Delegates at an international conference against racism cheered and whistled on Wednesday as they voted to expel non-blacks from the meeting, saying it was too traumatic to discuss slavery in front of them.
”I think this is a mistake,” said white cameraman Doug Norbeg, who was filming for San Francisco-based Collision Course Video Productions.
He was among a dozen whites and a couple of Asians at the African and African Descendants’ World Conference Against Racism who walked out without protest. Those expelled included several interpreters and members of non-governmental organisations.
The vote to restrict the six-day conference to blacks was proposed by a 60-strong delegation from Britain. More than 200 approved, including a group of African Americans who live in Israel. About 50 others abstained. ”This is an African family occasion and therefore they should not be allowed to sit down and talk with us,” said Garadina Gamba, a representative for the British delegation.
Conference chairwoman Jewel Crawford of the United States said ”There are a number of black people who have been traumatised by white people and they suffered psychologically and emotionally and, as a result of that trauma, some of them did not care to discuss their issues in front of them.”
A few conference officials disagreed. Jean Violet Baptiste, representative for the Guyana-based African Cultural and Development Association, said organisers should have made clear that only blacks were welcome: ”You can’t have people come all this way and then ask them to leave.”
A major issue at the meeting is a plan by black activists from the Caribbean and North America to sue France for making Haiti pay millions of francs for recognition of its independence nearly two centuries ago.
”We are working to put together a class-action suit that would demand France repays Haiti with interest now,” said Maxie Fox of Guyana, one of the conference organisers.
France officially recognized Haiti’s independence in exchange for 150-million francs in gold in 1838, 33 years after Haitians defeated Napoleon’s army in the first and only successful slave revolt against a colonial power.
Peter Flegel, a Haitian activist who lives in Montreal, said they planned to file suit by year’s end and would decide at the conference whether to do so in Haiti, France or at the International Court of Justice.
France demanded the payment theoretically to compensate for French property destroyed in the rebellion. Haitian and French officials could not immediately be reached for comment on the plan.
Attorney General Mia Mottley of Barbados said France forced Haiti to make payments between 1825 and 1922. ”And then we wonder why the systematic underdevelopment of Haiti,” she said. Mottley urged delegates to build upon last year’s UN
conference against racism in South Africa, which recognised slavery and the slave trade as a crime against humanity.
The meeting is hosted by the government of Barbados and organized by nonprofit groups including the Commission for Pan African Affairs, Congress Against Racism Barbados and the US-based Congress of People of African Descent. – Sapa-AP