Written and Oral Statements to the UN in 2003
Statements delivered in 2003 were heard and responded to by the UN.
Written and Oral Statements to the United Nations in 2003
Table of Contents
1. Oral Statement to the 55th Session of the Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights
2. Written Statement to the 55th Session of the Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights
3. Oral Statements to the 9th Session of the Working Group on Minorities (three statements)
4. Oral Statement to the 59th Session of the Commission on Human Rights
5. Written Statements to the 59th Session of the Commission on Human Rights (two statements)
1. Oral Statement to the Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights
Fifty Fifth Session, 28 July to 15 August, 2003
Agenda item 5 ( c ) Prevention of discrimination and protection of minorities.
Speaker: Mr. Silis Muhammad (alternate: Ms. Ana Leurinda)
We, the Afrodescendant Minorities throughout the Slavery Diaspora, have experienced total destruction of our collective human rights: original identity - language, culture and religion, as articulated in the Declaration on the Rights of Minorities and in Article 27 of the ICCPR. We once were families of African Nations, but today our blood is mixed with the blood of the slave masters. We speak his mother tongue instead of our own.
We are today the living example of the lingering effects of slavery, scattered across the Americas and the Slavery Diaspora. The sweet smell of freedom to choose our destiny is still snatched from our Life. The rights of Afrodescendant peoples are not legally recognized by the UN General Assembly; thereby, we do not have the respect nor the protection of the UN as do other human families.
We began, in 1997, bringing our prayers to the Sub-Commission, and we know today that it is through the resolutions of the Sub-Commission and the diligent efforts of the Working Group on Minorities that we, Afrodescendant Minorities, approach restoration of our collective human rights.
The 9th Session of the Working Group on Minorities has decided to place Afrodescendant Minorities on its agenda for 2004, acknowledging that we are minorities in the States in which we exist, either as numerical minorities or minorities with regard to possession of wealth and power.
We are recognized thereby as new minorities. We seek official recognition that we are new minorities, from the Sub-Commission and all bodies of the UN.
We support the recommendations of the 9th Session of the Working Group on Minorities for a second regional seminar for Afrodescendants in the Americas Region as a follow-up to the highly successful La Ceiba Seminar of 2001.
We urge the Sub-Commission to place its full support behind the Working Group on Minorities, and establish an International Year for Minorities with a Decade for Minorities to follow, as recommended by the Working Group on Minorities.
Thank you.
2. Written Statement to the Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights
Fifty Fifth Session, 28 July to 15 August, 2003
Agenda Item 5 (c), Prevention of discrimination and protection of minorities
Afrodescendants are peoples who have their roots in Africa, who have been forcibly transported to the Americas for slavery and have experienced the loss of their original identity, language, culture and religion, as articulated in the Declaration on the Rights of Minorities and in Article 27 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
In the countries in which Afrodescendants reside, we are in the position of minorities: either minorities numerically or minorities with regard to possession of money and power. In 1997 the Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights placed Afrodescendant issues before the Working Group on Minorities, and since 1998 the Working Group on Minorities has given great expertise, time and consideration to our issues.
Through the efforts of the Working Group on Minorities we Afrodescendants have begun to establish a foundation upon which we can proceed in our efforts, as recognition, restoration and reconciliation are our primary concerns. We urge the Sub-Commission to strongly support the efforts of the Working Group on Minorities on our behalf.
We fully support the decisions of the 9th Session of the Working Group on Minorities with regard to Afrodescendant minorities, and we are very grateful to the experts of this Working Group, for they are listening and responding to us, the descendants who continue to suffer the effects of slavery.
3. First Oral Statement to the 9th Session of the Working Group on Minorities, May 2003
Speaker: Mr. Silis Muhammad
Greetings Mr. Chairman. The Afrodescendant people, throughout the Slavery Diaspora, are, to this date, struggling for the protection of the UN. We are a diverse people, we know, in the lingering effects of slavery, and speaking no one common language. Albeit, we know, we are one common people seeking recognition of our inherent human rights.
We, Afrodescendants, have experienced total destruction of our essence: our original identity, language, culture and religion, as articulated in the Declaration on the Rights of Minorities and in Article 27 of the ICCPR.
These rights are denied us by systematically eliminating from our minds our mother tongue, culture and religion. By denying us these rights, generation after generation, in our homes and in our schools, the U.S. Government, in particular, destroys us mentally, and this is in breach of both the Minorities Declaration and Article 27.
These rights are an impossibility to recapture. The damages to us cannot be repaired due to forced mixed breeding during 400 years of slavery. The injury lingers on amidst us, collectively, to this day. We have been cross-bred by the slave masters, with no more regard than the regard given to animals. In America the slave masters cross-bred horses and donkeys in order to get a mule, which they used for plowing. We, like that mule, are a mixture of different people speaking different languages. We do not know what language we should speak, and tracing DNA cannot correct our dilemma.
We live either as numerical minorities, or minorities with regard to wealth and power, throughout the Region of the Americas and the Slavery Diaspora. We are the powerless and wealth-less minority, especially in the Islands, South, Central and North America and in the Slavery Diaspora. We are therefore new minorities, and we ask the UN to officially recognize us.
The children of the slave masters are reaping immense benefits from slavery, sanctioned by their Governments. By placing Afrodescendants on the UN agenda as recognized minorities, the UN and its Member States will give justice to us, and justify us as being human beings, equal to the slave master's children.
The ex-slaves are rising from a state of civil death. Other people of African descent, whose ancestors were not subject to slavery, still have their original identity, mother tongue and culture. It is axiomatic. We do not. The Working Group on People of African Descent has, in its first two sessions, failed to recognize this fact: that we have experienced civil death, and that we are now experiencing ethnogenesis.
I recommend that the Working Group on Minorities organize a second Regional Seminar for Afrodescendant Minorities in the Americas Region, similar to the very beneficial seminar, that was attended by our leaders from 19 countries, in La Ceiba, Honduras. Afrodescendant leaders wish to continue the work begun at that Seminar.
In closing, we, Afrodescendants, believe that United Nations protection of our collective human rights will place us on a path of recompense. We would like to thank the Working Group on Minorities for consistently demonstrating its concern for Afrodescendant Minorities.
Second Oral Statement to 9th Session of the Working Group on Minorities
Speaker: Silis Muhammad
Agenda Item 5: Other Matters
Mr. Chairman, members of the Working Group on Minorities. I would like to thank you for your decision to hold a follow-up seminar to the La Ceiba Seminar for Afrodescendants. We will support this decision fully, in any way we can, and we recommend that, if possible, the second seminar be held in Brazil. I would also like to thank the Working Group for their willingness to prepare working papers for the next session. We thank you for responding to the needs of the Minorities and their recommendations.
Third Oral Statement to the 9th Session of the Working Group on Minorities
Speaker: Harriett AbuBakr Muhammad
Greetings Mr. Chairman, members of the Working Group on Minorities. I am grateful to be here again this year in order to learn more about how we Afrodescendants might utilize the Declaration on the Rights of Minorities to bring about justice for ourselves and an end to injustice in the future.
My name is Harriett AbuBakr Muhammad. I represent the National Commission for Reparations. Because I am an attorney at law, I have looked to international human rights law for justice for my people. Since our first UN communication in 1994, we, the descendants of enslaved Africans in the Americas, have been pressing a claim that international human rights law has been violated. We have been denied and deprived of our original identity, mother tongue, culture and religion. For us, the slavery experience is not in the past, as the lingering effects of slavery are within us - permanently. And in addition to this permanent damage, deliberate acts to keep us from rising, collectively, have continued, and are continuing into the present time in violation of international law.
We began to try to establish ourselves collectively around the 1930's. Our movement became very strong in the 1960's. During the 60's and 70's, unknown to many people outside North America, there was a human rights movement running counter to the much publicized civil rights movement. I have deep personal experience of our human rights movement and the destabilization and destruction of our movement by the U.S. Government’s infamous Counter Intelligence Program. During that time I was a member of the family of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad. This great leader taught us, even then, that what we need is human rights. Some of you may have become familiar with his human rights efforts through his spokesman, Malcolm X.
Due to the deliberate acts of the U.S. Government from the 1950's to the present, which we claimi are in violation of Article 27 of the ICCPR, we are still today forced to engage in a struggle to establish ourselves internationally, with a UN recognized identity. The world has not yet clearly acknowledged that we exist.
Recently we have had to face another area of struggle within the UN. There seems to be a persistent desire to group us within the same category as other people of African descent who have not experienced the destruction of their original identity, mother tongue, culture and religion. We deeply appreciate our roots in Africa, but this appreciation should not prevent us from telling the world that we have, through force, lost our original identity. As this Working Group knows, people of African descent who have not experienced slavery are able to tell you where they come from, what their heritage is, what their original language is, what God their ancestors believed in. We cannot know these things - ever. What a terrible loss for us - and the world seems to want to gloss it over.
Our task has been to come together with each other, recognize ourselves and re-claim an identity that befits us. On our own, and with the help of the Working Group on Minorities, we have done this. Now we want the UN to clearly acknowledge that the Afrodescendant Minorities are a specific human family, emerging as a result of slavery, destruction of identity and forced mixed breeding. The UN can recognize our existence in the language of its documents and by placing our issues on appropriate agendas for discussion.
Even though the UN is to be applauded for its efforts against racism, and the establishment of a moral argument for reparations in the documents of the World Conference Against Racism, some of the outcomes of this Conference, including the Working Group on People of African Descent, have not yet heard our prayers for official UN recognition of our existence. We know that our rise, our ethnogenesis, is not easily understood, and we thank the Working Group on Minorities for their exceptional loyalty to human rights, and their immediate understanding and response to our first intervention some six years ago. We have come from death to life, and we are grateful to those who have seen and acknowledged this truth.
In conclusion, we agree with Mr. Silis Muhammad that a second Regional Seminar for Afrodescendant Minorities in the Americas Region would be beneficial to us. We ask the Working Group on Minorities to continue to validate our self-chosen identity in its documents, and use any other means available to it, to place the fact of our existence before the UN and the world. We are the Afrodescendant Minorities.
4. Oral Statement to the 59th Session of the Commission on Human Rights
17 March to 25 April, 2003
Agenda Item 15
Speaker: Mr. Silis Muhammad
Greetings Mr. Chairman. The Afrodescendant people, throughout the Slavery Diaspora, are, to this date, struggling for UN recognition of our inherent human rights.
We Afrodescendants have experienced total destruction of our essence: our original identity, language and religion. The U.S. Secretary of State is a classic example of how weapons of mass destruction are being used against us. We now know, weapons of mass destruction can destroy the person physically, or destroy the person mentally. He, to this day, is denied by the country he serves, the use of his own language, culture and religion. These rights, as articulated in Article 27 of the ICCPR, are denied us generation after generation, and this denial is tantamount to weapons of mass destruction of the mind.
Other people of African descent whose ancestors were not subject to slavery, still have their original identity. We do not.
We believe that UN recognition of our inherent human rights will place us on a path of recompense: if ever we are to be equal to our slave masters’ children. We ask you to place our issue on the agenda of the Sub-Commission and in the hands of the Working Group on Minorities.
5. (First) Written Statement to the 59th Session of the Commission on Human Rights
17 March to 25 April, 2003
Agenda Item 14: Specific groups and individuals: (b) Minorities
Four hundred years of the trans-Atlantic slave trade, plantation slavery, and the lingering effects of slavery have caused us, the Afrodescendants, to be left out of the UN system. Other people of African descent living in the Diaspora whose ancestors were not subjected to slavery in the Americas Region, still have their original identity and their bond with others of their family, tribe or nation. We do not. Thus we do not have collective human rights (original language, culture and religion), as articulated in Article 27 of the ICCPR.
Our collective human rights were utterly destroyed due to forced denial of our original identity and forced mixed breeding during slavery. Today we are no longer bonded together by the mother tongue, culture and religion of our ancestors. We, the Afrodescendant minorities in the Americas Region and slavery Diaspora, wish to reconstitute ourselves and reconstruct our lost ties with UN assistance. We seek to be recognized by the UN as one people, and we seek to have our collective human rights restored as the first step in granting us reparations for slavery and its lingering effects.
Afrodescendants is a name that we have chosen for ourselves. We chose this name during the process leading up to the World Conference Against Racism, and chose it again when Afrodescendant leaders from 19 countries met in La Ceiba, Honduras at a seminar organized by the UN Working Group on Minorities, which is a working group of the Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights.
In La Ceiba we began to define Afrodescendants as peoples who have their roots in Africa, who have been forcibly transported to the Americas for slavery, and have experienced the loss of their original identity, language and religion, and as a result suffer discrimination.
The experts of the Working Group on Minorities are aware that we Afrodescendants are experiencing, in reality, the process of ethnogenesis: a word that describes the coming to life again of a people who have been scattered, forcibly cut off, severed; now seemingly assimilated, within the countries of their domicile. This Working Group has been studying and assisting Afrodescendant minorities for six years under the direction of the Sub-Commission. Through the efforts of the Working Group on Minorities we have begun to establish a foundation upon which we Afrodescendants can proceed in our efforts, as recognition, restoration and reconciliation are our primary concerns.
We sincerely appreciate the decisions made by the Commission on Human Rights on our behalf, and we respectfully ask the Commission to consider our recommendation: we recommend that the Commission on Human Rights pass a resolution asking the Sub-Commission to place Afrodescendants on their agenda. We feel that restoration of the human rights of Afrodescendants is best placed in the capable hands of the Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights and the Working Group on Minorities.
(Second) Written Statement to the 59th Session of the Commission on Human Rights
17 March to 25 April, 2003
Agenda Item 6: Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and all Forms of Discrimination
The 58th Session of the Commission on Human Rights in its resolution 2002/68 decided to establish a Working Group on People of African Descent. This Working Group of five experts has conducted two sessions. In its 59th Session the Commission on Human Rights will hear and consider recommendations of this Working Group.
Since 1994 the leader of All For Reparations and Emancipation (AFRE), Mr. Silis Muhammad, has been intervening at the United Nations on behalf of the Afrodescendants in the Americas Region and the slavery Diaspora. Because of his continuing concern with the human rights of Afrodescendants, AFRE has taken a strong interest in the newly formed Working Group on People of African Descent.
In November of 2002 AFRE invited a group of Afrodescendant leaders to attend and participate in the first session of the Working Group on People of African Descent. Then, after much careful deliberation, we decided not to attend the second session. With the greatest respect and appreciation for the decisions of the Commission on Human Rights undertaken on behalf of Afrodescendants, we ask that the Commission consider our position, stated as follows:
AFRE is concerned with restoration of our human rights, their recognition and reparations for Afrodescendants. We Afrodescendants are a people who have our roots in Africa, who have been forcibly transported to the Americas for slavery and who have experienced total destruction of our essence: our original identity, language, and religion, and as a result we suffer discrimination.
Although we appreciate the efforts of the Working Group on People of African Descent, we understand that this Working Group has received its mandate from the Commission on Human Rights. We refer in particular to CHR Resolution 2002/68 (d) which asks the Working Group to elaborate a proposal for a mechanism to monitor and promote all of the human rights of people of African descent. We Afrodescendants do not possess human rights, as articulated in Article 27 of the ICCPR, for the Working Group to monitor or promote. Other people of African descent living in the Diaspora whose ancestors were not subjected to slavery in the Americas Region still have their original identity and their bond with others of their family, tribe or nation. We do not. Thus our human rights cannot be monitored or promoted. They must first be restored.
Afrodescendants are, to this date, no longer bonded together by the mother tongue, culture and religion of our ancestors due to forced denial of our original identity and forced mixed breeding during slavery. Our collective human rights (original language, culture and religion), as articulated in Article 27 of the ICCPR, were utterly destroyed.
In the countries in which Afrodescendants reside, we are in the position of minorities: either minorities numerically or minorities with regard to possession of money and power. In 1997 the Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights placed Afrodescendant issues before the Working Group on Minorities, and since 1998 the Working Group on Minorities has given great expertise, time and consideration to Afrodescendant issues. They have organized three regional seminars and they have brought in a number of scholars on issues such as autonomous and semi-autonomous arrangements.
We believe that the lack of collective human rights, the lack of UN recognition, and reparations must be addressed in order for the very grave injuries suffered to date by Afrodescendants to be resolved at their root.
We do not intend to mortgage the future of the generations of Afrodescendants to come. The leader of AFRE and other Afrodescendant leaders from the U.S. who support our position, feel that reparations must begin with restoration and UN recognition of our collective human rights. We do not agree to reparations only in the form of development money, affirmative action, examination of the records of slavery history, setting up monuments to honor our experience and so on. While these things may be helpful in improving the condition of our people, we Afrodescendants will still be a people without human rights recognition under UN law.
We Afrodescendants seek to be recognized by the UN as one people, however diverse, under our self-chosen name, living as minorities (either numerical or economic/power minorities) throughout the Region of the Americas and the slavery Diaspora. Because our issue is restoration of collective human rights, we believe it is best placed in the hands of the experts of the Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights and the Working Group on Minorities.
