About the bicentenary

25 March 2007 will mark 200 years - to the day - that a Parliamentary Bill was passed to abolish the slave trade in the then British Empire. 1807 was the beginning of the long road to the eventual abolition of slavery itself within the empire via the Act of 1833. Even then, slaves did not gain their final freedom until 1838.

A number of initiatives and events will mark the bicentenary. These programmes will raise awareness of the slave trade, its effects, and the existence of servitude even now.

Events and initiatives
Minister for Culture, David Lammy, and Minister for Race Equality, Paul Goggins, have published a joint pamphlet that underlines the Government's commitment to the bicentenary:

"Reflecting on the past and looking to the future: The 2007 Bicentenary of the Abolition of the Slave Trade in the British Empire"
The pamphlet has been sent to a wide range of cultural organisations and community groups around the UK.


More: http://www.culture.gov.uk/about_dcms...entenary.htm#1

So what?

**shakes head**

Actually I think their actions is huegly important for two reasons, once again if unchallenged the view will be put that we ought to grateful to massa for setting us free... When in fact it was our own efforts that forced their hand in the first place..

Second personally it will be a good opportunity to see what members of the Coconut class, actually stand up and support this nonsense....Name & Shame I say!!!

Kunjufu wrote:
Like Kunjufu, I also think 2007's planned activities are important. Chattel slavery didn't end solely by the acts of white do-gooders,the British Government suddenly seeing us as humans or the heroic decisions of racists like Abraham Lincoln.

Africans, we, made slavery untenable.

We have a continuous history of resistance and a will to self determine.

Our history in Diaspora has always been about our story versus HIS Story; one will versus the other.

The fact that the British state have chosen to recognise the abolishment of their official kidnapping and murder of millions of our people is not going to be about resurrecting that phenomenon as an Africanholocaust; precursor to the increased degradation of the African and Africa.

Remember, these people are still yet to apologise for their role in our holocaust; yet they plan next year to show the world how "just" they are by recognising their parliament's historic role in our "liberation".

Remember, too many Africans view their reality from ideas these people have propagated and continue to spin into our lives.

Our people have always had answers to their attacks on our humanity.

Oh here we go again, every year they need to find a new way to pat themselves on the back.

The 2007 Bicentenary of the Abolition of the Slave Trade in the British Empire"

blkthumbsdownblkthumbsdownblkthumbsdownblkthumbsdo wn

"Three recent books – Britain’s Gulag by Caroline Elkins, Histories of the Hanged by David Anderson and Web of Deceit by Mark Curtis – show how white settlers and British troops suppressed the Mau Mau revolt in Kenya in the 1950s. Thrown off their best land and deprived of political rights, the Kikuyu started to organise – some of them violently – against colonial rule. The British responded by driving up to 320,000 of them into concentration camps(3). Most of the remainder – over a million – were held in "enclosed villages". Prisoners were questioned with the help of "slicing off ears, boring holes in eardrums, flogging until death, pouring paraffin over suspects who were then set alight, and burning eardrums with lit cigarettes."(4) British soldiers used a "metal castrating instrument" to cut off testicles and fingers. "By the time I cut his balls off," one settler boasted, "he had no ears, and his eyeball, the right one, I think, was hanging out of its socket"(5). The soldiers were told they could shoot anyone they liked "provided they were black"(6). Elkins’s evidence suggests that over 100,000 Kikuyu were either killed by the British or died of disease and starvation in the camps. David Anderson documents the hanging of 1090 suspected rebels: far more than the French executed in Algeria(7). Thousands more were summarily executed by soldiers, who claimed they had "failed to halt" when challenged."

(Source: How Britain Denies its Holocausts, The Guardian, 27 December 2005)

Celebrate that.


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One of the Members of the British Government's Organising Committee To "Celebrate" The "Abolition" of Slavery[/align]

And in America...................................



A New Coalition for the 2007 Celebration of the 200th Anniversary Of the Abolition of the U.S. and British Slave Trade: WilberforceCentral.org

New York, NY - May 3, 2006 - Nine organizations today announce the launch of a unique coalition, Wilberforce Central (www.wilberforcecentral.org), which in 2007 will sponsor and promote events and activities to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the United States and British slave trade, with particular focus on the inspiration and impact that 18th century British parliamentarian William Wilberforce brought to that historic accomplishment.

Very few Americans are aware that the document to abolish the United States slave trade was signed on March 2, 1807 by President Thomas Jefferson, the same month as the Royal Assent was given to the abolition of the British slave trade, explained Wilberforce Central convener Chuck Stetson.

WilberforceCentral.org is formed to introduce the media and the American public to the numerous events surrounding the 200th Anniversary of both the abolition of the British and U.S. slave trade, which among countless international activities, prominently include:

• The 2007 international release of the Walden Media major motion picture, "Amazing Grace."
• The proposed "Concert of Benevolence" at Westminster Abbey, organized by Walden Media for early 2007.
• A new book and documentary by The Wilberforce Project about the abolition of the British and U.S. slave trade and the little known role of William Wilberforce, Thomas Clarkson and the Clapham Group in putting an end to the slave trade, and how their stories relate to the unfinished business of modern forms of slavery today.

More: http://www.wilberforcecentral.org/wfc/Press/index.htm

How can they have an official ceremony to mark an act that was not in their power to instigate in the first place? Since when did they have the power to set Africans free when Africans were not theirs to enslave in the first place.

Now if they want to mark the commencement of the biggest and most barbaric crime in the history of human kind. If they wish to mark, (lest the world forgets)the evilness of the acts they perpetrated against the AfricanNation............yeah that's fine by me.

MARK AND SET IN STONETHEIR EVILNESS!

NOT

SOME SO-CALLED ACT OF GOODNESS ON THEIR PART

Kiss teet.....Mark their act of setting me FREE? And I am supposed to seethat as a stout and commendable deed?............GTFOH!



Respect

... also in America: http://www.ncobra.org/


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