Slave Descendents File a Genocide
Lawsuit against Anglo-American
Companies
LEMONDE.FR | 30.03.04 | 10h06 (Translated from French)
According to the plaintiffs, this is the first lawsuit filed by slave
descendents whose genealogy tree allows to going back in that period.
After the Holocaust and Apartheid, slavery is on a New York judge's desk with the complaint lodged
Monday 30th for genocide by ten slave descendents vs. three big British and American companies.
The lawsuit is against the British insurer Lloyds, the American bank Fleet Boston, and the tobacco
company R. J. Reynolds, all accused of having contributed to the slavery commerce, said attorney Edward
Fagan, who represents those descendents of slaves disembarked on American soil in the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries.
The Manhattan federal court's judges, Lewis Kaplan and Gabriel Gorenstein, henceforth must examine the
admissibility of the legal proceedings.
According to the plaintiffs - Americans of Nigerian, Ghanian and Sierra Loenean origins - Lloyds insured
ships transporting slaves, Fleet Boston funded the slavery exploitation, and Reynolds "bought" slaves for
its fields.
"Since eight years, all victim groups throughout the world, except one, had their moment before
justice - the Jews had their moment in court, the Japanese had their moment, the Korean had their
moment?" Mr. Fagan pointed out during a press conference. Fagan won in 1998 a decision that several
Swiss banks pay about $1.25 billion (?1.03 billion) to the World Jewish Congress in the holocaust victims'
accounts case.
The lawyer also defended South-Africans who accused companies of having done business with their
country under the Apartheid regime. "The only group remaining includes Africans and African
Americans", he added.
WRECKED IDENTITY
This is not the first time slavery towards the United States is subject of a court action. According to Mr.
Fagan, this instead is the first legal complaint lodged by descendents of victims whose genealogy tree
allows to going back to that period. "Today we have DNA. And each one of these individuals can say
from where she/he comes from in Africa precisely, we can say which ship was insured by Lloyds,
which ship was financed by Fleet Boston and the individual who was at Reynolds", the lawyer
clarified.
For a complainant, Antoinette Harrell-Miller, there is no prescription: "I am talking about personal injuries.
I have never stopped wondering about my land, on which is my people." "Words cannot say what we went
through as a people", adds another complainant, Queen Mother Delois Blakely, who demands
"compensations, compensations, compensations".
These "companies, with the U.S. government, have destroyed our identity", Deadria
Farmer-Paellman agrees. For Mr. Fagan, they "have attempted to destroy people's communities,
language, the culture of people who were doomed to become slaves", hence the core legal
proceedings of "genocide".
As of this moment, the companies implicated have not reacted to the complaint.
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©2003 The African Independent, Inc.