Sixth session of the Working Group on Minorities
Agenda Item 3(b) Examining possible solutions to problems involving minorities
Statement by Harriett AbuBakr
Greetings Mr. Chairman and members of the Working Group on Minorities,
I am grateful for the opportunity to speak a second time before the Working Group on Minorities. My name is Harriett AbuBakr. I am a descendant of slaves in the United States of America. I speak as an Attorney, and founding member of the National Commission for Reparations. My concern is with Agenda item 3 (b) examining possible solutions to problems involving minorities, and also Agenda item 3 (c) further measures for the protection of persons belonging to minorities which could act as examples or be replicated.
Article 1.1 of the Declaration on the Rights of Minorities says that, "States shall protect the existence and the national or ethnic, cultural, religious and linguistic identity of minorities within their respective territories and shall encourage conditions for the promotion of that identity."
Professor Edie in his commentary on the Declaration tells us that the first requirement of Article 1.1 is to protect the right to existence in its physical sense and the fourth requirement is to protect the identity. We African-Americans, from the 400-year experience of plantation slavery, know that physical existence has little value without identity. Therefore we are grateful that the Declaration on the Rights of Minorities recognizes the importance of identity.
Our experience is an example for the civilized world of a holocaust wherein identity is exterminated. Within our experience is the example of the means that a State can use to forcibly, intentionally and permanently sever a people from their identity. Within our experience is the example of how a people in such a deprived condition by their very nature, and against terrible opposition, will seek without rest to find their lost identity. Within our experience is the example of how a State systematically, for the benefit of the majority, can obstruct the attempts of a people to identify themselves. Within our experience is the example of what extraordinary damage can be sustained when a people’s identity is lost and the identity of the majority is forced upon them.
Because of our experience with plantation slavery, we know how human dignity is attached to identity. We are a people, living within the United States as a minority. Without identity we have no legal/political status or recognition internationally, no respect from the majority population domestically, and no dignity among our fellow human beings.
We believe we can assist the Working Group on Minorities in defining the crime of destruction of identity and understanding its consequences upon civilization as a whole. Silis Muhammad refers to our current condition as civil death. We want to be restored from civil death so that we might live again in dignity, with respect. We believe we can help the Working Group on Minorities to develop measures that might serve as a solution for us and as an example for the civilized world.
African-Americans have been seeking an identity as a people since emancipation from slavery more than 100 years ago. Since that time the majority population has called us niggers, negroes, colored, Black and African-American. They have forced upon us the Christian religion, the English language and the Anglo-American culture. Simultaneously, numbers of our people have searched far and wide trying to find an identity that would better fit our nature. Among the more prominent identities that we have claimed are Nubian Islamic Hebrews, Kemetic People, Hebrew Israelites, Moors, Israelite Lawkeepers, Kushites and Asiatic Blackmen and women. Politically our leaders have given us the United Negro Improvement Association, Simbionese Liberation Army, Pan African Nationalists, Black United Front, Afrikan People’s Socialist Party, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, Uhuru Movement, Black Panther Party for Self Defense, Republic of New Afrika, Black Radical Congress, New Black Panther Party and so on. Our leaders have borrowed from the cultures of other identities as well as inventing the Afrocentric and Rastafarian cultures. I am among those who have chosen the family of Shabazz, the religion of Islam and the Government and culture of the Lost Found Nation of Islam.
As you can see, we are fractured into many pieces as a people. We have searched and cried for collective identity while the U.S. Government has systematically sought to keep any of our leaders from gaining too much influence. The U.S. Government has defamed the best of our leaders and placed them in jail. While defaming or destroying our leaders, the U.S. Government has put forth leaders of its own choice through use of the media. The U.S. Government held us captive in plantation slavery, and it captures us still through manipulation, both of our will and of those who would help us around the world. Ours is a situation where conflict is certain if we are unable to bring an end to our captivity.
For some time Silis Muhammad has prayed that a forum for African-Americans be established at UN Headquarters. He has said that within a UN protected forum African-Americans can establish a council or governing body amongst themselves, and within this council they can begin the process of reclaiming or choosing our legal/political being and status as a people. Surely the Working Group on Minorities can now see the reason behind Mr. Muhammad’s prayer.
Silis Muhammad has also prayed that the UN place a reparation sanction upon the United States. The demand for reparation is becoming widespread among African-Americans. UN involvement and protection is essential to us as we become ever more vulnerable to U.S. Government manipulation of our will.
I am here to ask the Working Group on Minorities to recognize us as a people and a minority in need of special assistance. We have suffered from the loss of that very thing the Declaration on the Rights of Minorities seeks to protect: identity. If our condition is not of concern to the UN, then how can the minorities and peoples of the earth find their protection in law that the UN creates? I am here to join Silis Muhammad in his prayer for the appointment of an expert to engage in dialogue with the United States on the subject of reparations. The National Commission for Reparations asks the Working Group on Minorities to consider his prayer and make a favorable recommendation to the Sub-Commission on behalf of so-called African-Americans.
Thank you Mr. Chairman.
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