August 1998, 50th Session, Agenda Item 2
Our issue is the violation of human rights and fundamental freedoms. When we consider Article 27 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which the United States of America has ratified, we conclude that we, the descendants of slaves (the so-called African-Americans), remain a lost people. We are dislodged from the knowledge of our cultural beginning. We remain dislodged from the knowledge of our ancestral tradition of religion. Regarding our language, as slaves we were by force prevented from speaking it, and we are lost still from the use of it. . . . My presence here is axiomatic of unfolding history. A potential holocaust is today on the horizon, particularly, in the United States of America. Will the United Nations persuade her to let my people go?
Written Statement to the Sub-Commission for the Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities 50th Session, August 1998, Agenda item 2: Question of the violation of human rights and fundamental freedoms, including policies of racial discrimination and segregation and of apartheid, in all countries, with particular reference to colonial and other dependent countries and territories: report of the Sub-Commission under Commission on Human Rights resolution 8 (XXIII)
Recognizing that the Sub-Commission Resolution refers to plantation slavery not only in the U.S.A., but in the Americas, we ask that the Sub-Commission be conscious of the fact that African-Americans are in a unique position among Africans in the Diaspora. African-Americans did not receive the benefits of a partial or full return to self-determination or self government which began to be enjoyed by Africans throughout the Diaspora as a result of the movement towards de-colonization in the 1960's. To the contrary, in the 1960's assimilation was further forced upon the African-Americans through a civil rights movement which caused the demise of whatever independent economic and cultural recovery they had been able to achieve during the years of segregation. For those who would argue that the civil rights movement in the U.S.A. was the will of African-Americans, it should be pointed out that an equally powerful movement toward human rights and self-determination took place at the same time. . . Every effort was made by the U.S. Government to destroy the independent spirit that was generated . . . . so-called African-Americans have suffered utter and complete destruction of their culture, language, ethnic identity, and religion. For them the United Nations protection offered to Minorities is meaningless. Because of the particular cruelty of chattel slavery in the United States, so-called African-Americans were able to retain nothing of their past and of their homelands. Hence, the truth arises… that unlike some of the Africans in the Diaspora, who do retain remnants of their original culture and identity, African-Americans possess no remnants, and therefore must build their future from nothing but their own will to survive slavery. Thus the vast majority are in the condition of a lost people whose assimilation has been so complete that they cannot identify what they suffer from. [Siphiwe note: by the miracle of African Ancestry DNA testing, now they can identify their direct maternal and paternal ancestry, who and where they come from in Africa.] . . . We believe that if the U.N. will establish a forum for African-Americans in the United States, through that act alone African-Americans will begin to fully understand that the Nations of the earth wish to help them recapture their rights as human beings. We believe that by doing this, an upcoming race war, or racial violence may be averted.”
Oral Statement to the Working Group on Minorities, Fourth Session, May 1998
Agenda Item 3 (b) Examining possible solutions to problems involving minorities
including the promotion of mutual understanding between and among minorities and Governments
“Our question is whether the national minority, the so-called African- Americans, are in possession of their inalienable human rights. . . . Article 27 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which the United States of America has ratified, states, "In those States in which ethnic, religious or linguistic minorities exist, persons belonging to such minorities shall not be denied the right, in community with other members of their group, to enjoy their own culture, to profess and practice their own religion, or to use their own language." Here, the so-called African-Americans are not in possession of their human rights. They were taken away from the culture of their origin. The slave ship took them from their place of beginning, as you scholars well do know. The slave master did not return them to their culture, nor did he bring their culture and teach it to them. Nor has the American government, to date, sought to teach them their culture, or return them to it. They are absent the knowledge of their cultural beginning. The slave ship took them away from their ancestral religious belief. They were dislodged from the knowledge of their lineage to . . . God. The slave master taught them of his religion ultimately, and of his lineage to a supreme being whom he refers. to by the name of God. The federal or local governments of America did not teach nor make provisions for the so-called African-American, or slaves, to learn the knowledge of their transmissible religious belief. They are absent the knowledge of their ancestral tradition of religion. Regarding their original language, there were not any provisions set in motion by the local and federal governments of America for them to cultivate and continue speaking their language. To the contrary, provisions were set in motion to prevent them from speaking their language, originally. They were intentionally separated from one another, with total disregard, during slavery such that they would not be able to speak their language. Ultimately, they lost the knowledge of it. Thus, to the extent that they were deprived of their culture, their religion and their language, they are not in possession of their human rights. Moreover, to the extent that they, especially during the period of chattel slavery, were constrained by the laws, the culture, the religion and the language of the Anglo-American, they lived, and to this day live, under a tyrannical government. By the acts of forced assimilation the Anglo-American has sought also to subsume the so-called African-American into its Constitution. The human rights, the desires and the perpetual existence of the national minority are not embodied in the majority Constitution: which, from its origin, is absent any input of the national minority. The laws arising from America's majority Constitution do not embody the living will of the national minority. Thus, we feel we cannot intelligently argue the issue of (a) violation of our human rights. While we are human, we have not been in possession of (our) human rights for the past 433 years. Our human rights were willfully destroyed, utterly. They were destroyed by the slave masters, under the auspices of the United States central and local governments, during our long sojourn as slaves in America.”
Written Statement to the 54th Session of the Commission on Human Rights
Provisional Agenda item 14, Specific Groups and Individuals (b) Minorities
March/April 1998
“Understanding that the most destructive violation of the human rights of African Americans remains ethnocide and forced assimilation into an alien culture: despite the attempts of American media to portray "happy American blacks" and "wealthy black athletes" the culture of the majority of African Americans is a post slavery culture. Many African Americans have long sought a separate identity, and they have long sought to distinguish themselves from the majority population through unique musical and cultural development. Some African Americans have tried to identify with the African continent and have found that their long absence and forced removal has made them unable to re-connect. African Americans are, in essence, a homeless nation without identity, exploited as a servant class. Increasingly they are being forced into criminal or suspect status. . . . Our organization is concerned with the protection of the human rights of the African National Minority in the U.S.A. We encourage awareness of the potential for racial conflict and violent suppression of those who are seeking independence and reparations.”
Oral Statement to the Sub-Commission on Prevention of Discriminationand the Protection of Minorities, August, 1999 Provisional Agenda Item 8: Prevention of discrimination against and the protection of minorities
“We charge civil death. The U.S., with knowledge that it has denied us our identity for the past 400 years, is in violation of both the aforementioned Covenant and Declaration. In articles 2 and 4, the Declaration stipulates that minorities have the right to protect their culture and identity. . . . Owing to plantation slavery, intercultural education is an impossibility for us. By forcibly depriving us of our "mother tongue," the Government of the U.S. deracinated our collective identity, making our condition irreversible. We need specific U.N. assistance. Absent knowledge of our mother tongue, how could and can we speak it with other members of our community, and preserve our individual identity? The annihilation of our "mother tongue" is the extermination of our identity. Absent our identity, we do not have our own culture. Absent culture, we are in a state of civil death. To destroy a people and their shared life is a crime. The U.N. can provide a remedy by establishing a forum for so-called African-Americans at the U.N. in New York. We want a forum for the purpose of restoring our human rights -- which only we can reclaim or choose. Within a forum, we will 1) rebuild a kind of council or governing body amongst ourselves; 2) openly discuss the devolution, in pertinent parts, of the Constitution of the U.S., which defines us as three-fifth of a human being; 3) make choices on the "mother tongue" or tongues we wish to speak; 4) discuss and conclude on the issues of reclamation, restoration, reparations and migration of some of us to a friendly nation; 5) then present this package to the U.N. in order that the U.N. can facilitate dialogue between us and the U.S. Government. The forum will provide a peaceful and protected environment for the resurrection of our legal, political being and status as a people.”
