Dear Editor,
Abu Bakr is a well-read intellectual who knows his history better than most. It was therefore very perplexing to read many of the statements he made in his letter entitled ‘We learn a certain narrative of our past” (SN, March 20).
First, he says: “It is known that among the Akan peoples from whom many in the English speaking world are descended, slavery was a socially accepted practice.” Then speaking of some tribes in Africa (a few of the 3000 that exist) Mr Bakr further states, “they bought, sold and exported slaves for hundreds of years. They committed the crimes. They reaped the profits. But it is considered useless to press these unfortunates, long fallen on hard times, to subscribe to the reparations fund.”
How can a man of vast knowledge and intellect like Mr Bakr, make some troublesome and totally false statements. European slavery was chattel slavery where human beings were defined as inhuman and property. African tribes never practised chattel slavery. Never. Slavery practised by African tribes was never a ‘crime against humanity.’ Chattel slavery was evil and was purely because of criminal enrichment.
How else do you explain the forced migration of 16 to 20 million Africans and millions of deaths from chattel slavery? Chattel slavery was an industry of rape, murder, exploitation, free labour and inhumanity. Were African tribes building huge ships to take these ‘gifts’ away to a foreign land of extreme cruelty and death? Yes, some African tribes participated in selling other Africans to Europeans. But these same tribes never practised chattel slavery. Chattel slavery was about indigenous genocide as in the case of the Garifuna in St Vincent. Chattel slavery was about African genocide for profit.
European chattel slavery was the world’s first nuclear bomb that annihilated African culture, African family structures, African institutions, African pride, African civilizations, African commerce, African science and African economic development. Chattel slavery was designed by Europeans for European criminal enrichment and made a crime against humanity.
Mr Bakr has for some reason attempted to blame Africans for chattel slavery and has joined the ranks of those who despite the evidence that abounds choose to blame the victims. Certainly, Mr Bakr is well aware that European governments were owners and traders of enslaved Africans; visited genocidal actions upon indigenous communities; created the legal, financial and fiscal policies necessary for the enslavement of Africans; defined and enforced African enslavement and native genocide as in their national interest; refused compensation to the enslaved with the ending of their enslavement; compensated slave owners at emancipation for the loss of legal property rights in enslaved Africans; imposed a further one hundred years of racial apartheid upon the emancipated; imposed for another one hundred years policies designed to perpetrate suffering upon the emancipated and survivors of genocide; and have refused to acknowledge such crimes or to compensate victims and their descendants.
Chattel slavery was the crime that developed Europe. Period. And underdeveloped Africa while creating the politics and practice of racism that exists today. Royalty, businessmen, bankers, religious groups, merchants, shipbuilders, arms makers, citizens – all made billions in blood money from chattel slavery and their descendants still enjoy this wealth today. How can a man of Mr Bakr’s stature make the statement, “We learn a certain narrative of our servile past. We learn that the European started the slave trade and bought and sold Africans for ‘beads and mirrors.’ I saw in this newspaper a few years ago in a Project Syndicate article with someone bearing an African name repeating the absurdity.” Mr Bakr is correct only in one part of that statement, for its was the Arabs that African slavery began and lasted for 11 centuries.
The second statement Mr Bakr makes is one that tries to discredit the reparations movement. He states in his letter, “The Coordinator of the efforts [reparations] is Dr Hilary Beckles, and we had earlier read, the local organisers include Eric Phillips of ACDA.” Mr Bakr knows full well that it is Sir Hilary Beckles, not Dr Beckles, and that the reparations initiative has been unanimously approved by the heads of state of Caricom.
Mr Bakr attempts to make reparations a trivial event. He purposefully has left the reader in the dark. He has purposefully hidden the fact that the sovereign nations of the Caribbean will sue eight European countries, including France, for crimes against humanity and criminal enrichment. He tries to hide the fact that France, like many European countries, was built on the backs and deaths of millions of Africans, and that even today France has an imperialist hold on the money of many African nations.
Let it be known that this effort to stigmatise and weaken the reparations movement with lies and European propaganda has no chance of success but rather diminishes Mr Bakr. Let it be known there is a Caricom Reparations Commission chaired by Sir Hilary Beckles and comprised of the Chairs of national reparations committees in in the Caribbean. This commission reports to a heads of state Reparations Committee comprised of the heads of state of Barbados, Guyana, Haiti, St Vincent, Jamaica and Suriname. I am not a local organiser. Guyana has a National Reparations Committee.
I hope Mr Bakr will read about 1100 years of the Arab Slave Trade which has fallen through the cracks of time and which had its own special horrors of rape, plunder, murder and criminal enrichment.
Yours faithfully,
Eric Phillips
