La Gran Bretagna si astiene dal voto chiave delle Nazioni Unite per riconoscere la schiavitù come “il crimine più grave contro l’umanità”

The headline neglects the part where it turns out it’s just yet another bid to get money out of the west. We didn’t sign it because it would sign us up for paying out a load of money we don’t actually have, unless we’re willing to accept big budget cuts and higher taxes to pay for it.

If they want reparations for the Slave trade. We want paying for using our Navy to end it

Its one of but not the gravest crime against humanity.

And getting exclusivley western nations to pay up is beyond hypocritical.

The Independent is awful with its misleading, clickbaity headlines. The first two sentences of the article show what a nothing burger this story is in reality:

*The UN General Assembly has formally recognised the trafficking of enslaved Africans as “the gravest crime against humanity,” while also calling for reparations to address historical injustices.*

*The resolution, passed on Wednesday, additionally urges the “prompt and unhindered restitution” of cultural artefacts – including artworks, monuments, and national archives – to their countries of origin without charge.*

I wouldn’t have supported this nonsense either. All slavery is wicked, whatever the time or the continent. And paying reparations, where all the villains and monsters are long, long dead, is not happening. Ever.

Its good to understand the complexities of our history so we can strive to better and not make the same mistakes as the people before us.

But in the same part; this really is just virtue signaling. We do not charge someone’s child when there father has committed a crime. Why should we have to pay for something we had no control over.

It’s an oversimplification but it feels equivalent of asking a nation like Mongolia to pay reparations for the damage Genghis Khan did to other nations.

I see the UN is doing its best to reduce its influence and importance by encouraging even more countries to totally ignore it.

I actually want them to proceed with this. Lets open this up and have a honest conversation about it. And don’t just talk about the Atlantic Slave Trade, but how about all slavery is the ‘gravest crime against humanity.’

Then, when we start to talk reparations, we have an open and honest conversation about it. That includes slavery committed by all countries, and about those who benefitted from slavery in all countries throughout history, and how they need to pay for it. You know, like the African tribes who sold their men into slavery of their own free will.

This includes slavery that is still committed today by many countries who have been the most vocal about this. It is estimated that there are 7 million slaves in Africa today.

Unless, of course, those slaves are somehow lesser than the slaves in the Atlantic Slave Trade that we managed to crush in probably the single biggest action to actually tackle the slave trade in history.

This is such an unhelpful headline, and the vote itself is just…weird. The UK was right to abstain (or reject it).

It’s not just ‘slavery’, which would be one thing, it’s specifically Transatlantic slavery. Creating a hierarchy of crimes against humanity serves no purpose, and it lessens the seriousness of all the other cases of slavery, past and present (or victims of genocide or any number of other atrocities). Millions of people continue to live as slaves today, or in conditions that aren’t technically slavery, but effectively slavery. Including, and *especially,* in the countries that voted for this motion, i.e. much of the Middle East and West/North Africa.

I happen to support returning of looted artefacts, and I support international aid, which the UK does a lot of. However, there’s no sensible way of calculating a specific figure of what is owed in the form of reparations, nor who owes what to who. It’s also highly questionable, given the legacy of bilateral aid, whether we’d see meaningful development as a result.

I say this as a black person, there is no single gravest crime against humanity. There are things which are the epitome of evil, and that includes the Atlantic Slave Trade (which was different to other forms of slavery up until that point so it’s not comparable). I don’t like this whole competition on who has suffered the most. Humans have done so much evil shit in the last 200,000 years; it’s impossible and incredibly unhelpful to try and powerscale trauma

Italy looks around the EU parliament at all the countries occupied by the Romans and says “Don’t even think about it!”

You cannot have reparations without targeting those who sold the slaves. And Africa receives approximately 60 billion annually in foreign aid from western nations. It just doesn’t seem fair to pay reparations to countries and people who are already receiving massive amounts of money, and imo western countries will be less likely to provide aid if they have to pay reparations

We took out the largest loan ever taken out to end slavery and only finished paying it in 2015.

We’ve certainly done more than most to end it.

I don’t really get the notion of atrocity Olympics. Slavery was abhorrent, so was the Holocaust, Pol Pot, the holodomor, Stalin, the Japanese conquest of China and Korea, the American treatment of Native peoples….and countless other acts of barbarism current day and historical

Quantifying which was the worst seems strangely insulting as it implies some were ‘better’

1. It wasn’t slavery, it was specifically the trans-atlantic slave trade, modern slavery, and the many cultures and civilisations that have, are and will enslave were left out, it’s just the West that’s evil.
2. It states it was the single most abhorrent event in human history, firstly, it wasn’t the largest enslavement, longest, etc. I believe Korea holds the record for the longest unbroken chain of slavery (pun un-intended). But holy subjectiveness! Would you say the genocide of millions, the experimentation on live subjects or the testing of explosives on pregnant women was less abhorrent? It’s just so stupid to discuss in that light.
3. It demands reparations (It’s a cash grab), which leaves out the inconvenient truth of who sold the slaves to Europe and America, and conveniently again, the countries that have and continue to enslave.

It’s a cynical cash-grab, nothing more. African states want a free check. None of this is to downplay the horrors of the British Empire slave trade, but if we actually roll out reparations for the sins of the past, how far back we going? Are we just going to exchange cash in a circle for all of history?

If I was a slave today, in the worst slave trade in human history (which covers a huge amount of ground), I’d be offended by this shit.

Did they use digital devices to cast the votes? Wonder where the minerals and components used came from?

Slavery.

Completely agree with this abstention. If not for the optics, I’d prefer us to vote against it

First up, let me be clear that I’m completely against slavery

But with that said

1. The idea of declaring things about something that happened hundreds of years ago like this is performative nonsense
2. Declaring one genocide as being worse than another is ridiculous
3. It’s mostly an attempt to extract money from Europe and the USA to Africa … not even to the people who were actually trafficked to the US/Caribbean as slaves
4. I’m fundamentally against the principle of “the child paying for the sins of the father” (or rather, great great great great grandchild and great great great great grandfather)
5. My g.g.g.g. grandparents were poor working class types and had absolutely fuck all to do with slavery. The same is true for almost all the taxpayers who would fund this nonsense

The whole idea is ridiculous. Not one person alive today had ANYTHING to do with Africans being taken to the Americas as slaves. It sucks that it happened but it’s nothing to do with any of us

If they wanna sue the wealthy direct descendants of slaveowners for damages then that’s for the courts to decide, but even that’s tenuous as shit