When a man or woman is captured and forced into slavery, do they forever yearn for freedom? When a person is born captive, born a slave, do they know any different? Do they yearn freedom?
When a person is born free, free to speak, free to worship, free to travel and roam, do they even think of the enslaved? Do they even consider it wrong? Or do all these people except that what they have is what they are.
How many people care about the plight of others? How many consider a persons destiny other than their own? How many people consider it wrong to enslave another, to capture the body and mind of another? How many are willing to help someone who is enslaved to break his or her bondage?
How many care that in their own house, own village, own country, there are people who are not free?
How many care that young boys, little boys, are sold into bondage to dirty nasty old men in Africa and Middle East to use as perverted sex objects, to bugger and rip savagely apart in that very act?
How many care that young girls, little girls are sold into bondage to dirty nasty old men to be used as perverted sex objects, to rape and rip savagely apart in that very act? How many care that girls are sold into bondage and forced to work in brothels, becoming riddled with disease and recipients of AIDS, only to be murdered when they can no longer work.
How many care that full-grown men are being sold into bondage by Africans to Arabs, castrated and sold and imprisoned in rich men’s households? How many care that Africans are being sold in Africa and the Middle East as house slaves?
How many care that African priests hold dozens of young girls in enslavement for them to use as sex objects, and house and field slaves, gifted by their parents in the belief it will favour them with that which they worship?
This is not yesterday that we are referring to, all these things are happening in 2013, and its getting worse because of lack of compassion and action by our Caribbean governments.
None of our many government ministers and their politically appointed reparations committees cares a damn about what is happening today. Why? Because they can get no political mileage from it; they cannot use it as an election tool; they cannot enslave the minds of their followers with a fight against slavery today. They know that they can make a call for reparations, promise some of their followers $200,000 each and know that it will launch them on the re-election trail, with the enslavement of the ignorant mind.
IT’S TODAY THAT IS IMPORTANT, NOT YESTERDAY. IF OUR COUNTRIES ARE NOT PERFORMING WELL, IT’S NOT BECAUSE OUR ANCESTERS WERE SLAVES. IT’S BECAUSE TODAY’S POLITICIANS HAVE WRECKED OUR ECONOMIES AND NOW WANT US TO RE-ELECT THEM ON PRETENCE THAT SLAVERY DAMAGED US. IT DID NOT. IT’S TODAY’S POLITICIANS THAT HAVE DAMAGED US. TO TELL US WE ARE DAMAGED PEOPLE IS UNTRUE AND IN ITSELF WILL CAUSE DAMAGE TO SOME. SOME MAY EVEN BELIEVE THIS DASTARDLY LIE, A LIE PUT FORWARD TO EXTORT MONEY FROM THE VERY PEOPLE WHO ARE OUR PROSPECTIVE TOURISTS AND FRIENDS.
Peter Binose
Self appointed keeper of the whistle
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