Jazz musician Marcus Miller (left), spokesman for the Slave Route Project, is using music to help educate people about slavery. Credit: A.D. McKenzie/IPS

By A. D. McKenzie
PARIS, Sep 14 2014 (IPS)

The Oscar-winning film 12 Years a Slave recently generated international discussion about the barbarity of slavery, but it is not alone in the attempt to break the silence around the 400 years of the transatlantic slave trade and to “shed light” on the lasting historical consequences.

At the United Nations level, The Slave Route Project observed its 20th anniversary this month in Paris and is pushing for greater education about slavery and the slave trade in schools around the world.

“People of all kinds suffered from slavery and people of all kinds profited from slavery just like so many people are now profiting from modern-day slavery. Racism is a direct result of this monstrous heritage and we need to increase the dialogue about this” – Ali Moussa Iye, head of UNESCO’s Slave Route Project
Ali Moussa Iye, chief of the History and Memory for Dialogue Section of UNESCO, the UN’s cultural agency, and director of the Project, says: “The least the international community can do is to put this history into the textbooks. You can’t deny this history to those who suffered and continue to experience the consequences of slavery.”

The Project is one of the forces behind a permanent memorial to slavery that is being constructed at UN headquarters in New York, scheduled to be completed in March 2015 and meant to honour the millions of victims of the traffic in humans.

UNESCO is also involved in the UN’s International Decade for People of African Descent (2015-2024), which is aimed at recognising people of African descent as a distinct group and at “addressing the historical and continuing violations of their rights”. The Decade will officially be launched in January next year.

“The approach is not to build guilt but to achieve reconciliation,” Moussa Iye said in an interview. “We need to know history in a different, more pluralistic way so that we can draw lessons and better understand our societies.”

He is aware that some people will question the point of the various initiatives, preferring to believe that slavery’s legacy has ended, but he said that international organisations can take the lead in urging countries to examine their past acts and the results.

“People of all kinds suffered from slavery and people of all kinds profited from slavery just like so many people are now profiting from modern-day slavery,” he said. “Racism is a direct result of this monstrous heritage and we need to increase the dialogue about this.”

According to UNESCO, the Slave Route Project has put these issues on the international agenda by contributing to the recognition of slavery and the slave trade as crimes against humanity, a declaration made at the World Conference Against Racism held in Durban, South Africa, in 2001.

Ali Moussa Iye, head of UNESCO’s Slave Route Project. Credit: A.D. McKenzie/IPS

It has also been collecting and preserving archives and oral traditions, supporting the publication of books, and identifying “places of remembrances so that itineraries for memory” can be developed.

For many people of African descent, however, much more needs to be done to raise awareness. Ricki Stevenson, a Paris-based African-American businesswoman who heads a company called Black Paris Tours, focusing on the African Diaspora’s contributions in the French capital, told IPS that there ought to be “national and international conversation about the continued effects of enslavement.”

“We need to break the silence on how racism continues to hurt, not just Black people, but all people in any country that would kill, imprison, deny education and rights to individuals,” she said. “The United States, France, and all of Europe made unimaginable money from the cruel, inhumane kidnapping and enslavement of millions of Africans.

“These nations grew rich, built their cities and economies on the enslavement of Africans, on the forced labour of Black people who were stripped of every basic human right, treated less than animals,” she added. “Today we are learning that the wealth of Wall Street and so many major corporations, insurance companies, shipping companies, banks, private families, even churches, is still tied to slavery.”

Stevenson said she knows that some find it hard to comprehend the legacy of slavery. “I doubt if anyone who has never lived in the United States can understand the overwhelming challenge of ‘breathing while Black’,” she told IPS. “It is a horrible, daily fact of life every Black man, woman, child has faced or will face at some point in their lives.”

In France, meanwhile, the rise of nationalism is leading to a culture of exclusion as well as racism, according to political observers. Justice Minister Christiane Taubira, for example, author of a 2001 law bearing her name that also recognises slavery as a crime against humanity, has been the target of racist depictions on social media and in certain publications.

Speaking at the 20th anniversary ceremony of the Slave Route Project, Taubira described her battle against “hatred” and said that the world’s challenge today is to understand the global forces that divide people for exploitation.

“We cannot accept this kind of inhumanity,” she said, adding that the “anonymous victims” were not just victims but “survivors, creators, artists, cultural, guides … and resistors”, despite the immense violence they suffered.

Some individuals and municipalities in France have worked to highlight the country’s active role in the transatlantic slave trade, through cultural and memorial projects. The northwestern city of Nantes, which achieved vast wealth through slavery in the 18th century, built a memorial to victims in 2012.

Historians say that more than 40 percent of France’s slave trade was conducted through the city’s port, which acted as a transhipment point for some 450,000 Africans forcibly taken to the Americas. But this part of Nantes’ history was kept hidden for years until the move to “break the silence” cumulated in the Memorial to the Abolition of Slavery.

In England, the city of Liverpool has an International Museum of Slavery, and Qatar and Cuba have also set up museums devoted to this history, carrying out partnership projects with UNESCO.

Acclaimed American jazz musician Marcus Miller, spokesman for the Slave Route Project, is also using music to educate people about slavery. Prior to an uplifting performance in Paris with African musicians, Miller said he wanted to focus on the resistance and resilience of the people forced into slavery and those who fought alongside to end the centuries-long atrocity.

(Edited by Phil Harris)

By Sudeshna Chowdhury
NEW YORK, May 24 2013 (IPS)

Say “Africa” and myriad images flood our minds. Like its landscape and peoples, the continent’s history is rich and diverse. While numerous books have been written and films made on the African slave trade in the West, a lesser-known aspect of the continent’s history lies in India.

Courtesy of Sylviane Diouf.

On the occasion of Africa Day and the Asian-Pacific American heritage month of May, IPS correspondent Sudeshna Chowdhury interviewed Sylviane A. Diouf, a renowned historian who studies the African diaspora, about the presence of Africans in India and the rest of Asia.

Diouf is also one of the curators of an exhibition called “Africans In India: From Slaves to Generals and Rulers” which is on display at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in New York City.

Excerpts from the interview follow.

Q: How different is the story of Asian Africans from the African diaspora in the rest of the world, such as in America or Europe?

A: Not all Africans arrived in Asia as slaves. Some were traders, artisans, and religious leaders. India had an abundance of local slaves to perform hard labour, so the Africans and foreign slaves were mostly employed in specialised jobs as domestics in wealthy households, in the royal courts, and in the armed forces.

Africans were regarded as exceptional warriors and they fought in armies all over India, alongside Arabs, Turks, Indians and Afghans. They could rise through the ranks and become “elite slaves”, amassing wealth and power and even becoming rulers in their own right.

Elite slavery was often a frontier phenomenon, often found in areas that underwent instability due to struggles between factions and where hereditary authority was weak. Rulers considered Africans reliable because they were outsiders with no family, clan or caste connections to the indigenous populations, so they promoted them as court officials, administrators, and army commanders."Elite slaves were frequently at the centre of court disputes and sometimes seized power for themselves." -- Sylviane A. Diouf

These elite slaves were frequently at the centre of court disputes and sometimes seized power for themselves. Slave soldiers, guards, and bodyguards were routinely freed after a few years of service, often married local women, and were integrated into the larger society.

Q: Why do you think Africans were able to distinguish themselves so easily in countries like India, unlike say in Western countries? Is there a greater story of assimilation here that made it possible for Africans to rise from slaves to generals and then rulers?

A: Due to Islamic laws, enslaved Africans tended to have much greater social mobility than West Africans did in the Americas. One distinctive trait of slavery in the Islamic world was that, contrary to what happened in the West, bondage and “race” were not linked. Instead, factors such as religion, ethnicity, and caste were often more influential than colour.

The Africans’ success in India was theirs but it is also a strong testimony to the open-mindedness of a society in which they were a small religious and ethnic minority, originally of low status. As foreigners and Muslims, Africans ruled over indigenous Hindu, Muslim and Jewish populations. It would have been unthinkable in the West.

Today, in a country of 1.2 billion people, there are about 50,000 to 70,000 African descendants. It is thus not surprising that most Indians have never heard of them. Many people know of the famous 16th century Malik Ambar, a former Ethiopian slave who became a prime minister and regent and was a bitter foe of the Moghuls, but some are not aware he was African.

Our exhibition will travel to India and this will help put the Africans’ place in India history in more people’s consciousness.

Q: What is the current state of these Africans in India? In most cases, why do you think they continue to live in poverty?

A: A majority of Sidis (Africans in India are called Sidis) live in poverty or are part of the working class: drivers, domestics, security guards, etc. Others are farmers and some belong to the middle class. According to their own organisations, the lack of education and of strong leadership is an impediment.

Some Sidis are recognised as “scheduled tribes” and benefit from affirmative action programmes, but others are denied the status or are not given the opportunity to make use of it.

Q: Any interesting observations during your visit to India? Was the African community in India aware of their roots and identity? Did they care?

A: It’s a diverse community. Some people are aware and do care, others are not and perhaps would not care. The people I met were very conscious of their identity as descendants of Africans and as Muslims. They were also very conscious of being Indians.

For the past several years, Western and Indian scholars have been doing research on the communities for books, photographs, articles, exhibitions, and documentaries and that has led some Sidis to learn about and value their own past and history.

Q: Do you see the image of Africa changing in today’s world? Has it managed to move beyond its stereotypical image of poverty, hunger and deprivation?

A: I think the image has already changed positively in some circles: the arts world, among younger generations, for instance, thanks to the extraordinary crop of writers, painters, musicians, designers, architects, and other artists who are producing wonderful work.

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