6 - 12 September 2001
Issue No.550
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Al-Ahram Weekly Online 6 - 12 September 2001 Issue No.550 |
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Healing the wounds
The preparatory African group for the World Conference Against Racism (WCAR) demonstrated great flexibility in its deliberations. Other groups should respond with similar flexibility, so that we can close, once and for all, a painful chapter in the history of mankind that has wrought as much harm to the oppressor as to the oppressed, stripping them both of their humanity.
The African nations have the right to demand acknowledgment of the mistakes and practices of the colonial era. Such acknowledgment will help to free colonial nations from an imbedded guilt complex. This catharsis will permit the onset of a new phase of constructive cooperation -- one that will efface the wounds of the past and their continued effects on the present for those peoples who were subjected to slavery and colonialism. Africans have freed themselves from slavery and colonialism, but the scars are still evident in the many social and economic problems of underdevelopment that plague the African people today.
Now is the time for the former colonisers, who have emerged today as partners in development, to contribute to solving these problems. The New African Initiative (NAI) for development and progress, which Egypt has participated in formulating and which was adopted at last month's Lusaka summit, offers an excellent opportunity for realising this aspiration. This initiative furnishes a viable framework for joint action in solving the problems of debt burden, the scaling down of officially sponsored development allocations and the drop in direct foreign investment. This is achieved through efforts to diversify our productive base, increase and diversify exports and develop our infrastructure, health and educational services.
Demonstrators at WCAR protesting the US and Israeli walk-out (photo: AP)
For its part, the Arab group, in cooperation with the Islamic group and in consultation with the African group, has also demonstrated its flexibility during the preparatory sessions for WCAR. We have foregone ideological debate over Zionism and its association with racism in order to focus on concrete proposals for halting the Israeli onslaught against the Palestinian people. The Palestinian people are victims of an occupation in which violence, hatred and discrimination prevent them from realising their legitimate right to self-determination and independence as a free nation that can coexist in equality and mutual security with its neighbours.
Egypt, which initiated the peace process in the Middle East more than 20 years ago, is the Egypt which today seeks to rescue the region from the abyss to which it is being driven by Israel's belligerent and provocative policies. This is the Egypt that has cherished the values of tolerance and a rejection of xenophobia, discrimination and racism since time immemorial.
* Extracted from speech before the WCAR
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