By Lansana  Dabo

‘Reparations must include fundamental change in the field of Education. People must be afforded the opportunity to learn about the injustices of the past and present.’

The demand for Reparations is growing rapidly across the world. Today, the Afro-Brazilian and the Indigenous are implementing a new kind of policy to demand Reparations from the government. Everybody knows very well that the sudden discovery of the new world by the Europeans, Indigenous annihilation, the white people’s bad adaptation to the tropical climate and also the intervention of the Catholic Church that have initiated with the unreasonable Negroes trade by the Europeans. Then, the decision of using the African free labor force has been taken in a unilateral manner by the Europeans without any settlement from the African point-of-view.

Before history, that decision has come out from a spiritually lost man from the Catholic Church, called Bartholomeo Las Casas (1474 -1566). He has anticipated the Indigenous´ inability for agriculture, and has suggested our ancestral massive deportation for mines exploration, sugar cane growing and cotton in an extremely cruel new world, reason of our natural robustness. For him, Negroes have been four times more profitable than the Indigenous. Portuguese and Spanish have already landed in Africa, around 50 years well ahead on Christopher Columbus’s arrival in America in 1492, armed with their guns, cannons, and cross for kidnapping vigorously people in the African seashore to be resold in Europe.

Mr. Yedo Ferreira, the president of the New Pan-Africanist Movement for Reparations explained that the Conference Against Racism—WCAR, held in , September 2001, was an important moment in the development of the call for Reparations. During this Conference, many other organizations, together with the International Counterparts, developed an approach to reparations that was inclusive of the damage caused by slavery, Colonialism and Neo-colonialism.

The pointed out that current Neo Durban August -liberal policies are causing ongoing damage and that those guilty of imposing these policies should also be subject to the demand for reparations, and also took on the call for a targeted and all-inclusive socio-economic and historical reparations in relation to the debt crisis faced by the African continent and its Diaspora.

Despite intensifying calls for the cancellation of this debt, the G8 governments and the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) have remained steadfast in their intention of keeping the countries of Africa and the South in debt bondage.

They deliberately use debt as a means of maintaining control over these countries and insist that they implement neo-liberal structural adjustment policies. In the world, debt is used as an instrument of domination. Participants at the opening day of the Union for the New Pan-Africanist spoke to the racist dimension of debt. Every day, an estimated millions of children die as a consequence of debt and structural adjustment policies in the South while the North is trapped in over-consumption. A catastrophe of such proportions would never be tolerated in Europe or North America, but the lives of people in Africa and its Diaspora are clearly considered to be less important than the “white peoples with blues.” The insistence in maintaining countries in debt in the face of such devastating consequences constitutes nothing less than a gross crime against humanity. It is on this basis that the Union for a New Pan-Africanist, the Brazilian Indigenous Convention in keeping with other important movements around the world, are going beyond the call to the authorities, World Bank and IMF to cancel the debt. It identified the need to organise to repudiate, or stop paying, the debt and, furthermore, to demand Reparations for the damage caused by slavery and colonialism. The debate around the nature of Reparations has already developed well beyond an initial focus on monetary payment. The financial aspect remains important. Victims of repressive brutality, the indigenous have lost their land and those that have become ill as a result of hazardous materials exposed by other activity are entitled to Reparations.

The communities in which they (the indigenous) live must be able to care for the needs of these victims. This requires the necessary finances to ensure, for example, that there are clinics with appropriate staff and medicines and transport facilities that enable access to these clinics.

Places that have been devastated by structural adjustment must receive the resources to rebuild the capacity to meet the essential social needs of their descendants. The New Pan-Africanist Union and the Indigenous Convention observed that Reparations entails far more than this. People across the country have been so ravaged by generations of oppression to the point where millions are without land, food, water, shelter and jobs.

They are increasingly suffering the consequences of ill health, but also many other diseases of poverty. In this context, all too many have lost a sense of confidence around their Human Rights. The demand for Reparations provides the opportunity for people to regain that confidence and feel inspired to fight for the Rights that have been denied them for so long.

Reparations is also about uncovering the truth as regards the perpetrators of violence and exposing the root causes of people’s suffering. It includes a call for those responsible for damage to acknowledge and apologise for their role and take the necessary steps to address the damage done. It entails taking action against those who refuse to acknowledge their culpability.

The call for Reparations is also part of a broader process of fundamental change. Pressure needs to be ratcheted up to the point where a halt is put to the ongoing damage caused by the slave masters. In order for Reparations to result in lasting change, it must be part of a process towards dismantling the neo-liberal system and replacing it with one in which the lives of the poor take priority over the whims and excesses of the rich.

The rapid development of the debate around Reparations is a healthy sign that reflects a growing confidence on the continent in tackling the unjust neo-liberal paradigm that has been thrust upon the Indigenous and the Black people around the world. The task now is to ensure the development of strong organisations among people who are victims of slavery, communities that have been forcibly removed from sites earmarked for other illegal activities.

Their needs to be interaction across these organisations towards a strong and united call for Reparations and this must include linking with victims and allies in both the South and the North.

This new movement campaign and, indeed, the Indigenous Convention, will be measured by the degree to which they are successful in deepening the call for Reparations into a strong grassroots movement Reparations by any means necessary the participants talked about Reparations outside of the context of globalisation and neo-liberalism but the reverse is also true.

“We can’t talk about globalisation and neo-liberalism without addressing the issue of exclusion and race. The very system of neo-liberalism results in exclusion of large majorities across the world and any attempt to fight neo-liberalism must include Reparations for this injustice,” said Yedo Ferreira.