Dear Editor,
For the past 12 years, dedicated Black scholars and activists (including Mr Silis Muhammad, Mrs Dorothy Lewis, Elder Osiris Akkebala and attorney Harriet AbuBakr) have been working inside the United Nations to establish human rights and secure reparations for all Afro-descendants in the Western Hemisphere.

In numerous interventions before diverse UN bodies, including the Human Rights Commission, they have documented how long-term and ongoing US Government policies of ethnocide and forced assimilation blatantly violate UN covenants.

As a result of their perseverance, the UN sponsored an historic conference for us in LaCeiba, Honduras in March 2002 and another pivotal conference will take place in Latin America later this year.

For us, reparations means far more than financial restitution for centuries of brutal chattel slavery and subsequent decades of harsh institutionalised racism, including what Professor Lani Guinier aptly describes as America's "race caste system".

Reparations means restoration of our people who have been robbed of our original language, religion, culture and the powers of self-determination.

Please visit our AFRE website to learn more about this seldom-publicised legal battle which the US Government seeks to strangle and which the white mass media strives to hide through non-coverage.

Malik Al-Arkam
www.AllForReparations.org

Executive Class

Gardens with Gravel

Necessary Luxury