No nation can divide within itself and remain powerful…To meet together, to take council with one another

and to act in mutual cooperation, has proved a most fruitful method, both in secular and spiritual fields.

Henceforth, the way is open to follow this path… – Emperor Haile Sellassie I

The executive directors of the Ethio-Africa Diaspora Union Millennium Council also known as the Rastafari Millennium Council (RMC) in collaboration with the executives of the Spanish Town House of Nyahbinghi and in support of a planned protest by Rastafari community members are very deeply concerned and outraged by these recent human, cultural, and indigenous rights violations committed against members of our community and other African-conscious person(s), reportedly:

• the brutal trimming of our Rastafari youth and nursing student, sister Nzinga Candace King at the Four Paths Police Station

• the brutal marring of our Rastafari ancient, Binghi Irie Lions, in the Linstead Hospital

• the refusal of admittance of a young girl of the African-conscious Virgo family, where the former principal of Kensington Primary School told her parents to cut her hair to secure a place at the institution.

• the refusal of the Manning’s School to allow students to wear Bantu knots.

The case of the Virgo family sparked heated debates as the Supreme Court ruled that the school may bar the seven-year-old as the judge upheld the laws within the Education Act.

A similar outcry was made against the edict of the Manning’s School, where Bantu knots and African-centric traditions were allegedly banned.

It is this engrained societal prejudice, born of our colonial and post-colonial history that we wish to highlight. While the Government of Jamaica (GOJ) has made an apology in Parliament for the Coral Gardens massacre of 1963, as with the Education Act relating to the school issues, there remains within the laws of the land directives that outlaw and criminalise Rastafari and other indigenous Afro-centric groups who pattern their lifestyle off the traditions of Africa.

The legally unanswered atrocity against our elder, Binghi Irie Lions (William Holmes), that may have contributed to his early demise last year, and the most recent atrocity committed against sister Nzinga, occurring about a week before Emancipation Day, requires not only an analysis of the extant colonial laws that are still on our books, but the deeper socio-economic issues at play.

The GOJ Coral Gardens apology, therefore, ranks only as being mere lip service as long as the old colonial laws against the Rastafari community remains intact and the socio-economic issues surrounding our community’s intellectual rights and reparatory justice are not concurrently addressed.

From as early as January 25, 1937, a letter was sent to Sir Edward Denham by the chief executive of the island to complain about a “Rastafari cult” that threatened the status quo of British colonial Jamaica. Similar cries led to the Obeah Act, which was instituted specifically because the colonial powers felt that African-centred spirituality was a tool that assisted the Maroons in their victory. In respect of the Rastafari community, these points were raised and still persist in the Christian-majority ethos of the nation. Further to this, the Moral Rearmament Movement (MRA) of the 1950s established by Governor General Sir Kenneth Blackburne that attempted to conform and/or convert the Rastafari community was just a move to “Christianise” Rastafari into the present colonial church culture.

The recent victories in recognition of the Rastafari faith and culture under United Nations treaty bodies, as well as the intangible cultural heritage and indigenous rights protocols under UNESCO, with the aid of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) should have signalled the GOJ to immediately reform the laws of the land as it pertains to indigenous African retentions in Jamaica. The fact that our delegation from the Indigenous Treaty march, April 17, 2016, was well received by the Government was a step in the right direction.

However, against the backdrop of these recent human rights violations, the Government’s gesture of acceptance has now been marred. It cannot be countenanced that the very attempts to protect the rights of both the Maroons and the Rastafari communities by a Practice Notice issued by the Jamaica Intellectual Property Rights Office (JIPO) from 2012 and further extended to develop a National Policy on Indigenous Rights in 2017 has been ignored by the Supreme Court of the land, which seems oblivious to fundamental human rights developments or, at best, remains shackled by old colonial oppressive laws.

The Supreme Court, however, has within its authority to recommend changes to these archaic laws or, via test cases, set precedent. The political will to push for these constitutional changes since Parliament’s apology for the Coral Gardens atrocities is woefully lacking.

How ironic it is that the oldest UN treaty body, the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD), which was ratified by Jamaica on June 4, 1971, has as its current vice-chair, Professor Verene Shepherd — a Jamaican.

Prime Minister Andrew Holness, we request your immediate intervention, through the powers of the Office of the Prime Minister, to effectuate an Afro-centric commission to identify needed changes in legislations and call for a public Bill — Human Rights Violation and Race Discrimination Act — to enforce the current developments to protect the indigenous rights of communities against blatant human rights violations.

We expect nothing less… One perfect love!

ethioafricamillennium2000@gmail.com