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On March 2 I received an email from All For
Reparations and Emancipation as follows:
I read with interest your statement titled: "We won't pay" and wanted to share AFRE's position on Why the US government must be held accountable and pay. Just wanted to share our view with you.
Below you will find the position statement of the Silis Muhammad, Chairman of the Board of All For Reparations and Emancipation, a United Nations NonGovernmental Organization.
If you believe it appropriate, please publish on your website. Thank you, Maia K. Hadi, Director of Media Relations AFRE
POSITION STATEMENT
February 2002
Brief Statement of the Political Position of Mr. Silis Muhammad, Chairman of the Board of All For Reparations and Emancipation, a United Nations NonGovernmental Organization
We are a new people in the earth, rising into self-awareness after more than 400 years of slavery and its legacies. The slave master and his children named us niggers, negroes, coloreds, blacks, and African Americans. We have yet to give name to ourselves. We were kidnapped from our homes, tribes and nations. We were forcibly denied our mother tongue, our religion and our culture. We were subjected to forced mixed breeding and rape by the slave masters. These inhumane acts resulted in the destruction of our original identity, and the making of a new people. We are rising, yet we remain scattered and of many minds. We must now take up the task of joining together, identifying ourselves, gaining our human rights, obtaining reparations, and restoring ourselves.
We have suffered many atrocities, but the greatest damage done to us as a people is the destruction of our identity. We have been made like unto orphans, lost, without ancestral lineage. We possess no mother tongue to connect us to our place in the homeland, Africa. We can claim nothing that is uniquely our own except what has arisen from the experience of slavery, and our struggle in the aftermath of our holocaust. We now know that there are no other people like us on the earth. Because of the destruction of our identity, and the false picture given by the U.S. Government to the international community about us, we have no collective human rights.
For years the U.S. Government has been successful in persuading the international community that African Americans expressed their will through the civil rights movement, and that their ultimate desire was integration into America, and equality with the white majority. We know that it was not integration, but a desire for justice that gave rise to the civil rights movement. When we went to the UN in person, and asked for recognition, reparations, and the granting of our collective human rights, the UN began to see the African Americans in a different light. We informed them that we are a people deserving of the right to determine our future, yet we cannot because we are captives within the identity of the slave master's children. Thus we are perpetually lost to ourselves. Upon hearing our prayer, the UN recognized that it had an obligation to find a place or create a place within international law where we will fit.
Our legal argument is based upon international law, ratified by the U.S. Government, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), Article 27. The covenant 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." We are a numerical minority in the U.S., and the U.S. Government has recognized us politically as a minority, thus we use this Covenant in order to argue our right to be recognized as Peoples.
We know that this covenant did not exist during slavery, when we were first denied the human rights of speaking our own language, practicing our religion and enjoying our culture. Yet we argue that denying us the right to speak our language, and separating us so that we could not retain it, are acts that constitute a permanent, ongoing denial, as the language is forever lost. In addition, we argue that the ICCPR had been accepted by the UN General Assembly at the time when the U.S. Government disrupted through its infamous counter-intelligence program the movement of our people toward our choice of identity, education, culture and government. When we sought to identify ourselves as the Lost-Found Nation of Islam, Republic of New Afrika, Black Panther Party and so on, our activities were undermined and our leaders denigrated, incarcerated and assassinated. And finally, we argue that the U.S. Government was aware of our collective existence when it signed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948. The U.S. Government at that time demonstrated its utter disregard for the spirit of the Universal Declaration, which promises human rights for everyone, everywhere, by keeping our existence hidden from the UN.
The UN has given clear direction as to the avenue through which the so-called African Americans can seek recognition. In 1998, after hearing only a small number of interventions on behalf of African Americans, including Mr. Silis Muhammad's written and oral statements, the Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights passed Resolution E/CN.4/SUB.2/RES/1998 in which the Working Group on Minorities was called upon to consider how the Sub-Commission in its future work might address the continuing legal, political and economic legacies of the African slave trade as experienced by Black communities throughout the Americas. Since that time Mr. Silis Muhammad has addressed the Sub-Commission three times, and the Working Group on Minorities five times, including twice in forums that the Working Group has organized for the specific purpose of hearing the issues of the so-called African Americans.
Internationally, Mr. Muhammad recommends that Black leaders throughout the Americas Region and the Diaspora join him in support of the efforts of the Working Group on Minorities. Information can be gained from an expert paper written by one of the Working Group members, Professor Jose Bengoa. In his writing he demonstrates a clear understanding of our situation, our rise, and our desire for restoration. Mr. Muhammad advises that when African American leaders speak to the Working Group on Minorities or other UN bodies, they ask for UN expert and technical assistance in the establishment of a forum in which the many issues around reparation, restoration, self-identification and the definition of our collective human rights might be discussed. Domestically, Mr. Muhammad continues to build the government for African Americans that he began establishing some years ago. In the past few years he has put religion into the background, and has expanded the structure to democratically include all groups that wish to belong to a government of and for our people.
Mr. Silis Muhammad has been the CEO of the Lost-Found Nation of Islam for 24 years, and a leader of our people for even longer. He is Chairman of the Board of All For Reparations and Emancipation, a United Nations NonGovernmental Organization. More information can be found at the AFRE website: www.afre-ngo.org.
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