The following report is from a U.S. Communist party called The Worker's World Party.
"Stop U.S. racism all over the world!"
That was the chant of U.S. participants in the World Conference Against Racism as they marched on the International Convention Center here Sept. 3. They were protesting the Bush admin i stra tion's decision to withdraw from the United Nations-spon sored event. The State Department's representatives had earlier failed to show up at their own press conference for fear of having to face hundreds of outraged U.S. nongovernmental delegates.
Seven thousand delegates from every corner of the earth have come to this port city on the shores of the Indian Ocean. They are here to speak out about racism and oppression. They were welcomed Sept. 1 by a march of 100,000 South African workers, organized by the Congress of South African Trade Unions. They were greeted by 20 heads of state and government, including Fidel Castro, Yasir Arafat and South Africa's own Thabo Mbeki.
Mbeki addressed the conference one day after the death of his father, Goven Mbeki, 91, a founder of the African National Congress who had been imprisoned on Robben Island with Nelson Mandela.
The Bush administration walked out on all of them. Israel followed.
The U. S. State Department said the conference had sinned by "suggesting that Israel practices apartheid." Israeli spokespeople called the huge multinational gathering "part of a Palestinian political offensive." The corporate-owned media echoed that line.
It is clear to any observer here that most WCAR participants do identify with the Palestinian people. That sentiment was also expressed by the South African workers who marched Saturday. Israel materially supported white-minority rule in South Africa, and the similarities between apartheid and Israeli racism are well known here.
But many delegates feel that the prime motive for the U.S. walkout was to avoid facing the issue of reparations for slavery and colonialism. The State Department made it clear before the conference that if the transatlantic slave trade were labeled a "crime against humanity," it would take its bat and ball and go home.
U.S. wealth founded on slave trade
"The great wealth of the United States, as well as that of many of its European allies, is founded on the transatlantic slave trade, slavery and colonialism," said Adjoa Aiyetoro of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom at a press conference denouncing the U.S. withdrawal.
"In addition, the history of the United States is replete with systemic, structural, oppressive and violent forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance. Yet the U.S. government has shown contempt and disrespect for the millions of people of color in the United States, especially Africans and African descendants, whose representatives are here seeking redress for historic and contemporary violations of their fundamental human rights.
"Moreover, the United States government has shown contempt and disrespect for this World Conference against Racism from its inception and contempt and disrespect for the democratic process. It has rationalized its opposition to even a discussion of reparations by unfairly linking it to the demands of the Palestinian people that the national oppression and racial discrimination visited upon them by the state of Israel be condemned.
"We declare the U.S. government's claims to be bogus, manipulative and insulting to the legitimate concerns of millions of the world's people."
A statement by the United U.S. Nongovernmental Organizations (NGOs) condemned "U.S.-Israeli extremism and its blatant but failed attempt to hijack the agenda of this conference."
A five-day forum of nongovernmental organizations preceded the "official" WCAR. That forum passed a resolution calling slavery and colonization crimes against humanity, demanded reparations for the people of Africa and their descendants in the United States, and called for unconditional release and amnesty for political prisoners in the United States.
That resolution was affirmed Sept. 2 at a press conference of the U.S. Congressional Black Caucus.
Voices of the oppressed
Washington sent only a low-level delegation to the WCAR to begin with. The oppressed of the world are here in force. Dalits, so-called "untouchables," from India. Roma people, the so-called "Gypsies," from East Europe. Burakumein, the "low-caste" people of Japan, and Ainu people from Hokkaido Island.
Palestinians from refugee camps in Gaza and the West Bank. Pygmy people from Congo. Native people from the Americas, Australia and New Zealand. Migrant workers from many countries.
African Americans by the hundreds from the United States, Brazil, the Caribbean and everywhere else in the Western Hemisphere. People from all over Africa, including many South African veterans of the struggle against apartheid. People from every nation on earth, the majority of them women.
There is Njeri Shakur of Houston, who came on behalf of the Texas Death Penalty Abolition Movement. "When he was governor of Texas, George Bush executed 152 people," Njeri said. "Some were innocent, like Shaka Sankofa. Some were old, like Betty Lou Beets, a 62-year-old grandmother, a battered woman, whom George Bush executed.
"Some were young, like Kamau Wilkerson. Most were people of color, all were poor. Bush has gone forth from Texas; he's now visiting his violence and contempt on the people of the world. Well, we don't need his representatives here. We are here to join together with people from all over the world who are fighting the same enemy we are."
Ethel LeValle, aboriginal vice president of the Canadian Labor Congress, came to raise the case of Native U.S. political prisoners. "We're calling on the U.S. government to free our brother, Leonard Peltier. It's been proven that he was convicted on false information, and he's done 24 years. I'm also speaking on behalf of Dudley George, an unarmed protester who was shot and killed in 1994 in Ontario, and to this day the Canadian government will not call an inquiry. This is discrimination and racism."
Orinthal Lumumba is here from New York City for the International Concerned Family and Friends of Mumia Abu-Jamal. "They want to execute Mumia, an innocent man, for no other reason than that he spoke out against their brutal system. Another man, Arnold Beverly, confessed to the crime of which he was convicted, and they still want to execute him. But they are the criminals. The Philadelphia police bombed the MOVE house in Philadelphia, killing 11 members of my family, including babies. The Pentagon killed one million Iraqi babies. They have no right to execute anybody."
Sharon Eolis of the International Action Center in the U.S. was angered by the U.S.-Israeli efforts to depict solidarity with Palestine as "anti-Semitism." "I'm Jewish, and I support Palestine. Israel doesn't speak for me. It represents the interests of the Pentagon and U.S. oil companies. Jewish people should look twice when the 'old-boy' bigots who run the Bush administration claim to champion our interests."
The U.S. and several West European governments pressured the UN leadership to stifle such voices. Appointed UN High Commissioner Mary Robinson did her best. "Insider working groups" were set up to edit conference documents. Arbitrary last-minute restrictions were placed on NGO delegates, and UN cops harassed some delegates. But they couldn't stop the conference from turning into an international demonstration against global injustice and inequality.
Castro: 'Use corporate ad dollars to pay reparations'
Twenty heads of state and government spoke, including Fidel Castro, Yasir Arafat and Mbeki.
"'After the purely formal slavery emancipation, African Americans were subjected during 100 more years to the harshest racial discrimination, and many of its features still persist,'' Castro told the conference. ''Cuba speaks of reparations, and supports this idea as an unavoidable moral duty to the victims of racism.'' He called for the $1 trillion spent every year on corporate advertising to be spent instead on reparations to the poor of the world.
Castro also addressed a rally of thousands of African National Congress members in a Durban stadium Sept. 1. Cuba is loved here for the aid it gave to the South African popular struggle against racist apartheid rule.
"We say no to the continuation of the injustices of the past," Zimbabwe Justice Minister Patrick Chinamasa told a WCAR plenary Sept. 3. "The relationship of compensation to liberation is important to us in several respects."
Chinamasa told how British colonists robbed Zimbabweans of their land and livestock, destroyed their homes and subjected them to forced labor, all without compensation. Chinamasa described how his government is trying to redress the colonial legacy by land redistribution inside Zimbabwe. He called on the conference to "come out emphatically in favor of a declaration of reparations."
Chinamasa's words were met with a loud standing ovation from the nongovernmental delegates.
"The world has seen many horrors, whole nations have been exterminated, but no one has suffered so much as the people of Africa," said Libyan Foreign Minister Ali Treiki. "It began when white men herded millions of Africans into slave ships for forced labor in the Western Hemisphere. We must adopt clear resolutions and unambiguous recommendations to compensate African people for colonialism and slavery. We can only be fully free today if we receive such compensation and a clear apology."
Treiki called imposing famine by means of sanctions a form of racism. "Sanctions have killed one million Iraqi children," he said. Speaking of U.S. bombing of Iraq and Sudan and Israeli atrocities in Palestine, he said, "There are no safeguards for human rights in a world where there are oppressor and oppressed, master and slave, rich and poor."
U.S. tries to derail conference
In an interview the morning of Sept. 3, Elombe Brath of the Patrice Lumumba Coalition and the December 12 Movement said that the U.S. and several West European powers had held a meeting at the Durban Hilton to work on the final conference language. No African or Asian countries were invited. He told how the U.S. had granted $5 million in aid to the government of Senegal the very day it reversed its position on reparations. "But most African countries are standing strong and talking about reparations, contrary to the impression given by the media."
That night the U.S. walked out.
Brath is one of the Durban 400, African descendants from the United States who are here to lobby for reparations. The group is united around three principles: declaration of the transatlantic slave trade, slavery and colonialism as crimes against humanity; recognition of the economic base of racism, and reparations for the people of Africa and their descendants in the Americas.
Slavery lives in U.S. prisons
Sam Jordan of the International Concerned Friends and Family of Mumia came here to work for a resolution in support of framed political activist Mumia Abu-Jamal. Lynchings and slavery are not a thing of the past, he said. "The U.S. has 5 percent of the world's population, but 25 percent of the world's prison population," he continued. "Sixty percent are people of color and at least 250,000 are wrongfully convicted because of prosecutorial misconduct.
"Many, like Mumia Abu-Jamal, languish on death row in spite of their presentation of exculpatory evidence, which the racist U.S. courts refuse to admit into the judicial record or order their release. This is part of the heritage of slavery, and the demand for reparations includes relief for the wrongfully convicted."
Johnnie Stevens and other members of the U.S.-based International Action Center came to Durban with the delegation for Mumia. "We don't know whether or not the final declaration of this conference will reflect the sentiments expressed by the majority of people here. But whatever is written on the official stationery, this conference is historic," said Stevens.
"It will do for the issue of reparations what Seattle, Prague and Genoa did for the issue of globalization. Whether you talk about repaying Africans and their descendants for centuries of unpaid labor and suffering, or the right of the Palestinian people to return to their land seized by Israel, you are raising the concept that the rich are rich because the poor are poor and that stolen wealth must be returned.
"That concept does not divide us, it unifies us. And that terrifies Corporate America."
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