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DEBATE: The Global Afrikan Congress will head to Parliament this summer

CAMPAIGNERS ARE calling on Afrikans to tell their local MPs to back reparations from the government for enslavement and colonialism.

Global Afrikan Congressuk (GACuk) wants the community to support their lobby of Parliament and call on MPs to back an effort to repair the damage done to Afrikans by the UK and Western nations.

Global Afrikan Congress regards all black people on the continent and the Diaspora as ‘Afrikans’ and has chapters across the world.

On June 12, in the Houses of Parliament, GACuk members and supporters will present a set of reparation demands to MPs from different parties and representatives in the House of Lords. They want Afrikans and their supporters to write to their MPs this month using a model letter they will create.

The GACuk’s reparations demands for the UK government are to:

- declare August 1 each year as a public holiday called Emancipation Day,
- develop a programme for reparations for Afrikan enslavement and colonialism,
- expunge from the record any guilt for ‘crimes’ by Afrikan Freedom Fighters,
- eliminate racial discrimination in the criminal justice system, and
- actively support the United Nations’ international decade for Afrikans, 2015 - 2024.

Members also intend to have a rally in Parliament. Past speakers have included the Shadow Chancellor, John McDonnell MP; former shadow international development minister, Kate Osamor MP; Baroness Osamor, of Tottenham and of Asaba in the Republic of Nigeria plus more

Secretary of GACuk, Glenroy Watson said: "The issue of reparations needs to be on the political agenda and we want Afrikans to go and see and write to their local MPs to convince them of the rightness of our cause.

"We will be spending a day in Parliament as we have been doing for the past three years, lobbying MPs and holding meetings.

"Enslavement and colonialism enriched this country but we call enslavement the Maangamizi or the Afrikan Holocaust. It resulted in the Maafa or the Great Disaster for Afrika and her peoples all over the world. It haunts us and affects us to this day.

"The West has a responsibility to rid us of the effects of this Holocaust but we as Afrikans also need to speak for ourselves and set our own agenda.”

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