Accra, Aug. 30, GNA – Vice President Aliu Mahama on Monday described the slave trade as a black hole in history and said it had influenced global development and human rights in today’s world. According to him, the difficulty in also placing the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade in world history was closely linked to the problems of understanding and explaining the historical origins of the contemporary world economic order.
Speaking at the opening of a four-day international conference on the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, which is on the theme, “Landmarks, legacies and expectations,” the Vice President said: “Indeed, the repercussions of horror and suffering engendered by slave raids, wars, and devastation cannot be described adequately in words.”
The conference marks part of the proclamation of 2004 as the international year to mark the struggle against slavery and its abolition by the United Nations General Assembly.
Scholars, researchers, representatives from the West Africa sub-region, Africans in the Diaspora and other participants from Africa, Europe and America are attending the conference organised by the Ministry of Tourism and Modernisation of the Capital City, in collaboration with UNESCO.
Research papers are expected to be presented, which would bring to the fore the truth surrounding the horrors of slavery to serve as a basis for the charting of a future, which would bring about reconciliation, healing and forgiveness.
The Vice President said: “The true story of the slave trade can no longer be suppressed or swept under the carpet.”
“While we still search for the truth, we should at the same time, attempt to find the medicine to heal the deep wounds and scars that have been inflicted by the slave trade.”
He said Ghana supported UNESCO’s quest for a “healing process that would mollify the bitterness among Africans and people of African descent”.
“The only way to heal the wounds of this unparalleled tragedy is to ensure that we avoid its recurrence in any form.”
The Vice President tasked the participants and the organisers to disseminate the outcome of the conference through publications, seminars and teaching programmes in schools in order to place the slave trade in context to help improve upon human rights in the communities.
He said the forum should serve to draw attention to a new form of slavery, which had emerged in the form of abduction of women and children into foreign lands to engage in forced and degrading labour.
He also called for the reintegration and relocation of Africans in the Diaspora to the motherland, saying Ghana would lead the way through the African Union, the New Partnership for Africa’s Development and the ECOWAS.
This, he said, was for the adoption of a common approach in “inviting our brothers and sisters in the Diaspora to relocate to their roots”.
Mrs Elizabeth Moundo, UNESCO Representative in Ghana, said the conference should discuss the modern forms of slavery, which were closely linked to sex slavery and human trafficking.
Mr Arie Van Der Wiel, the Netherlands Ambassador to Ghana, said the Dutch and Ghana government were working on strengthening their common past through the establishment of a cultural heritage policy framework signed in May this year.
He said the principal aim of the policy was to foster the sustainable “preservation of the mutual cultural heritage in Ghana and the Netherlands”.
