WE CHARGE GENOCIDE/ECOCIDE

(PETITION RECOGNIZING GENOCIDE/ECOCIDE BY THE BRITISH STATE

                                      AGAINST AFRIKAN PEOPLE)

           The Undersigned Make the Following Heartfelt Declaration:

·         The immoral and inhuman treatment inflicted on Afrikans by the money making Europeans has never been addressed;

·         The racist mindset which fuelled the Transatlantic Traffic in Enslaved Afrikans (TTEA) from the 15th - 19th centuries has not been terminated;

·         The lack of accountability by those responsible confirms the ongoing racism which creates disproportionate detriment to the offspring of the millions of individuals that were stolen from Afrika;

·         Today the offspring of the stolen Afrikans encounter direct and indirect racial discrimination daily.  This results in poverty, lack of education, unemployment, imprisonment and ill health;

·         The damage that has been done to Afrika also needs to be addressed in a structured and effective manner;

·         The blood, sweat and tears of our Ancestors financed the economic base of the United Kingdom. Therefore it is just and fair that Reparations be made to their offspring;

·         Repatriation should be a viable option for any Descendant of Afrikans captured, enslaved and financially exploited by the Lords Commissioners for Trade and Plantations (UK) and their European counterparts;

·         The immoral acts inflicted on Afrikans against their will cannot all be undone. However, the perpetrators, their descendants and all other beneficiaries ought to be compelled to address the harm that has resulted from these actions;

·         Now is the time for the victims of these inhumane atrocities to demand holistic and comprehensive reparations for the wrongs that continue to be inflicted on Afrika and Afrikans.

Whereas  we, the undersigned, recognize the destabilisation, oppression and terrorisation of our Afrikan heritage communities, the proliferation of guns, the distribution and sale of drugs and the resultant Black on Black self-annihilation has reached epidemic proportions, causing harm to Afrikan heritage communities within and beyond the United Kingdom and prolonging the war and Holocaust of enslavement (Maangamizi) against Afrikan peoples all over the world; We understand this harm can only be described as acts of Genocide/Ecocide by the State through its agencies of the police, armed forces, security and intelligence agencies and other organised as well as unorganised manifestations of structural,  systemic and institutionalised racism of the White supremacist order of global apartheid. Genocide as defined in Article II of the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide adopted on December 9, 1948 explained that “genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group, as such: killing members of the group; causing serious bodily harm or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to prevent births within the group; and forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.”

In addition to the acts of Genocide/Ecocide perpetuated through various instruments of the British State and its European superstate, acts of Genocide/Ecocide can also be attributed to the British Government’s misuse of resources extorted through taxes from people in the United Kingdom and plundered from all peoples, communities and nations subjugated to the oppression and exploitation of British/European Imperialism. This is evidenced by the following: (1) the denial of Afrikan and Black human and peoples’ rights; (2) the mentacide of Afrikan heritage youth and adults through the state mis-education system;( 3) brutality by police and security agents including deaths in custody; (4) unemployment and mal-employment; (5) the expanding prison and psychiatric industrial complex; (6) racist immigration policies; (7) privatisation schemes including the Economic Partnership Agreements (EPA’s) of the European Union (EU) being forced on Afrikan Caribbean & Pacific countries; and (8) the crimes against humanity inherent in the aggression committed against Afrikan and other Majority World peoples. The results of these inhumane public policies have caused devastation to Afrikan heritage communities within and beyond Britain. Out of these have also arisen environmental injustice, violence, poverty, ignorance and anti-Black racism such as Afriphobia resulting in the destruction of generations of Afrikan heritage people, all amounting to geno/ecocidal crimes against humanity for which we demand reparations, including voluntary repatriation, as a matter of restorative justice.

According to the United Nations Basic Principles and Guidelines on the Right to A Remedy and Reparation for Victims of Gross Violations of International Human Rights Law and Serious Violations of International Humanitarian Law an essential aspect of reparations include, among other measures: investigation of the facts, official acknowledgement and apology, receipt of answers; an opportunity for victims to speak in a public forum about his/her experiences and to have active involvement in the reparative process. We in the Interim National Afrikan Peoples Parliament (iNAPP) and the Rastafari Movement (UK) therefore advocate the need for honest dialogue between legitimate representatives of Afrikan heritage communities in Britain and the British Government, Parliament and other interested state and non-state bodies within the UK on how best to redress the harmful legacies of enslavement. 

We urge that this dialogue takes place by establishing an All-Party Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry for Truth, Justice and Reparations to: acknowledge the fundamental injustice, cruelty, brutality, and inhumanity of the imposition of Afrikan chattel, colonial and neocolonial enslavement within and beyond the British Empire; examine subsequent de jure and de facto racial and economic discrimination against Afrikans and people of Afrikan descent; examine the impact of these forces on living Afrikans and Afrikan descendant communities, as well as all other peoples;  make recommendations to Parliament and similar bodies at local, national and international levels, including the European Parliament, and; determine appropriate methods of dissemination of findings to the public within and beyond Britain for consultation about proposals for redress, repairs and for other purposes.

We call upon the UK Government to exercise leadership in acknowledging and addressing the social and economic legacies of enslavement on contemporary generations of Afrikans and people of Afrikan descent. We believe that establishing the All-Party Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry for Truth, Justice and Reparations will have far reaching effects which will go a long way towards the reparative process of healing and restoring the descendants of the enslaved and enabling racial justice and equity between the descendants of the enslaved and the enslavers as well as in the wider society. We call upon the British state to honour the need and right of the descendants of the enslaved to speak in a public forum, provide testimony and evidence of how the legacies of enslavement are resulting in continued human and peoples’ rights violations, impaired quality of life and the ensuing destruction of the essential foundations of life for Afrikan peoples today.