Oral Statement to the 55th Session of the Commission on Human Rights, April 1999
Agenda Item 14(b) Specific Groups and Individuals: Minorities
Madam Chairperson:
Our question is whether the United States of America’s refusal to ratify certain U.N. human rights treaties, which would lead to the restoration of the human rights of her handicapped victims of slavery, amounts to a violation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights envisages the establishment of a common framework of protected human rights for everyone, everywhere. The United States knew, upon the adoption of the Universal Declaration on December 10, 1948, that African-Americans did not have their original mother’s tongue, their inherent religion or their ancestral culture, as a result of the acts of the Anglo-American government. She had kept us perpetually regenerating the human rights of the Anglo-American, against our will.
Our identity as a national minority, a minority or as a people, in possession of our human rights, can not ever be achieved if left to the will of the United States. Why? America’s refusal to ratify the Convention on the Non-applicability of Statutory Limitations to War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity makes it blatantly clear that she shuns responsibility for 400 years of slavery and its legacies. In the process she obstructs the pathway for the restoration of our human rights.
The United States holds herself out as being in full compliance with the spirit of U.N. protected human rights for everyone, everywhere; while holding us in this slavery predicament. Thereby she causes the U.N. to fail in its intent to consider everyone, everywhere; and causes us to remain trapped within the identity of the Anglo-American.
Her omission to act, with knowledge that there was an equitable and fiduciary duty to act, is not within the spirit of the Universal Declaration. We will remain victims continuously, until the United Nations corrects the damages that the U.S. has done to it and to us. Thus the United States has committed fraud against the U.N., ongoing forced assimilation against us, and an additional act calculated to bring about our total destruction.
Thus we conclude, that since its inception, a consistent violation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights has been perpetrated by the United States. We ask, humbly, can this lofty body, the Commission on Human Rights, permit the U.S. to continue these acts?
We ask the U.N. to grant us a forum for the purpose of restoring our human rights, our political being, and our status as a people. Within a forum, while promoting respect for the Universal Declaration, we will be able to rebuild a kind of council or governing body amongst ourselves, absent the social engineering of the U.S. Government. We will develop and present a package of recommendations to benefit race relations in American society, including support for those of us who wish to migrate to a friendly nation.
In closing, 50 years after the signing of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, my people stand before you seeking political resurrection and restoration of our human rights.
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