Dear Editor,
There is a famous truism in law: when the facts are on your side, argue the facts; when the law is on your side, argue the law.
Mr Abu Bakr has neither the law nor the facts on his side, so he descends into a cacophony of divisiveness and public mischief.
One: the law is clear. Indigenous genocide and African chattel slavery were and are crimes against humanity.
As Sir Anthony Gifford so elegantly put it, “The Charter of the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal, which defined crimes against humanity as ‘Murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation and other inhumane acts committed against any civilian population… whether or not in violation of the domestic law where perpetrated.’ I referred to the Genocide Convention, which did not create a new international crime but gave it new and more effective legal form. It recognised genocide as a crime against international law, and defined genocide as being ‘acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group as such.’
The invasion of African territories, the mass capture of Africans, the horrors of the middle passage, the sale and use of Africans as worse than beasts, the extermination of family life, culture and language, were violations of these international laws. I have never accepted the argument that because the slave trade was legal under the British laws of the time, it could not have been a crime against international law. The Nuremberg Charter dealt with that argument, which might have been used in the context of laws passed by the elected Nazi Government in Germany, in the last part of the definition quoted above.
As international law experts have written, acts which are so reprehensible as to offend the conscience of mankind, directed against civilian populations, are crimes in international law and always have been. The criterion is the conscience of decent human beings (who in Britain were indeed outraged by the slave trade) not the standards of those who perpetrated and condoned the crimes.”
Two: the facts are clear.
Eight European countries participated in crimes against humanity. The proof exists in volumes.
Some African tribes sold other Africans to Europeans. But it was the eight countries who regarded Africans as non-beings. Again, as Lord Gifford stated, “Nor am I impressed with the comment that African societies themselves permitted slavery, or that many Africans helped the slave traders by capturing and selling the people who were transported. The peculiar cruelties of the transatlantic trade, and the subsequent conditions of slavery in the Americas, were infinitely worse than the indigenous African practices of enslaving prisoners of war or criminals. Africans did not treat each other as racially inferior, subhuman beings. Africans did not imprison each other in stinking dungeons or crowd them into the holds of ships with less space than pigs in a sty. Africans did not work slaves to death because it was cheaper to replace them than to keep them alive.”
Three: Europe (governments, royalty, private sector, bankers, the church, ordinary people, cities, industries) benefited from slavery and indigenous genocide. And as Jonathan Adams stated in his recent letter which Mr Bakr read: “Should we not move past the question of debating the appropriateness of Afrikan reparations if it is known that: (a) American Indians received reparations in the form of cash payments, land, and tribal recognition; (b) New Zealand’s Maoris got a multimillion dollar award and forest concessions which saw seven tribes becoming the largest forest owners in New Zealand; (c) the allies received reparations from Germany by way of the Treaty of Versailles which formally asserted Germany’s war guilt; (d) Japan had to pay reparations after World War II which saw the United States removing capital goods from Japan and the USSR seizing Japanese assets in from Manchukuo, while other Asian nations received reparations from the Japanese through the negotiation of individual treaties with those nations; (e) since 1951 Germany has paid more than 102 billion marks in federal reparations payments to Israel and in addition has paid out billions in private and other public funds including 75 million marks by German firms in compensation for wartime forced labour; (f) in 1983 the US Congress passed a remediation law for the Japanese Americans whom the US government had put into internment camps during World War II. It created a foundation for educational and humanitarian purposes and established a $1.5 billion dollar fund for the payment of reparations to survivors of the camp. (g) Slave owners received £20 million for the loss of labour due to Emancipation; (h) East Indian Guyanese saw Indians in Guyana receive land and other state assistance in return for forfeiture of the right to return to India and contracted sums for return passages; (i) Portuguese reparations through Ordinance 28 of 1858 which saw the enactment of the Registration Tax which was used to pay Portuguese businessmen who suffered loss as a result of the Angel Gabriel riots; (j) the Haitians had to pay France reparations after having defeated the French in their war for their freedom.”
Having been legally, factually and intellectually trumped, Mr Bakr goes for broke with his divide and rule eurocentric tricks, namely the argument that Caricom heads of state, Sir Hilary Beckles and all the folks involved in the Caricom Reparations process don’t know what they are doing.
He then tries to localise it by stating that Phillips was appointed by the President of Guyana (who apparently doesn’t know what he is doing) to bamboozle Africans in Guyana and the Caribbean and has chosen Phillips against the wishes of some African activists in Guyana. Therefore Phillips is leading the Guyana Reparations Committee down that path.
Sadly, Mr Bakr, while he lives in France, is not cognizant of the fact that Phillips is one of 16 individuals on the Guyana Reparations Committee. Organizations such as the Guyana Pan African Organization; the Guyana Rastafarian Council; the Descendants of Manumitted Africans; the Amerindian Peoples Association; the Museum of African Heritage; the Berbice Reparations Committee; the Essequibo Reparations Committee; Youth; the Black Reparations Forum; and Women and the Church are all members. Unlike Mr Bakr’s eurocentric governance approach, each person has a single vote.
Yours faithfully,
Eric Phillips
