ACCRA (PANA)�Africa is demanding $777 trillion (US)
from Western Europe and the United States in reparation for
enslaving Africans while colonizing the continent.
The African World Reparations and Repatriation Truth Commission
said it would set up an international team of lawyers from Africa
and the Diaspora to pursue all legal means to collect the money.
The Accra declaration on reparations and repatriation added
that the money would be demanded from ��all those nations of
Western Europe and the United States and institutions, who
participated and benefited from the slave trade and colonialism.��
It said it would demand justice through monetary compensation
and that it would request, with assistance of the UN and OAU, that
interest be paid on the money.
The document was adopted at the first international conference
of the commission at the W.E.B. Du Bois Memorial Center for
Pan-African Culture.
Signed by Dr. Hamet Maulana and Mrs. Debra Kofie,
co-chairpersons of the commission, it said: "The
socio-economic deterioration of the global African society today
is directly linked to the burdensome African debt crisis, which
has strangled development in Africa. World�wide monitoring and
networking systems should be instituted to ensure that reparations
and repatriation will be achieved by 2004.�� It emphasized
that "there is no African debt�� and demanded that the
current "international debt owed by Africa be unconditionally
cancelled.��
The declaration said all those in the Diaspora, who want to
return and settle in Africa, should be allowed to do so and that
those who enslaved and colonized Africa should provide seaworthy
vessels and aircraft for such repatriation.
