Written and Oral Statements to the UN in 2000

Statements delivered in 2000 were heard and responded to by the UN. Statements were delivered by Mr. Silis Muhammad unless otherwise noted.

1. Written Statement to the Commission on Human Rights, April 2000
2. Oral Statement to the Commission on Human Rights
3. Oral Statement to the Working Group on Minorities, May 2000
4. Oral Statement of Attorney Harriett AbuBakr to the Working Group on Minorities
5. Oral Statement of Ida Hakim to the Working Group on Minorities
6. Written Statement to the Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights, August 2000
7. Oral Statement to the Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights

1) Written Statement to the 56th Session of the Commission on Human Rights
Provisional Agenda Item 14. Specific groups and individuals: (b) Minorities.

1. Silis Muhammad is the spiritual son of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad. He sojourns amid forty million Black men and women in the United States of America whose foreparents were brought to the United States aboard slave ships. They were brought to America over 400 years ago. During the period of plantation slavery, were forcibly denied the right of speaking their ‘mother tongue’.

2. Today, the lingering effects of plantation slavery deny us, the so-called African-Americans, the enjoyment of speaking our ‘mother tongue’ in community with other members of our group. This inherent human right is set forth in Article 27 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. We, the so-called African-Americans, are charging the United States of America with the "denial" of the use of our ‘mother tongue’.

3. Article 27 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights states, "In those States in which ethnic, religious or linguistic minorities exist, persons belonging to such minorities shall not be denied the right, in community with other members of their group, to enjoy their own culture, to profess and practice their own religion, or to use their own language."

4. We are human beings, but to this date and time we are denied the human right of speaking our ‘mother tongue’: it was taken during slavery. The United States grants the right today for us to speak it. Then speak it, one might say. How can we speak what the U.S. has denied us the use of? If our ‘mother tongue’ is taken away, aren’t we denied the use of it? No! One may say, you are deprived the use of it; there is a difference. Is not to be deprived of the use of our ‘mother tongue’ the same as being denied the use of it? No! Says the State, to be denied the use of it presupposes it is in your possession; while being deprived of its use presupposes it has been taken away. Well, since it has been taken away, we are both deprived and denied the use of it. The very act of taking our ‘mother tongue’ away was for the express purpose of denying us the use of it. In fact, the act is tantamount to a gross and excessive permanent denial. The United States craved for the denial of our use of it so strongly that it deprived us of the very instrument.

5. Thus, this will be viewed as a gross and an excessive act of denial of the United States to permit the so-called African-Americas to speak their ‘mother tongue’ in community with other members of their group. While the act of the United States may be viewed as an act against humanity, equally so has the United States made itself responsible for the rights of minorities, within its jurisdiction, to not be denied the use of their own language, in community with other members of their group. We, the so-called African-American, cannot speak ours. The United States grossly denies us the right, having deprived us, continually, of the very instrument. And in its place, the United States continually has forced its Anglo-Saxon ‘mother tongue’ upon us for the past four hundred years. Absent our ‘mother tongue’, we are a non-people: living in a state of civil death.

6. In addition, we are denied a permanent identity. Rent from our land in Africa, our roots, sold and forced into slavery: we have been recognized as slaves, Niggers, Negroes, Coloreds, Black-Americans and today we are the so-called African Americans. While holding us in this ever-revolving state, the United States holds itself out as being in full compliance with Article 27 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Yet the United States causes us to remain trapped within the Anglo-American culture regenerating its ‘mother tongue’, in reality, its identity. One’s ‘mother tongue’ is the essential route to one’s identity. It is the manner in which one’s identity is passed from generation to generation and through which one’s culture and religion flow.

7. Professor Gulillame Siemienski’s working paper on "Education rights of minorities: Hague Recommendations", states that language, but not just any language, one’s ‘mother tongue’ is intimately bound with identity. Absent exposure to our original tongue at the earliest possible stages in life and in primary and secondary levels of schooling, how could and can we speak it with other members of our community and preserve our individual identity? By forcibly stripping us of the use of our language and of the right to be educated in the same, the Government of the United States deracinated our collective identity, making our condition irreversible. We need special assistance.

8. While we are a People, and not a minority, in the United States we are placed within a minority status. Hence we call upon the United Nations to come to our succor under Article 27 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, as the lingering annihilation of our ‘mother tongue’ and the continual force, by the United States, imposed upon us to speak its Anglo-Saxon ‘mother tongue’ at the earliest possible stages in our lives, is the continual extermination of both our individual and collective identity. Absent identity we do not have our own culture, absent culture we live, today, in a state of ongoing civil death: genocide. We are a people who are buried, politically. The United States has killed our human rights and has covered us over with its own, fraudulently, by trick and by duress. We were buried and hidden, so very much so, the United Nations in making its laws has left us out, it seems: it is not known immediately where we fit. In the United States, we, the so-called African-Americans, mimic the human rights of the majority; but in reality, we are in the position of a minority, as every scholar knows.

9. In conclusion, we pray for compensation in the form of reparations. We ask that the United States pay reparations to the so-called African Americans, since the United States cannot restore our ‘mother tongue’ if ever it wanted to. Nor can the United States continue, illegally, to choose and force one upon us, which it has done for the last 400 years. The United States should be held liable, at least, for the last 51 years, plus the additional years which are needed to resolve this issue. We ask that the United Nations place this reparation sanction upon America if the identity and language of minorities and Peoples are to be preserved. The precise dollar amount will not herein be stated, but will be presented when we are satisfied that the gravity of our argument, in the eyes of the United Nations, warrants it. Along with a dollar amount, we will ask for the release of a number of African-American human rights victims who have been unjustly incarcerated in federal and state penitentiaries. Finally, we ask that the United Nations impose a sanction on the United States in the form of exemption of all taxation upon our people for as long as this issue is in the hands of the United Nations.

2) Oral Statement to the Commission on Human Rights
Item 14 (b) Specific Groups and Individuals: Minorities

The lingering effects of plantation slavery leave my people and me in a deprived state. We are deprived of our 'mother tongue.' Today, the United States of America grants minorities the use of their own language. But mine was forcibly taken away. I am denied and deprived of its use.

Article 27 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which the United States has ratified, declares, "In those States in which ethnic, religious or linguistic minorities exist, persons belonging to such minorities shall not be denied the right, in community with other members of their group, to enjoy their own culture, to profess and practice their own religion, or to use their own language.

We, the so-called African-Americans, in the aftermath of plantation slavery, cannot speak our own language, in community with other members of our group. The U.S. Government took it away.

African-Americans originate from many parts of Africa encompassing hundreds of languages. Therefore, it would be impossible to implement the prayer of African-Americans regarding the loss of their ‘mother tongue.’ The inability to implement a remedy makes it impossible to enforce any law. Our prayer, however, is for reparations. In this way America can address this legal and moral wrong: we will choose a language pleasing to us.

This argument is being made by a group that represents only one tenth of one percent of African-Americans in the United States. Nonetheless, the argument is made.

In conclusion, we ask that the United States pay reparations to the so-called African-Americans, as the United States cannot restore our 'mother tongue' if ever it wanted to. Nor should the United States continue, illegally, to choose and force one upon us, which it has done for the last 400 years. We ask that the Commission on Human Rights recommend a reparations sanction against the United States to ECOSOC and the General Assembly.

3) Oral Statement to the 6th session of the Working Group on Minorities, May 2000
Agenda Item 3 (b) to examine possible solutions to problems involving minorities

Greetings Mr. Chairman, members of the Working Group on Minorities.

The lingering effects of plantation slavery leave my people and me in a deprived state. We are deprived of our ‘mother tongue’. To date, we are denied and deprived of its use.

Article 2.1 of the Declaration on the Rights of Persons Belonging to Minorities states: "Persons belonging to national or ethnic, religious and linguistic minorities have the right to enjoy their own culture, to profess and practice their own religion, and to use their own language, in private and in public, freely and without interference or any form of discrimination."

Today, the United States of America grants minorities the use of their own language. It has ratified Article 27, of the ICCPR, which declares: "In those States in which ethnic, religious or linguistic minorities exist, persons belonging to such minorities shall not be denied the right, in community with other members of their group, to enjoy their own culture, to profess and practice their own religion, or to use their own language."

But we, the so-called African-Americans, in the aftermath of plantation slavery, cannot speak our own language. The U.S. Government took it away: it was forcibly taken away.

African-Americans originate from many parts of Africa encompassing hundreds of languages. Therefore, it would be impossible to implement the prayer of African-Americans regarding the loss of their ‘mother tongue’. The inability to implement a remedy makes it impossible to enforce any law. Our prayer is, however, for reparations. In this way America can address its legal wrong, and moral obligation. We will choose a language pleasing to us.

In conclusion, we ask that the Working Group on Minorities, in its report to the Sub-Commission, recommend that an expert be appointed to engage in dialogue with the U.S. Government. The urgent prayer of African-Americans for reparations should be the subject of this dialogue. Our recommendation is made in light of the fact that 40 million people are suffering this continuing legal wrong.

4) Sixth session of the Working Group on Minorities
Agenda Item 3(b) Examining possible solutions to problems involving minorities
Statement by Harriett AbuBakr

Greetings Mr. Chairman and members of the Working Group on Minorities,

I am grateful for the opportunity to speak a second time before the Working Group on Minorities. My name is Harriett AbuBakr. I am a descendant of slaves in the United States of America. I speak as an Attorney, and founding member of the National Commission for Reparations. My concern is with Agenda item 3 (b) examining possible solutions to problems involving minorities, and also Agenda item 3 (c) further measures for the protection of persons belonging to minorities which could act as examples or be replicated.

Article 1.1 of the Declaration on the Rights of Minorities says that, "States shall protect the existence and the national or ethnic, cultural, religious and linguistic identity of minorities within their respective territories and shall encourage conditions for the promotion of that identity."

Professor Edie in his commentary on the Declaration tells us that the first requirement of Article 1.1 is to protect the right to existence in its physical sense and the fourth requirement is to protect the identity. We African-Americans, from the 400-year experience of plantation slavery, know that physical existence has little value without identity. Therefore we are grateful that the Declaration on the Rights of Minorities recognizes the importance of identity.

Our experience is an example for the civilized world of a holocaust wherein identity is exterminated. Within our experience is the example of the means that a State can use to forcibly, intentionally and permanently sever a people from their identity. Within our experience is the example of how a people in such a deprived condition by their very nature, and against terrible opposition, will seek without rest to find their lost identity. Within our experience is the example of how a State systematically, for the benefit of the majority, can obstruct the attempts of a people to identify themselves. Within our experience is the example of what extraordinary damage can be sustained when a people’s identity is lost and the identity of the majority is forced upon them.

Because of our experience with plantation slavery, we know how human dignity is attached to identity. We are a people, living within the United States as a minority. Without identity we have no legal/political status or recognition internationally, no respect from the majority population domestically, and no dignity among our fellow human beings.

We believe we can assist the Working Group on Minorities in defining the crime of destruction of identity and understanding its consequences upon civilization as a whole. Silis Muhammad refers to our current condition as civil death. We want to be restored from civil death so that we might live again in dignity, with respect. We believe we can help the Working Group on Minorities to develop measures that might serve as a solution for us and as an example for the civilized world.

African-Americans have been seeking an identity as a people since emancipation from slavery more than 100 years ago. Since that time the majority population has called us niggers, negroes, colored, Black and African-American. They have forced upon us the Christian religion, the English language and the Anglo-American culture. Simultaneously, numbers of our people have searched far and wide trying to find an identity that would better fit our nature. Among the more prominent identities that we have claimed are Nubian Islamic Hebrews, Kemetic People, Hebrew Israelites, Moors, Israelite Lawkeepers, Kushites and Asiatic Blackmen and women. Politically our leaders have given us the United Negro Improvement Association, Simbionese Liberation Army, Pan African Nationalists, Black United Front, Afrikan People’s Socialist Party, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, Uhuru Movement, Black Panther Party for Self Defense, Republic of New Afrika, Black Radical Congress, New Black Panther Party and so on. Our leaders have borrowed from the cultures of other identities as well as inventing the Afrocentric and Rastafarian cultures. I am among those who have chosen the family of Shabazz, the religion of Islam and the Government and culture of the Lost Found Nation of Islam.

As you can see, we are fractured into many pieces as a people. We have searched and cried for collective identity while the U.S. Government has systematically sought to keep any of our leaders from gaining too much influence. The U.S. Government has defamed the best of our leaders and placed them in jail. While defaming or destroying our leaders, the U.S. Government has put forth leaders of its own choice through use of the media. The U.S. Government held us captive in plantation slavery, and it captures us still through manipulation, both of our will and of those who would help us around the world. Ours is a situation where conflict is certain if we are unable to bring an end to our captivity.

For some time Silis Muhammad has prayed that a forum for African-Americans be established at UN Headquarters. He has said that within a UN protected forum African-Americans can establish a council or governing body amongst themselves, and within this council they can begin the process of reclaiming or choosing our legal/political being and status as a people. Surely the Working Group on Minorities can now see the reason behind Mr. Muhammad’s prayer.

Silis Muhammad has also prayed that the UN place a reparation sanction upon the United States. The demand for reparation is becoming widespread among African-Americans. UN involvement and protection is essential to us as we become ever more vulnerable to U.S. Government manipulation of our will.

I am here to ask the Working Group on Minorities to recognize us as a people and a minority in need of special assistance. We have suffered from the loss of that very thing the Declaration on the Rights of Minorities seeks to protect: identity. If our condition is not of concern to the UN, then how can the minorities and peoples of the earth find their protection in law that the UN creates? I am here to join Silis Muhammad in his prayer for the appointment of an expert to engage in dialogue with the United States on the subject of reparations. The National Commission for Reparations asks the Working Group on Minorities to consider his prayer and make a favorable recommendation to the Sub-Commission on behalf of so-called African-Americans.

Thank you Mr. Chairman.

5) Sixth session of the Working Group on Minorities
Agenda Item 4. The Future Role of the Working Group
Statement by Ida Hakim

Greetings Mr. Chairman and Members of the Working Group on Minorities. I appreciate being able to make a few comments. The sixth session of the Working Group has been greater than past sessions in my view. There is a serious working atmosphere and yet a relaxed atmosphere. It seems that the Minorities themselves are being given more consideration and that is much appreciated. Also, the working papers are found to be very informative and beneficial. The attendance of more State representatives is gratefully noted.

In my view the intent of the Working Group to promote mutual understanding between and among minorities and Governments is an excellent and appropriate intent. We hope that the Working Group will take that intent one step further and hear the prayer of the African-American representatives. Expert dialogue with the US Government on the subject of African-American reparations would, at this time, be one of the few ways in which the Working Group could serve to promote mutual understanding between the minority in question and the Government.

There is another role that I believe the Working Group could expand upon, and that is in assisting the African-American minority in its efforts at self-organization. African-Americans have a well documented collective experience which is of the essence to all minorities: that of the complete annihilation of identity and severing of ties to ancestry and the consequences of this criminal act upon the collective human spirit. The Working Group could invite African-Americans to share their accumulated wisdom with other minorities and with the experts, in the form of a written document. An invitation to share experience would have a beneficial effect as follows.

First, African-Americans in the US are to a great degree convinced that the US Government controls the UN. They have been very slow in believing that the United Nations will be able to do anything of substance for them, and it has been difficult for us to argue that the UN will recognize their suffering in a meaningful way. If the Working Group on Minorities were to invite African-Americans to share their experience in the form of a written document, the word would spread within the African-American communities that the UN is listening. Just this act of listening can serve to promote the self-organization of African-Americans.

Additionally, an invitation to prepare an official document of experience would facilitate the gathering together of a core group of Black leaders and intellectuals. In our view, this core group could potentially evolve into the foundation of a council or governing body.

Finally, I would like to make one small comment on the commentary to the Declaration on the Rights of Minorities prepared by Professor Eide. The commentaries are very helpful and very much appreciated. As to the importance of identity in Article 1.1, I would say that we view identity as equal in importance to physical life. The individual human being enjoys physical life: the collective enjoys a collective spirit which is identity. Both the life of the body and the life of the human spirit are essential. Thank you for listening.

6) Written Statement to the 52nd Session of the Sub-Commission
on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights, August 2000
Agenda Item 8, Prevention of Discrimination Against and Protection of Minorities

The lingering effects of plantation slavery have left my people and me in a deprived state. We are deprived of our original identity. We, the so-called African-Americans, have experienced the forcible removal of culture, religion and ‘mother tongue’. The annihilation of our ‘mother tongue’ is the extermination of our identity.

To the extent that we have been deprived of our culture, our religion and our language, we do not have our human rights. We have been dispossessed of those human rights possessed by every minority and people and protected by the United Nations. While we are a People, and not a minority, in the United States we are placed within a minority status. We mimic the human rights of the majority; but in reality, we are in the position of a minority, as every scholar knows.

The United States of America has destroyed our human rights. It has covered us over with its own, fraudulently, by trick and by duress. We were buried and hidden, so very much so that United Nations in making its laws has left us out, it seems: it is not known immediately where we fit. To be left out of both the Declaration on the Rights of Minorities, and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, is to not have political recognition of our human rights. Thus, we feel we can not intelligently argue the issue of a violation of our human rights. While we are human, we have not been in possession of our human rights for the past 400 years. Our human rights were willfully destroyed, utterly. They were destroyed by the slave masters, under the auspices of the United States central and local governments, during our long sojourn as slaves in America.

We, the so-called African-Americans, were taken away from the culture of our origin. The slave ship took us away from our ancestral religious belief. Regarding our original language, there were not any provisions set in motion by the local and federal governments of America for us to cultivate and continue speaking our language. To the contrary, originally, provisions were set in motion to prevent us from speaking our language. We were intentionally separated from one another with total disregard, during slavery, such that we would not be able to speak our language. Ultimately, we lost the knowledge of it.

By forcibly stripping us of the use of our language and of the right to be educated in the same, the Government of the United States deracinated our collective identity, making our condition irreversible. Absent exposure to our original tongue at the earliest possible stages in life and in primary and secondary levels of schooling, how could and can we speak it with other members of our community and preserve our individual identity? The United States causes us to remain trapped within the Anglo-American culture regenerating its ‘mother tongue’, in reality, its identity.

When we are able to argue about a violation of our human rights, this is our complaint: we are human beings, but to this date and time we are denied the human right of speaking our ‘mother tongue’ in violation of Article 27 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which the United States of America has ratified.

The United States grants the right today for us to speak our language. Then speak it, one might say. How can we speak what the U.S. has denied us the use of? If our ‘mother tongue’ is taken away, aren’t we denied the use of it? No! One may say, you are deprived of the use of it; there is a difference. Is not to be deprived of the use of our ‘mother tongue’ the same as being denied the use of it? No! Says the State, to be denied the use of it presupposes it is in your possession; while being deprived of its use presupposes it has been taken away. Well, since it has been taken away, we are both deprived and denied the use of it. The very act of taking our ‘mother tongue’ away was for the express purpose of denying us the use of it. In fact, the act is tantamount to a permanent ongoing denial.

Thus, this will be viewed as a gross and an excessive act of denial of the U.S. to permit the so-called African-Americas to speak their ‘mother tongue’ in community with other members of their group. While the act of the U.S. may be viewed as a violation of the Convention on the Non-Applicability of Statutory Limitations to War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity, which the U.S. has not signed or ratified, the U.S. has made itself responsible for the rights of minorities, within its jurisdiction, to not be denied the use of their own language in community with other members of their group. We cannot speak ours. The U.S. grossly denies us the right, having deprived us, continually, of the very instrument. And in its place, the U.S. continually has forced its Anglo-Saxon ‘mother tongue’ upon us for the past 400 years. Absent our ‘mother tongue’, we are a non-people, living without a permanent identity.

We have brought our prayers to the Working Group on Minorities, as it has been entrusted with the task of promoting the rights of minorities. We wish to thank the Working Group on Minorities. We appreciate and applaud their efforts and join with them in the recommendation that a Regional Seminar for the Americas be held in order to examine the issues of African-Americans in the Americas.

In conclusion, we, so-called African-Americans, support the notion that "Race" is a constituent element of the definition of a minority. In the U.S. Blacks are mindful, daily, of a consciousness of "otherness", with respect to racial differences, as every scholar knows. And, unlike the Indigenous Peoples who were native to the territory, before colonization, and who formed many groups and spoke several languages, African-Americans were displaced from their common territory, and yet they invoke their similar characteristics in order to obtain their rights. As the so-called African-American "Racial" group is a group destroyed, it is axiomatic knowledge that we are a different racial group from the majority: we have neither racial dignity nor political bond.

The integration movement of the 1960s, whatever of high hope and of good intention, it did not make us equal with the majority, nor did it set us apart as a people or as a minority. We continued to mimic the human rights of the majority. At the same hour, during the1960s, there had long been developing in the U.S. not only a consciousness of "otherness", but also an awareness to bring that consciousness into reality. The Ethno-racial differences had then reached the glass ceiling, marked by violent rioting in major cities: Watts, California; Newark, New Jersey; Rochester, New York; Cleveland, Ohio; Cincinnati, Ohio; Chicago, Illinois; Harlem, New York; Detroit, Michigan; Washington D.C.; and Atlanta, Georgia in the time period from 1965 through 1967.

U.S. federal agents cleared the way for a non-violent solution. The US Government and its media sought to redirect the rising Black consciousness, by promoting integration. Non-violent integration’s chief advocate was the late and the memorable Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who fell to his unfortunate death from an assassin’s bullet in the year 1968, having commenced the civil rights movement December 1, 1955.

7) Oral Statement to the 52nd Session of the Sub-Commission
on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights, August 2000
Agenda Item 8, Minorities

We appreciate and applaud the efforts of the Working Group on Minorities and we join with them in the recommendation that a Regional Seminar for the Americas be held in order to examine the issues of African-Americans, in the Americas. Thirty-one African-American organizations from the grassroots to the intellectual elite stand with us today in support of the proposed Regional Seminar for the Americas.

I came to the Sub-Commission to seek recognition that we, the so-called African-Americans, do not fit the UN established definition of human beings, in the category of minority or as a People. The United States has the UN under the belief that we do fit, one or the other, in that the US asserts that the UN is in charge of promoting and protecting the inherent rights of human beings - everyone, everywhere. To the extent that we do not fit the UN definition, presently, the UN definition is in need of expansion to also include us. For we have not our original ‘mother tongue’, culture nor religion, thus, no identity: due to the lingering effects of plantation slavery. We are but clones of the Anglo-Saxon in the United States. During slavery, we were forced to speak the Anglo-Saxon’s mother tongue, and practice their religion and culture. Our human rights were destroyed.

Therefore, like the Indigenous People, it is our preference to be reinstated as a "people," in that we have been historically categorized by continental ancestry, from which territory we were shackled and removed. We invoked that characteristic in order to obtain our rights. Notwithstanding, we have brought our prayer to the Working Group on Minorities, as it has been entrusted with the task of promoting and protecting rights of minorities, in which category we are placed in the US. We support the notion that "Race" is a constituent element of the definition of a minority. My people are the living evidence of a group with a consciousness of " otherness," of difference, having been victims of four hundred years of plantation slavery, by the rigor of "Racial" grouping.