THE HISTORIES OF ATROCITIES page 7

          AND THE FORMULATION OF THE ELITIST'S PRINCIPLES , TO ENGINEER THE  DECIMATION OF THE HUMAN FAMILY, TO BRING IN THE NEW WORLD ORDER, AND OR TO PREPARE THE EVACUATION OF  THIS PENAL COLONY WE CALL EARTH, 

Biko Day Links African Genocide and Asian Workers Rights
The crisis of genocide in the African nation-state Sudan and the plight of corporate slavery and fear of job loss by mostly female textile workers in the Asian country of Bangladesh became the focus of the 6th Annual Commemoration of Bantu Stephen Biko’s martyrdom and the future agenda of Azania Heritage International.

Steve Biko’s life ended in 1977 when he was beaten to death by thugs of the apartheid regime. (Another sentence about who he was, before this sentence). The commemoration was a historic occasion to focus on the issues of African genocide in Sudan, Uganda and Somalia as well as the plight of textile workers in Bangladesh who function as corporate slaves for US-based apparel companies that make obscene private profits off of the workers’ labor. 

This event was organized by Azania Heritage International (AHI) to re-affirm the unfinished Biko and Black Consciousness agenda: African peoples and their allies’ quest for a true humanity without political oppression or economic exploitation based on race, nationality, gender, religious or sexual orientation, said Mongezi Sefika wa Nkomo, a comrade and organizer with Steve Biko in the Black Consciousness Movement of Azania (BCMA) inside and outside of South Africa.

Professor Dennis Brutus of the University of Pittsburgh Africana Studies Department emphasized that Biko was far more visionary and inclusive in his definition of “Black” than were many other South African activists affiliated with the African National Congress (ANC) at the time. While the ANC was exclusively “African” in ethnic membership, with allies in a coalition known as the Congress Alliance made up of the Colored Peoples’ Congress, the Indian Congress, the White Congress of the Democrats and the ANC, “Biko de-legitimized ethnic and racial separations of ‘Coloreds,’ ‘Indians’ and ‘Africans’ and ideologically redefined Black as ‘beyond skin deep,’” said Brutus. 

Nkomo added that Africans such as Chief Gatsha Buthelezi, Jonas Savimbi, Mobutu Sese Seko, Judge Clarence Thomas, Colin Powell and Condoleeza Rice, “cannot be classified as non-whites as they are mere apologists of a white reactionary, right wing fundamentalist political agenda of economic exploitation and imperialism over African peoples and other people of color at home and abroad.”

It was in this context that AHI decided to be part of the No Sweatshop Bucco Campaign for workers of the Third World’s labor and human rights. 

At the event, attendees also decided that a major localized publicity drive and direct action campaign has to be mobilized through African American community leadership in the areas of academia, community, labor and student activism. This steering committee has named itself the Pittsburgh Activists, Academics, Faith-based and Student Organizers against Genocide in Africa (PAAFSOGA) and will operate out of the African Continental Advocacy Program of Azania Heritage International, an affiliate project of the Thomas Merton Center for peace and justice.

- Azania Heritage Information Committee