Oral Statement to the Sub-Commission for the Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities
August 1998, 50th Session, Agenda Item 2
Greetings Mr. Chairman, Members of the Sub-Commission, Delegates, Staff members, NGOs and guests: My name is Silis Muhammad. I am a spiritual son of the late Honorable Elijah Muhammad (peace be upon him). Oh! How much he did for us, the so-called African-Americans, and perchance, too, for humanity.
Our issue is the violation of human rights and fundamental freedoms. When we consider Article 27 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which the United States of America has ratified, we conclude that we, the descendants of slaves (the so-called African-Americans), remain a lost people. We are dislodged from the knowledge of our cultural beginning. We remain dislodged from the knowledge of our ancestral tradition of religion. Regarding our language, as slaves we were by force prevented from speaking it, and we are lost still from the use of it.
We, particularly in the United States, live under a system of forced assimilation within the ruling culture.
Thus, to the extent that we have been deprived of our culture, our religion and our language, we do not have inalienable human rights. Is that not a question for the United Nations to resolve, or to take part in the resolution on We are lost still, as a result of the lingering effects of plantation slavery.
We have returned to Geneva to request the assistance of the Sub-Commission in the establishment of a forum to address the question of reclaiming our original human rights, or deciding upon whether we choose to assimilate, for upon this matter we have never enjoyed the freedom of choice.
Having been dispossessed of those inherent rights, possessed by every minority (and protected by the United Nations), we believe that through a forum we can define ourselves, thereby assisting the United Nations in fulfilling its most honorable covenant with the human families and peoples of the earth, as at present, we are left out.
We would ask that our decisions be officially recorded and our prayers for reconstruction heard. Once we have declared our inalienable rights, as only we can, we would pray to the United Nations to recognize those rights sculptured by our own hands. We ask for the forum to be established at the United Nations in New York, under the auspices of the Sub-Commission.
Furthermore, we suggest that if the more acute problems evidenced in the United States can be successfully addressed within a forum, then the problems of all of the Diaspora communities can be explored more efficaciously by the creation of a new Working Group in Geneva.
The General Assembly proclaims that recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world. Here, to the extent that we have been dispossessed of our equal and inalienable rights, and uprooted from any inherent ancestral dignity, we are absent full and complete freedom, justice and equality in the world. Thereby, all of the Americas and potentially Europe, along with ourselves, are absent the very foundation of peace.
Our youth embody the wrath of the transmissible effects of plantation slavery. Their disposition is expressed in their "rap" music. Oftentimes contained in the lyrics are the very words "No justice! No peace!"
My presence here is axiomatic of unfolding history. A potential holocaust is today on the horizon, particularly, in the United States of America. Will the United Nations persuade her to let my people go?
We thank you, members of the Sub-Commission, for your attention and your consideration. May this intervention warrant your actions.
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