Latest update March 29th, 2024 12:59 AM
Oct 13, 2014 News
As the African Cultural and Development Association (ACDA), along with other local African groups observe African Holocaust Day 2014, the body has reaffirmed its position that a local African Lands Commission is necessary in Guyana in recognition of the struggles once faced by those enslaved Africans in Guyana who were later able to purchase land from colonial superiors.
The body has recognised that while African slaves virtually built early Guyana with their bare hands, this group has never received economic or cultural assistance.
ACDA said that it applauds the Government’s support and setting up of the Guyana Reparations Committee, which will be making Guyana’s case to Europe for compensation following centuries of enslavement, economic and cultural deprivation.
“However, ACDA has continually appealed for the setting up of a Land Commission to address the concerns of African Guyanese land allocations. This appeal has fallen on deaf ears as African Guyanese ancestral lands are being taken over and lands being allocated to others without first remedying the gross injustice done to African Guyanese.”
ACDA contends that, “All groups in Guyana, except Descendants of Africans, have been significantly helped economically and culturally.”
At Emancipation, they say, Africans were given nothing although they worked free and built Guyana from 1621 to 1838, a period of 217 years in the worst slavery conditions in the Caribbean before Portuguese, Indians and Chinese indentured servants were brought to Guyana.
The organisation noted that the sum of 4.21 million pounds (sterling) was paid to 2,761 British slave owners in Guyana for 83,455 enslaved Africans set free. “This is today equivalent to over 42 billion pounds (sterling).”
ACDA said that the British slave owners succeeded at Emancipation by holding on to their vast West Indian enterprises thereby leaving freed Africans “landless, and as second class citizens in a country they had built for free”.
The British slave-owners were also able to keep Africans in Guyana colonized for another 130 years, the organisation stated.
In the information provided by Penda Guyan of ACDA’s Educational Management Committee, it was highlighted that today, by Law, 80,000 Amerindians have been given 15 percent of Guyana for being the First People.
“The 83,455 Africans who created the entire economy in 1838 and whose families died by the thousands during the 217 years of slavery, were given nothing.”
“East Indians in Guyana were paid wages by contract during indentureship. At the end of their indentureship, they were given free lands for housing, agriculture and for the creation of villages. Indians were also assisted by the British Government with free lands, capital and technical expertise to be successful in rice cultivation.”
“The Portuguese were paid during Indentureship. They were hired by the British after Indentureship, assisted by their Government in Madeira and by the British Government to succeed in business.”
At the same time, the organisation said, Africans were also forced to sell their produce to the Portuguese as middlemen because the British refused to buy from freed Africans as a way of forcing them back on to the plantations. ACDA said, to add insult to injury, despite no assistance coming to the Africans, licenses were however granted to Portuguese to open shops in African villages.
ACDA thus made a special appeal to “all right-thinking persons to support our call for an African Land Commission to right the historical injustice done to African Guyanese from slavery to the present time.”
“We call for an end to the allocation of lands to foreign groups until African Guyanese land allocations have been completed. A landless people is a powerless people.”
ACDA will host a special libation ceremony today at noon in front of Parliament Building in remembrance of the country’s first martyr, ‘Damon’, who along with hundreds of Africans declared themselves independent.
Damon was jailed and later murdered as he was deemed the leader of the independence move.
American Historian, Anthropologist and Lecturer Dr. Runoko Rashidi, who has already delivered several speeches on African history since his arrival in Guyana, is expected to give a special address. At this time Africans worldwide are observing African Holocaust/MAAFA Day which recognises Christopher Columbus’ arrival in the West and the commencement of Africa’s trouble.
THIS IDIOT TELLING GUYANA WE HAVE NO SAY IN THE 50% PROFIT SHARING AGREEMENT WE HAVE WITH EXXON.
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