July 16, 2023 Bissau - In the very early morning of Friday, July 14 around 3:00 am, thieves entered through a bedroom window and stole two laptops and a computer backpack which contained an ID, bank cards and credit cards from the Decade of Return Office run by Siphiwe Baleka, President of the Balanta B’urassa History and Genealogy Society in America (BBHAGSIA) and Coordinator of the Lineage Restoration Council of Guinea Bissau (LRC-GB) and Daiana Taborda Gomes, Founder and CEO of Repat Bissau which serves as a Coordinator for the Decade of Return in the capital city of Bissau.
According to Baleka, “there was a big storm that night. While we were sleeping, the thieves entered through our bedroom window which is only three feet above our mattress. Both the front and back gates are locked so this is the only way into the house. Nothing was disturbed. It was bizarre. At first I thought it was petty thieves. But then some people suggested it might have been connected to my political activism.”
Indeed, Baleka has been at the forefront of many reparations efforts, including
a three-year campaign to formally charge the Vatican with issuing a declaration of total war against people from Africa in an Apostolic Edict known as the Dum Diversas (1452);
charging the United States with state-sanctioned ethnocide at the Inter American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR);
raising the claim of transgenerational epigenetic effects at the United Nations;
requesting a advisory opinion from the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on the status of AfroDescendant people under the Geneva Convention;
planning and mobilising for an plebiscite for African American self determination; and
formally establishing the African diaspora as the 6th Region of the African Union and immediate citizenship for the 6th Region.
Cecile Johnson, a Certified UN Human Rights Defender, Co-Facilitator of the African lol Descendant Nation, Co-Author of the National Black Agenda, CEO / Founder African Development Plan and Co- Founder Big Mama Movement Chicago remarked,
“It might be connected to [Baleka’s] political activism. Who could be so stealth [he] did not even hear? Navy seal …. Yes the poor people didn’t do this because someone would notice and tell. Yeah this was a special op. [Baleka] is bringing attention to them.”
On January 23, 2023 Baleka filed a landmark case charging the United States government with state sanctioned ethnocide. Kaitlyn Kennedy reported in Tag24,
“Baleka's quest for justice has led him to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), where he has filed a first-of-its-kind petition seeking redress for the continued harms he and his family experience stemming from the era of enslavement. . . . Baleka's petition builds on the insights from epigenetic research to characterize slavery as an artificial operation designed to transform human beings into chattel. . . . Baleka is seeking not only financial compensation for the damage done to his family, but also the transfer of at least 80 acres of land that are due to his ancestors Jack Blake and Yancey Blake following Emancipation. He is further calling on the US to facilitate his family's repatriation efforts by redirecting resources to Guinea-Bissau, as the damages done by colonialism have left the country at rank 175 out of 189 in the 2020 UN Human Development Index. . . . After failing to secure a hearing in the US legal system, Baleka has turned to the IACHR with his petition. He hopes the case will set a precedent for other African Americans seeking justice for the crimes of ethnocide and enslavement and show them that they, too, can have their day in court.”
However, on Tuesday, July 11, the IAHCR dismissed Baleka’s ethnocide case. They offered no explanation, only notifying Baleka of their "DECISION TO NOT OPEN FOR PROCESSING". This followed France’s recent decision to dismiss a reparations case filed by Martinique and Oklahoma’s decision to dismiss a reparations case filed by survivors of the Tulsa Race Massacre.
The following day, Baleka attended a meeting of the U.S. State Department ICCPR July 12 Civil Society Consultation regarding the United States’ upcoming presentation to the Committee on the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and Optional Protocols. The President of BBHAGSIA submitted a 10-page statement ahead of the meeting outlining BBHAGSIA’s three -year campaign calling for the United States to recognize the U.S. state-sanctioned ethnocide committed against Balanta people in America, and to provide reparations in the form of recognition to Balanta people in America as a federally recognized ethnic group similar to the 566 federally recognized American Indian and Alaskan Native Tribes; land concessions and autonomous self government similar to that of the 326 Indian land areas in the U.S. administered as federal Indian reservations; and negotiated voluntary repatriation with compensation back to their ancestral homelands in Guinea Bissau.
As requested, Siphiwe Baleka submitted the following questions to the U.S. State Department:
Q1. What remedies are available to the Balanta people in America for redress for ethnocide?
Q2. Will the government of the United States of America engage in negotiations with the Balanta people, the government of the Republic of Guinea Bissau, the Vatican, and the Government of Portugal, under the Geneva Convention, for the final “release and repatriation” of the descendants of the Balanta, Fulani, Mandinga, Papel, Manjaco, Beafada, Brame (Mancanha), Bijago, Djola (Felupe), Mansoaca prisoners of war who were trafficked to and enslaved in America?
Q3. How can the Balanta B’urassa History and Genealogy Society in America engage in the process of receiving reparations for the crimes of slavery and ethnocide?
Additionally, Mr. Baleka asked the government of the United States to answer the same questions posed in the MANDATE FROM THE AFRO DESCENDANT PEOPLE ISSUED TO THE PERMANENT FORUM ON PEOPLE OF AFRICAN DESCENT TO REQUEST AN ADVISORY OPINION FROM THE INTERNATIONAL COURT OF JUSTICE ON THEIR STATUS AS PRISONERS OF WAR UNDER THE GENEVA CONVENTION that invokes Article 96 of the United Nations Charter, Article 65 of the Statute of the International Court of Justice, and UN Resolution 75/314:
(a) Is the Dum Diversas apostolic decree issued by Pope Nicholas V on June 18, 1452 a declaration of “total war” - warfare that includes any and all civilian-associated resources and infrastructure as legitimate military targets, mobilizes all of the resources of society to fight the war, and gives priority to warfare over non-combatant needs - and therefore a war crime and a crime against humanity? Is there a statute of limitation regarding reparations for this war crime and crime against humanity?
(b) Were the people captured as a result of the Dum Diversas apostolic decree “prisoners of war” and do their descendants retain that status until their final “release and repatriation” under the Geneva Convention?
(c) Have the Afro Descendants - black folks - now within the United States ever been converted, in accordance with settled principles of universally established law, into United States citizens, and divested altogether of their original foreign African nationality?
(d) What rights do the Afro Descendants throughout the Americas and Caribbean have to exercise self-determination and conduct plebiscites to discern who wants to repatriate to their ancestral homeland, who wants to establish independent nation states of their own, and who wants to integrate into the states they currently reside?
(e) What are the legal consequences that arise for all States and the United Nations from the above?
The intervention with the U.S. State Department comes on the heals of the State of Illinois House of Representatives 103rd General Assembly Resolution 292 that 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. The resolution states,
“Additionally of note is the fact that Robin Rue Simmons (former 5th Ward Alderman for the City of Evanston, IL, where she led, in collaboration with others, the passage of the nation’s first municipally-funded reparations legislation for Black residents, which began disbursements in January 2022) , Kamm Howard (former National Co-Chair of the National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America), and BBHAGSIA President Siphiwe Baleka have all taken African Ancestry DNA tests and discovered they are each descendants of the Balanta people of Guinea Bissau; the subsequently traveled together to their ancestral homeland to launch the country’s Decade of Retrun Initiative in 2021;”
According to Siphiwe Baleka, “Our aim is to help the entire Lineage Restoration Movement and New Afrikan Independence Movement to exercise their self determination and establish a pathway for members of the African Diaspora to exercise their right to return to their ancestral homelands and receive citizenship which, with the implementation of AU policies by each AU member state, will allow for the freedom of movement and trade thorughout the continent.”
To further advance the Decade of Return and Citizenshship Initiative the BBHAGSIA launched in 2021, Baleka led the effort to establish the Lineage Restoration Council of Guinea Bissau that includes the Djola History and Genealogy Society in America and the Fula History and Genealogy Society in America. The new Council has drafted legislation and has been invited to meet with the newly elected National Peoples Assembly through the transition team of the winning coalition party, Plataforma Aliança Inclusiva (PAI) -- Terra Ranka, to make diaspora citizenship a priority issue of the new government.
“We hope to set an example for the other 800,000 people that have taken the African Ancestry DNA test, on how to constitute themselves into History and Genealogys Societies, form National Lineage Restoration Councils, and then proceed with the work of self determination through legislation,” said Baleka.
Additionally, On July 12 and 13, Baleka attended the PAN AFRICAN ROOTS-SYNERGY MAPUTO ROUNDTABLE (PARSMR) and made the following recommendations:
On July 13 Baleka did a second interview with Ms. Kennedy discussing the IAHCR dismissal of his Ethnocide reparations petition. It was right after that interview that the burglary happened.
“More and more people are reaching out to me saying that this was either the work of the ‘lumpen’ element or the work of people who want to stop me and my work and thus rules out the average people of Guinea Bissau,” said Baleka. “Our mattress was less than three feet directly below the window which suggests special skills needed to enter and exit without waking us, the gates at the front and back of the house being locked and requiring a key. The timing of the theft, given all my political activity and especially the past 72 hours and my interview with Kaitlyn, is suspicious. I am well aware of the fact that the last attempt to bring the United States before the world court and unite the Africans at home and abroad resulted in the assassination of Malcolm X, Burundi Prime Minister Pierre Ngendandumwe and Kenyan government official Pia Gama Pinto as well as the infamous U.S. National Security Council Memorandum 46. I don’t know what to think. Many people have come forward and said this has happened to them and suggested that organised criminals have a spray that they use to put their victims into deep sleep and then rob them. But some wise friends and elders have reached out to me and encouraged me not to lose faith in the people.”