Rael categorizes London Mayor's apology for city's role in transatlantic slave trade as woefully inadequate. Rael, founder and leader of the International Raelian Movement, classified as inadequate the recent apology given by London's Mayor Ken Livingstone for the city's role in the trans-Atlantic slave trade.
In speaking of the city's role in the slave trade, an emotional Mayor Livingstone said, "The city of London was still tainted by it." The contrite mayor added as he pointed to the skyscrapers of the financial district, "You can look across there to see the institutions that still have the benefit of the wealth created out of slavery. As mayor, I offer an apology on behalf of London and its institutions for their role in the trans-Atlantic slave trade."
Rael categorized the Mayor's comments as being "good … but not enough! … all countries which took part and benefited from the slave trade should pay a heavy compensation to Africans….Forgiveness is possible only if there is a reparation as painful as the crime was to the victims, even if non-violent and merely financial".
In addition to the numerous skyscrapers in London's financial district, the slave economy's profits created many wealthy elites and paid for impressive projects such as the cathedral-like library of All Souls College in Oxford, the grandiose Royal Crescent in Bath and the enormous West India docks in
London. The Royal Bank of Scotland and the Barclay brothers were involved in the slave trade from as early as 1756. These are only a few of the many European institutions that have established their empires as a direct benefit of the trans-Atlantic slave trade.
In the US, JP Morgan Chase & Co., the second most important bank has also acknowledged its active participation in the slave trade, so did Brown University, the US 7 th oldest University, said Dr Dodo, Raelian bishop from African origin living in the US.
Rael went further and said that "all the wealth and fortunes built on slavery should be seized and given to the descendants of the slaves and to the countries where they were abducted from… plus an equal amount of money being paid as damages by the countries having harbored slave traders!"
Emma Reyes
www.raelpress.org
Image Courtesy of Wikipedia
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