SA leaves 'black' conference
2002-10-05 08:55
Bridgetown, Barbados - Saying they'll have no part in discrimination, delegations from
Russia, Cuba, South Africa, Colombia and France's overseas
territories on Friday abandoned an anti-racism conference that
voted to exclude whites.
The walkout, on the fourth day of the six-day African and
African Descendants World Conference Against Racism, came after a
day of negotiations failed.
"Cuba will never support any action aimed at segregating a group
of people. Furthermore, Cuba believes that such a decision is
intolerant and contrary to the purposes of this conference," Maria
Morales, the spokeswoman for Cuba's delegation, told the conference,
reading from a prepared statement.
The South Africans said that the conference had gone adrift and
that they could not endorse the decision to exclude non-blacks. It
was unclear how many delegates left the conference late on Friday, and
whether all were black.
But most of the 250 delegates at the meeting hosted by the
Barbados government whistled and cheered their approval as
chairperson, Jewel Crawford of the United States, stood by the vote.
"The motion will stand and the democratic process will be
respected," Crawford said. "The motion of exclusion was the will of
the majority because there are sometimes when we feel that we just
want to have a meeting of our own."
Ghanaian delegate Maya wa Taifa agreed, arguing that Africans
are normally too generous for their own good and that "our
over-hospitality" backfired on the conference.
The move to exclude whites was proposed by the 60-strong British
delegation, which said it was under the impression that the
conference was entirely for blacks to discuss issues from racial
profiling to reparations for slavery.
Whites and Asians left the meeting
Some 200 delegates voted on Wednesday for whites and Asians to
leave the deliberations, saying slavery was too painful a subject
to discuss in front of non-Africans.
Fifty delegates abstained and more than a dozen white and Asian
journalists, interpreters and delegates left the meeting.
In an ironic twist on Friday, delegates were shocked by an
impassioned plea from Mauritanian Bakary Tandia for the conference
to denounce slavery in the African countries of Mauritania and
Sudan.
He said such conferences lay too much emphasis on demands for
reparations from former white colonisers and "hardly focus on what
is happening on the continent, where slavery is alive in some
places".
Tandia, co-chairman of the New Jersey-based Africa Peace Tour
lobbying group, said Arabs in Mauritania and Sudan hold blacks
against their will. He charged that up to 900 000 black Mauritanians,
mostly women and children, work without pay as domestic servants
and herders.
"These people are owned as property by Arabs and are so enslaved
that they cannot even give testimony in a court of law ... They
have no rights," Tandia said.
Conference organisers said they planned a resolution of
condemnation before Sunday's end to the meeting, billed as a
follow-up to last year's UN anti-racism conference in South
Africa. - Sapa-AP
- SAPA