13 - 19 September 2001
Issue No.551
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Al-Ahram Weekly Online 13 - 19 September 2001 Issue No.551 |
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The NGO Forum's Declaration on Zionism and slavery
ZIONISM: Appalled by the on-going colonial military Israeli occupation of the Occupied Palestinian Territories (the West Bank including Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip), we declare and call for an immediate end to the Israeli systematic perpetration of racist crimes including war crimes, acts of genocide and ethnic cleansing (as defined in the Statute of the International Criminal Court), including uprooting by military attack, and the imposition of any and all restrictions and measures on the population to make life so difficult that the only option is to leave the area, and state terrorism against the Palestinian people, recognising that all of these methods are designed to ensure the continuation of an exclusively Jewish state with a Jewish majority and the expansion of its borders to gain more land, driving out the indigenous Palestinian population.We declare that this alien domination and subjugation with the denial of territorial integrity amounts to colonialism, which denies the fundamental rights of self-determination, independence and freedom of Palestinians. Condemn this process of settler colonialism through the on-going collective punishments, expropriation and destruction of Palestinian lands, homes, property, agricultural land and crops; the establishment of illegal Israeli settlements, the mass transfer of Israeli Jewish populations to the illegally expropriated Palestinian land and the development of a permanent and illegal Israeli infrastructure, including by-pass roads.
We declare Israel as a racist, apartheid state in which Israels brand of apartheid as a crime against humanity has been characterised by separation and segregation, dispossession, restricted land access, denationalisation, "bantustanization" and inhumane acts.
Appalled by the inhumane acts perpetrated in the maintenance of this new form of apartheid regime through the Israeli state war on civilians including military attacks, torture, arbitrary arrests and detention, the imposition of severe restrictions on movement (curfews, imprisonment and besiegement of towns and villages), and systematic collective punishment, including economic strangulation and deliberate impoverishment, denial of the right to food and water, the right to an adequate standard of living, the right to housing, the right to education and the right to work.
We recognise that targeted victims of Israel«s brand of apartheid and ethnic cleansing methods have been in particular children, women and refugees and condemn the disproportionate numbers of children and women killed and injured in military shooting and bombing attacks. Recognise the right of return of refugees and internally displaced people to their homes of origin, restitution of properties, and compensation for damages, losses and other crimes committed against them, as guaranteed in international law.
Appalled by the discrimination against the Palestinians inside Israel which include: The imposition of discriminatory laws, including the discriminatory laws of return and citizenship, which emphasise the ethnicity of the Israeli state as a Jewish state; the granting of benefits or privileges solely to the Jewish Israeli citizens; the imposition of restrictions on the civil and political rights of Palestinians because of their national belonging or because they do not belong to the majority ethnic group; The negation of the right of Palestinians to equal access to resources of the State and civil equality, including affirmative action policies, which recognize the historical discrimination against Palestinians inside
SLAVERY: Africans and African Descendants share a common history shaped by the slave trade, slavery, conquest, colonisation and apartheid, all of which constitute crimes against humanity, and a common experience of anti-Black racism. We acknowledge that people of African descent live all over the world, although in many instances they have been renamed, suppressed and marginalized. On every continent African and African Descendants continue to suffer from racism...
We affirm that the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade and the enslavement of Africans and African Descendants was a crime against humanity and a unique tragedy in the history of humanity, and that its roots and bases were economic, institutional, systemic and transnational in dimension...
We recognise that the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade and slavery forced the brutal removal and the largest forced migration in history (over one hundred million), caused the death of millions of Africans, destroyed African civilizations, impoverished African economies and formed the basis for Africa's under- development and marginalisation which continues to this date...
We recognise also that part of the Trans-Saharan Slave Trade continues unabated to this day, despite international agreements that condemn slavery, and that the trafficking of African men, women and children for forced labour and enslavement is still ongoing in Cameroon, Mauritania, Niger and Sudan...
Post-slavery African Descendants have endured official and de facto segregative policies of governments, affecting political, economic, educational, cultural and social rights, causing and legitimising theft of land and racial violence. African Descendants have suffered the loss of their culture, identities, and languages and have been victimised by the perpetuation of negative stereotypes, psychological damage, racial discrimination, economic disadvantage and the criminalisation of their peoples. These conditions have uniquely impacted African and African Descendant women whose bodies, familial roles and reproductive ability have been used as a tool of oppression and exploited for the production of economic wealth... African and African Descendant women [are maintained] at the bottom of the social, economic, cultural and political system...
We recognise that the development of Africa has been greatly impeded by the global imbalances in power created by the slave trade, slavery and colonialism as crimes against humanity... and is maintained and extended particularly by neo-colonial economic policies and practices including the pillage =of human and material resources of Africa and the draining of its financial resources by foreign debt services. The legacy of these abhorrent crimes is manifested in wars, displacements and the precarious socio-economic situation in which Africans find themselves.
REPARATIONS: Slave-holder nations, colonisers and occupying countries have unjustly enriched themselves at the expense of those people that they enslaved and colonised and whose land they have occupied. As these nations largely owe their political, economic and social domination to the exploitation of Africa, Africans and Africans in the Diaspora they should recognize their obligation to provide these victims just and equitable reparations...
There is an unbroken chain from the slave trade, slavery, colonialism, foreign occupation, apartheid, racial discrimination and the contemporary forms of structural racism that maintain barriers to the full and equal participation of the victims of racism and discrimination in all spheres of public life...
The enslavement of Indigenous Peoples, the appropriation of their lands and exploitation of their resources must be acknowledged and repaired and the historic precedents for reparations to the victims of gross violations of human rights should be applied to them...
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