Condemnation of British expulsion of African peoples-from-the-Caribbean

(Amber Rudd ... British home secretary whose department/ministry is responsible for the African peoples’ deportation)

Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe

MANY African commentators in the diaspora and at home have joined other critics elsewhere in the world to condemn the current British government’s outrageous expulsion of some of its citizens of African descent to the Caribbean. The criticisms are rightly commendable.

Yet silence…

IT IS  however most noticeable that a number of these commentators have been conspicuously silent when African peoples in African-run states are deported similarly or subjected to even worse treatment by their hosts as the following examples highlight:

1. In Lagos, west Nigeria, the regional regime has over the years deported scores of Igbo people to Biafra. In 2015, the king or oba of Lagos issued a royal edict to murder Igbo people if they did not vote for the king’s own preferred candidate for a senior political regional office.

2. In South Africa, thousands of African émigrés from southern, east and west Africa have been expelled in recent years by the state. Hundreds of these immigrants have been murdered in the country during the period and their homes and businesses destroyed by organised groups often linked to state officials.

3. Since the March 2015 imposition of Muhammadu Buhari, the genocidist islamist jihadist, as head of regime in Nigeria by ex-US President Obama and ex-British Prime Minister Cameron, the Buhari regime’s military and its adjunct Fulani militia, one of the world’s five deadliest terrorist organisations, have murdered 3000 Igbo people across Biafra in what has been one of the bloodiest track of phase IV of the ongoing Igbo genocide. These murders have continued unabated.

Moral rectitude
AFRICAN peoples’ lives matter. This must surely be the case wheresoever African peoples live: Biafra, Sénégal, Tanzania, Botswana, United States of America, South Africa, Barbados, Kenya, India, Côte d’Ivoire, Guyana, Canada, Britain, Surinam, St Lucia, Jamaica, Trinidad & Tobago, Brazil, France, Ghana, Finland, Uganda…

Few now doubt that African commentators and others in that prominent professional grouping stand to forfeit any moral rectitude if they restrict their quest to uphold African lives’ interests usually in geographical spaces marked outside Africa but exercise a predictable stone-walled silence when these same interests are assaulted, quite often more viciously, inside Africa.

(John Coltrane & Don Cherry, “Focus on sanity” [personnel: Coltrane, tenor saxophone; Cherry, pocket trumpet; Percy Heath, bass; Ed Blackwell, drums; recorded: Atlantic Studios, New York, US, 28 June/8 July 1960])

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FWD: Amnesty International demands end to rights’ violation against pro-Biafra activists, The Guardian, Lagos, Friday 14 April 2017

(Biafra freedom movement: ... determination, resilience, restoration, transformation...)

Bertram Nwannekanma, The Guardian, Lagos, Friday 14 April 2017 [published unedited from original]

AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL  (AI) has called for an immediate end to human rights’ violation against the pro-Biafra activists in Nigeria. The group made the call in a letter by Evelin de Leliwa from its Germany office to the Speaker, House of Representatives, Yakubu Dogara. The Guardian obtained a copy of the letter dated March 20, 2017 yesterday.

It also called for an investigation into the alleged killings and disappearances of members of the Indigenous Peoples of Biafra (IPOB) and their supporters in several incidents.

The letter urged the Federal Government to release all IPOB members and their supporters who are currently being detained in the country without trial. He also urged Dogara to announce an end to the deployment of the military in peaceful assemblies in the country.

The group called for the full payment of reparation to all those who have suffered human rights violation as a direct result of the security forces’ operations in the southeast and south south regions of the country.

The AI disclosed that at least, 150 pro-Biafra protesters were killed during the Biafra Remembrance Day in the southeast, during which the security forces, led by the military, embarked on a campaign of extrajudicial executions and violence.

According to the group, the analysis of 87 videos, 122 photographs and 146 eyewitness testimonies relating to the demonstrations and other gatherings between August 2015 and August 2016, showed that the military fired live ammunition with little or no warning to disperse the crowds.

The group further stated that it found evidence of mass extrajudicial executions by the security forces, including at least, 60 people who were shot dead within two days in connection with the remembrance.

It said: “Since August 2015, there had been a series of protests marches and gatherings by members and supporters of IPOB, who are seeking the creation of a Biafran state.”

According to the group, the tensions increased when the IPOB leader, Nnamdi Kanu was arrested on October 14, 2015 and had since remained in detention. “The largest number of pro-Biafra activists were killed on May 30, 2016 when an estimated 1,000 IPOD members and supporters had gathered for a rally in Onitsha, Anambra State.

“The security forces raided some homes and a church where the IPOB members were sleeping in the night before the rally on May 2016 and also shot people in several locations.”

The group alleged that the inspector general of police had failed to act, despite sharing its key findings with the minister of justice and attorney general, chief of defence staff, chief of army staff, ministries of interior, foreign affairs and the department of state services.

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FWD: Cashing in on Biafra?

“I am not a Biafran member ... I merely cashed in on the situation at hand to make money”, Lagos publisher

A NEWSPAPER publisher in Lagos, west genocidist Nigeria, who recently added Biafra Times to their publishing firm’s titles, has been arrested by police, accused of “sedition”, and had the entire business shut down (saharareporters, Monday 30 January 2017).

Speaking shortly after the arrest, the publisher insisted that they are “not a Biafran member ... I merely cashed in on the situation at hand to make money”. The publisher is adamant:

“I am not aware that my publication is seditious. I only saw it from a commercial point of view. I have not registered the Biafra Times but my sports and politics papers are registered. I started Biafra Times because we discovered that each time we ran Biafra stories on the other papers, we usually had huge sales.

“So, we thought that having a paper with Biafra in its title would attract more money for us. And it worked because we usually print between 6,000 to seven 7,000 copies a week and we sell. The paper is sold at N100 [“n” for naira, genocidist Nigeria currency] per copy but we give vendors at N60.

“I was trying to recoup the money I spent on setting up the printing press. I bought the four printing machines at N2.1 million each.

“That was when I decided to focus on Biafra Times. I am not a Biafran member, I merely cashed in on the situation at hand to make money.”

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*****This Land of the Rising Sun, 280 miles east of the location of this publisher’s close encounter of the theatrical kind! Africa and the rest of the world cannot wait to witness the creative and transformational energy that will be unleashed in Biafra by an African people, building, reconstructing on their land and on their own terms – definitely not an engagement and process seen in Africa for ages... “Morning Yet On Creation Day”, as the Father of African Literature reminds us. (HE-E)*****

Twitter @HerbertEkweEkwe