Spetember 23, Bisssu - BBHAGSIA President Siphiwe Baleka apeared on the WEFT 90.1 fm Higher Ground radio program with Illinois State Representative Carol Ammons to discuss the status of African Americans as prisoners of war, the ethnocide that was committed against them and the need to frame reparations under a plebiscite for self determination. During the program, Mr. Baleka explained the pitfalls of using the established “slave trade” historical narrative in the quest for reparations and advocating framing the issue as state sanctioned trafficking of prisoners of war and state-sanctioned ethnocide. Reparations is generally understood as remedy for damage incurred in war and not for “trade”. Listen to the full discussion here which starts around the 25:00 mark.
Earlier, on May 24 of this year, Representative Ammons succeeded in passing Illinois House Resolution 292 that declares the State of Illinois should take the lead on issues of Pan-Africanism, citizenship in Africa, and reparatory justice, and the State should champion the Eighth Pan-African Congress Part 1 (8PAC1) and its agenda to develop a continental-wide diaspora citizenship plan, establish the African Diaspora as the 6th Region of the African Union (AU), and determine a permanent headquarters for the 6th Region. Calls upon the State to immediately, through its African Descent-Citizens Reparations Commission (ADCRC), provide matrilineal and patrilineal DNA testing through African ancestry to determine the ancestral lineages and territories of origin of its Black residents so that they can seek citizenship in their ancestral homelands, if so desired. Calls upon the State to become the first to conduct a repatriation census in preparation for honoring President Abraham Lincoln's desire for voluntary repatriation with compensation and to make conducting the repatriation census its immediate priority.
