Public Statement in Connection with BBC2 Documentary

on Afrikan Enslavers
Statement from the Europe-Wide NGO Consultative Council on
Afrikan Reparations (ENGOCCAR) on the recently published Public
Statement by Civil Society Organizations in Europe and the United
States Representing People of African Descent on Britains
Historical Involvement in the Transatlantic Traffic of Enslaved
Africans and Its Far Reaching Impacts*
This is a contribution from the European NGO Consultative Council on
Afrikan Reparations (ENGOCCAR) to the 14th July 2015 statement entitled
Public Statement by Civil Society Organizations in Europe and the United
States Representing People of African Descent on Britains Historical
Involvement in the Transatlantic Traffic of Enslaved Africans and Its Far
Reaching Impacts. For reasons explained below we are putting out this
version in response to the invitation to contribute to the first draft,
together with our colleagues of the PARCOE (Pan-Afrikan Reparations
Coalition in Europe) based in London, United Kingdom (UK), and co-sign
it, alongside others.
The original draft came from Dr Michael McEachrane a member of the
European Reparations Commission (ERC) and the European Network of
People of African Descent (ENPAD).
As the email thread after this document shows, ENGOCCAR was proposed
by PARCOE to be fully involved in working on and co-signing the
statement. This proposal, which sought to make the drafting of the
statement and its consultative deliberations part of a truly democratizing
inclusive process involving all Afrikan Heritage Community Activists
working from diverse perspectives in Europe for Reparations, seems to
have been ignored. We have therefore got the unanimous approval of all
the member organisations of the ENGOCCAR to release our version of the
statement as it is below.
We deem this step all the more critically necessary, as the version put out
by the European Reparations Commission leaves out some highly
important contributions from PARCOE, endorsed by ENGOCCAR, such as
the inclusion of reference to the Abuja Declaration. ENGOCCAR shares the
outrage of PARCOE and its other member organisations at the deliberate
unjustified and seemingly Afriphobic decision to falsify the historical
1

trajectory of Afrikan heritage communities participation in reparatory

justice struggle in and beyond Britain by excluding the contributions that
Bernie Grant and others made the process leading to and after the First
Pan-African conference ON Reparations for Enslavement, Colonisation and
Neocolonisation which took place in Abuja, Nigeria in 1993.
We are of the strong conviction that this very important contribution by
and living legacy of the late Bernie Grant, MP and others of the Africa
Reparations Movement (ARM-UK) should not be excluded from anything
being done concerning Afrikan reparatory justice matters today anywhere
in the world. We hold dear our traditional Afrikan reverence for our
ancestors and their freedom-fighting work and hold dear Bernie Grant as
one of such ancestral giants upon whose shoulders we of the PARCOE and
ENGOCCAR stand in continuing todays battles.
Not even the insistence of Dr Nathaniel Adam Tobias Coleman upon the
inclusion of the PARCOE proposed reference to the Abuja Declaration
persuaded the authors of the final version of the 14th July 2015 statement
to do so.
[The navy blue text was provided by our PARCOE colleagues in the
correspondence regarding contributions to the drafting of the public
statement.]
DearMichael&All
ThankyouforincludingmyselfandKofiMawuliKluinthisexchange.
Whilstwelcomingtheinitiativetakentoissuethisdraftstatement,wehavesomeserious
reservationsabouttheprocessofdraftingthisstatementandalsosomeofitscontent.
Wewishthattheideahadbeensuggestedtopotentialsignatorieswithaninvitationto
submitdraftstatementsoftheirownthatcouldbeharmonisedintoaunifieddocumentfor
pubicrelease,ofcoursewithstricttimetablesforresponses.Wehighlyrecommendthatthis
approachistakenfromnowonwardsindealingwithsimilarsituations.
Theseriousreservationswehaveaboutsomeofthecontentofthedraftstatementurgeus
tomakethefollowingrecommendationsforamendmentinorderforourleadershipto
collectivelyapprovethelistingofPARCOEamonsgstitssignatories.
Firstly,weproposethatallreferencestotheSlaveTradefromofficialdocumentse.g.the
DDPAofWCARshouldbeputintoquotationmarks
FollowingthepositionlongexpressedbyDrWalterRodney,weofPARCOErefuseto
describetheMaangamizi(AfricanHolocaust)asaSlaveTradeandratheruseoftheterm
theTranstlanticTrafficinEnslavedAfrikans(TTEA).Thismaycomeinforinstanceinthe
penultimateparagraphofthedraftstatement.
2

ThereisnoreasonfortheUnitedKingdomtobelessdiligentinrecognizing,researching,
remembering,teaching,keepingalivethememoryofandotherwiserespectingitsdirect
involvementinthetransatlanticslavetradeTranstlanticTrafficinEnslavedAfrikans(TTEA)
anditsfarreachingconsequences.

WeagreewiththeanalysisofDrMaulanaKarenga,inhispapertitled"TheEthicsof
Reparations:EngagingtheHolocaustofEnslavement,"presentedattheTheNational
CoalitionofBlacksforReparationsinAmerica(N'COBRA)Convention,BatonRouge,LA,
2001June2223onthepointsthat:
1.Thisstruggleforreparations,likeallourstruggles,beginswiththeneedforaclear
conceptionofwhatwewant,howwedefinetheissueandexplainittotheworldandwhatis
tobedonetoachieveit.
2.Thelogicoftheenslavedandcolonisedcannotbethelogicoftheenslaverandcoloniser
thereforepartofourtaskmustbetoreframewhathasbecomeinsomecirclesaccepted
discourseandinitiateanew(inter)nationaldialogue...ontheMaangamzi.
3.AccordinglyKarengastates:itisimportanttostresstheroleofintentionalityinthe
Holocaust.Again,discussionoftheHolocaustasacommercialprojectoftenleadstoan
understandingofthemassiveviolenceandmassmurderasintendedcollateraldamage.
Thus,toframeitrightfullyasamoralissueratherthanacommercialone,wemustuse
termsofdiscoursewhichspeaknotonlytothehumancosts,buttotheelementof
intentionality.ItisinthisregardthatUsmaintainsthatmaangamizi,theSwahilitermfor
Holocaust,ismoreappropriatethanitsalternativecategorymaafa.Formaafawhichmeans
calamity,accident,illluck,disaster,ordamagedoesnotindicateintentionality.Itcouldbea
naturaldisasteroradeadlyhighwayaccident.Butmaagamiziisderivedfromtheverb
angamizawhichmeanstocausedestruction,toutterlydestroyandthuscarrieswithita
senseofitnentionality.The"a"prefixsuggestsanamplifieddestructionandthusspeaksto
themassivenatureoftheHolocaust.http://www.usorganization.org/position/erehe.html

The rest of the text is highlighted in red in the statement below and the
email concludes:

WearesharingthiswithourcolleaguesDrBarrylBiekman(Netherlands),KoroSallah
(Sweden)andAbuyNfbea(Spain),togetherwithwhomwearebuildingtheEuropeWide
NGOConsultativeCouncilforAfrikanReparations(ENGOCCAR),forthemalsotobeaware
andincluded;
PARCOEiswillingtoadditselftothesignatoriesprovidedthattheseproposedamendments
aretakenonboard.
Wearethereforeinterestedtohearyourthoughtsontheseproposedamendments.

InService
EstherStanfordXosei&KofiMawuliKlu
Please now read the full statement as we have agreed to release it
officially as an ENGOCCAR document as follows:
The suggested edits PARCOE made supported by us as member
organisations in ENGOCCAR are in red:
In an article in the Guardian this past Sunday (7/12), historian and filmmaker, David Olusoga, writes that The disadvantage and discrimination
that disfigures the lives and limits the life chances of so many AfricanAmericans is the bitter legacy of the slave system and the racism that
underwrote and outlasted it. Britain, by contrast, has been far more
successful at covering up its slave-owning and slave-trading past.
The occasion for the article is the documentary, Britains Forgotten Slave
Owners: Profit and Loss, the first of the two episodes of which will be
presented by David Olusoga and broadcast on BBC2 on Wednesday 15
July.
In the same article in the Guardian Olusoga writes that slavery has
largely been airbrushed out of British history; that many of us today
have a more vivid image of American slavery than we have of life as it
was for British-owned slaves on the plantations of the Caribbean; and
that the history of British slavery has been buried.
It is high-time for this to change. The 2001 UN World Conference Against
Racism (WCAR) held in Durban, South Africa, acknowledged that the
transatlantic slave trade is a crime against humanity, among the major
sources of racism in the world today, and Africans and people of African
descent were its victims and continue to be victims of its consequences.
Britains transatlantic enslavement and trafficking of Africans spanned
hundreds of years, involved millions of victims, many of whom died as a
direct result of trafficking and enslavement. It spurred the British
economy and enriched many of its families, but at a tremendous human
cost, on several continents. The full abolition of British slavery on 1
August 1838 was followed by the racial apartheid of colonial law and a
racialized social hierarchy that is still with the descendants of the original
victims in the United Kingdom as in the United States and the
Caribbean.
As a signatory to the International Convention on the Elimination of All
Forms of Racial Discrimination, Britain needs to act urgently in its
domestic and external policies to settle its outstanding obligations to
those it continues to wound and reopen the scars of centuries of
4

still ongoing Global Apartheid Racism. We emphasize the fact that

such obligations are owed to all communities of African people
throughout the world, including those officially called Africans as
well as those referred to as people of African descent. It can begin
this year, which marks the beginning of the UN International Decade for
People of African Descent 2015-2024.
As a signatory to the International Convention on the Elimination of All
Forms of Racial Discrimination, Britain needs to act urgently to settle its
outstanding obligation to those scarred by centuries of racial apartheid. It
can begin this year, which marks the beginning of the UN International
Decade for People of African Descent 2015-2024.
The Programme of activities for the implementation of the International
Decade for People of African Descent (UN resolution A/RES/69/16) which was adopted by the General Assembly in November 2015
acknowledges and profoundly regrets the untold suffering and evils
inflicted on millions of men, women and children as a result of the
transatlantic slave trade and colonialism. It calls upon those States that
have not yet expressed remorse or presented apologies to find some way
to contribute to the restoration of the dignity of its victims and invites
the international community and its members to honour the memory of
the victims of these tragedies with a view to closing those dark chapters
in history and as a means of reconciliation and healing. Moreover, it calls
upon all States concerned to take appropriate and effective measures to
halt and reverse the lasting consequences of those practices, bearing in
mind their moral obligations.
The United Kingdom has an annual National Holocaust Memorial Day (27
January). In 1991 the United Kingdom was the first European country to
make teaching about the Holocaust a mandatory part of the history
curriculum in state secondary schools. In 2009 it was the first country to
undertake extensive national research into Holocaust teaching and
learning. Recently, the Prime Ministers Holocaust Commission, which
issued a report this year and was tasked with establishing what more
Britain must do to ensure that the memory of the Holocaust is preserved
and that the lessons it teaches are never forgotten.
There is no reason for the United Kingdom to be less diligent in
recognizing, researching, remembering, teaching, keeping alive the
memory of, and otherwise respecting its direct involvement in, the
Transtlantic Traffic in Enslaved Afrikans (TTEA) and its far reaching
consequences.
Considering all this, we, the undersigned representatives of the CARICOM
Reparations Commission (CRC), the European Reparations Commission
(ERC), the National African American Reparations Commission (NAARC),
5

the Pan-African Reparations Coalition in Europe (PARCOE), the Global

Afrikan Congress in the UK (GACuk) and the Europe-wide NGO
Consultative Council for Afrikan Reparations (ENGOCCAR), urge the
British Government and its Prime Minister, David Cameron, to do the
following:
1. Take full responsibility concerning the Maangamizi (The
African Holocaust) for all its obligations to Africans and people of
African descent as well as to all other victims of historical tragedies
as mandated by the United Nations;
2. Respond positively to all the demands for commissions of
inquiry on the historical and contemporary impact of the TTEA and
its legacies upon Africans and people of African descent in and
beyond Britain and Europe, including their social, cultural and
economic consequences; such an enquiry should include
examination of pertinent issues like the continuing UK/EU
imposition of debt bondage and austerity upon Africans and
people of African descent in the UK, Africa, the Caribbean and
other parts of the Americas and indeed the world;
3. Establish 1st August as a national holiday for Maangamizi
commemoration which gives recognition to the annual 1st August
African Heritage Communities' March for Reparations; give greater
recognition to 23rd August as the UN International Day for
Remembrance of Resistance to the Transatlantic Traffic in
Enslaved Africans and its Abolition; enable Africans, people of
African descent and all others who choose to commemorate it as a
holiday to do so; and respect the initiatives of those African
Heritage Community organisations that commemorate the entire
month of August as Maangamizi Awareness Month;
4. Accept the CARICOM Ten-Point Plan as well as the Abuja
Declaration of the First Pan-African Conference on Reparations For
African Enslavement, Colonisation And Neo-Colonisation,
endorsed by the Organisation of African Unity (OAU), now the
African Union (AU), as starting points for dialogue between
representatives of state and civil society bodies of Africa, the
Caribbean and other countries of the Americas as well as Britain
and other European countries concerned;
5. Take immediate steps to engage in conversations with the
undersigned as to how best to concretely progress action on the
contents of this statement and its related.

This is the first draft of the statement as we were originally sent it

by Dr Michael McEachrane, member of the European Reparations
Commission (ERC) and the European Network of People of African
Descent (ENPAD)

In an article in the Guardian this past Sunday (7/12) historian and film-maker
David Olusoga writes that, The disadvantage and discrimination that disfigures
the lives and limits the life chances of so many African-Americans is the bitter
legacy of the slave system and the racism that underwrote and outlasted it.
Britain, by contrast, has been far more successful at covering up its slaveowning and slave-trading past.
The occasion for the article is the documentary, Britains Forgotten Slave
Owners: Profit and Loss, the first of the two episodes of which will be
presented by David Olusoga and broadcast on BBC2 on Wednesday 15 July.
In the same article in the Guardian Olusoga writes that slavery has largely been
airbrushed out of British history; that many of us today have a more vivid
image of American slavery than we have of life as it was for British-owned
slaves on the plantations of the Caribbean and that the history of British
slavery has been buried.
It is high-time for this to change. The 2001 UN World Conference Against
Racism (WCAR) held in Durban, South Africa, acknowledged that the
transatlantic slave trade is a crime against humanity, among the major sources
of racism in the world today, and Africans and people of African descent were
its victims and continue to be victims of its consequences.
Britains transatlantic enslavement and trafficking of Africans spanned
hundreds of years, involved millions of victims, many of whom died as a direct
result of trafficking and enslavement. It spurred the British economy and
enriched many of its families, but at a tremendous human cost, on several
continents. The full abolition of British slavery on 1 August 1838 was followed
by the racial apartheid of colonial law and a racialized social hierarchy that is
still with the descendants of the original victims in the United Kingdom as in
the United States and the Caribbean.
As a signatory to the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms
of Racial Discrimination, Britain needs to act urgently to settle its outstanding
obligation to those scarred by centuries of racial apartheid. It can begin this
7

year, which marks the beginning of the UN International Decade for People of
African Descent 2015-2024.
The Programme of activities for the implementation of the International
Decade for People of African Descent (UN resolution A/RES/69/16) - which
was adopted by the General Assembly in November 2015 acknowledges and
profoundly regrets the untold suffering and evils inflicted on millions of men,
women and children as a result of the transatlantic slave trade and colonialism.
It calls upon those States that have not yet expressed remorse or presented
apologies to find some way to contribute to the restoration of the dignity of its
victims and invites the international community and its members to honour
the memory of the victims of these tragedies with a view to closing those dark
chapters in history and as a means of reconciliation and healing. Moreover, it
calls upon all States concerned to take appropriate and effective measures to
halt and reverse the lasting consequences of those practices, bearing in mind
their moral obligations.
The United Kingdom has an annual National Holocaust Memorial Day (27
January). In 1991 the United Kingdom was the first European country to make
teaching about the Holocaust a mandatory part of the history curriculum in state
secondary schools. In 2009 it was the first country to undertake extensive
national research into Holocaust teaching and learning. Recently, the Prime
Ministers Holocaust Commission, which issued a report this year and was
tasked with establishing what more Britain must do to ensure that the memory
of the Holocaust is preserved and that the lessons it teaches are never forgotten.
There is no reason for the United Kingdom to be less diligent in recognizing,
researching, remembering, teaching, keeping alive the memory of and otherwise
respecting its direct involvement in the transatlantic slave trade and its far
reaching consequences.
Considering all this, we, the undersigned representatives of the CARICOM
Reparations Commission (CRC), the European Reparations Commission
(ERC), the National African American Reparations Commission (NAARC), the
Pan-African Reparations Coalition in Europe (PARCOE) and the Global
Afrikan Congress in the UK (GACuk), urge the British Government and its
Prime Minister, David Cameron, to do the following:
8

1. Assume its moral obligation to the victims of historical tragedies

as mandated by the United Nations;
2. Establish a National Commission of Inquiry into the history of
the British involvement in the transatlantic slave trade and its
social, cultural and economic consequences;
3. Establish 1st August each year as a National Memorial Day in
the UK for the Enslavement of Africans and its Abolition; a day
of national recognition and awareness raising and a day on which
the descendants of British slavery and the transatlantic slave
trade can mourn, intentionally remember and learn about the
tragedies of the past.
4. Issue a formal apology on the behalf of the United Kingdom to
the victims of the transatlantic slave trade and their descendants.
5. Take immediate steps to engage in conversations with the
undersigned, and especially the Caribbean Community
(CARICOM), in an effort to begin the process of repair and
reconciliation through a reparatory justice programme.
Signatories 1. ENGOCCAR including:
o PARCOE, Pan-Afrikan Reparations Coalition in Europe (UK)
o Global Coalition International Decade for People of African
descent, section, Europe/ Netherlands
o African and African Descendant Network, Netherlands
o PANAFSTRAG International (Pan African, Strategic and Policy
Group)
o Pan-African Diaspora Union (PADU), Section in the
Netherlands
o National Platform of the Dutch Slavery Past (LPS),
Netherlands
o Pan-Afrikan Network in Europe (PANE), Sweden
o Panafricanos, Spain
o Mouvement International pour les Rparations (MIR), France,
Guadeloupe, Guyane, Martinique
o Coalition pour la Reconnaissance des Crimes Contre
lHumanit de Lesclavage et de la Colonisation (CRCH),
Europe
2. Global Afrikan Peoples Parliament (GAPP), UK
Dated:15th July 2015

For further info email: engoccar@gmail.com

9