Monday, August 22, 2005

The wealth of the west was built on Africa's exploitation

Britain has never faced up to the dark side of its imperial historyBritain was the principal slaving nation of the modern world. In The Empire Pays Back, a documentary broadcast by Channel 4 on Monday, Robert Beckford called on the British to take stock of this past.

1. Why, he asked, had Britain made no apology for African slavery, as it had done for the Irish potato famine?


2. Why was there no substantial public monument of national contrition equivalent to Berlin's Holocaust Museum?


3. Why, most crucially, was there no recognition of how wealth extracted from Africa and Africans made possible the vigour and prosperity of modern Britain?


4. Was there not a case for Britain to pay reparations to the descendants of African slaves?

These are timely questions in a summer in which Blair and Bush, their hands still wet with Iraqi blood, sought to rebrand themselves as the saviours of Africa. Full Link

So much hypocrisy on all fronts...

posted by Cynthia   Permalink| Comments(3)|

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