Also published in The Daily Herald of July 5, 2022 (see below)
The St. Eustatius Afrikan Burial Ground Alliance is proud of the fact that Emancipation Day is formally a national holiday in St. Eustatius, Saba and Bonaire. This is still being fought for in the European Netherlands. Yet Emancipation Day 2022 is a day of great worries as well. The day after the visit of the president of Unesco Netherlands, Ms. Kathleen Ferrier, to the burial ground Godet, access to the site was closed. Big rocks have been dumped in front of the graves with bulldozers and filled with sand. “To protect the Godet burial site”, as the government Facebook page claims. But the rocks were placed without the necessary measures to protect the graves, such as protective shielding in between.
Another worrisome fact was that archaeologist Ruud Stelten, found guilty in the SHRC report of malpractice in handling the remains of our ancestors at the Golden Rock site, was putting pressure on members of the Central Committee to convince them to conduct further scientific research on the excavated human remains of our ancestors. How can the governments representatives allow that to happen? Besides the inappropriateness, it is not just for the Committee to decide on this
Ms. Kathleen Ferrier visited the cemeteries on June 1 on invitation of the St. Eustatius Afrikan Burial Ground Alliance. The Alliance wants to enroll the Godet Burial Ground and the Golden Rock Burial Ground in the famous Unesco's Routes of Enslaved People https://en.unesco.org/themes/fostering-rights-inclusion/slave-route
The St. Eustatius Afrikan Burial Ground Alliance emphasizes that we, all Afrikans in the diaspora and especially from St. Eustatius, are the descendant authority, not the government representatives, not the Island Council, not the Central Committee alone, but all of us. This is our heritage. The Alliance will soon present an interim report on these shocking developments that will be presented to the relevant cultural heritage organizations in the Netherlands and internationally.
The St. Eustatius Afrikan Burial Ground Alliance wishes everyone on St. Eustatius a memorable and meaningful Emancipation Day 2022. We are now a free people and we have the right to decide what will happen to the remains and resting places of our ancestors. Everyone who is upset as we are with these developments, we welcome to contact us. Together we have a stronger voice.
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Information for the Editor
Kenneth Cuvalay, President of the “St. Eustatius Afrikan Burial Ground Alliance”
- Phone/WhatsApp St. Eustatius: +599 3194975
- WhatsApp Netherlands +31 6 29014308
- Email: steustatiusafrikanburialground@gmail.com
- Website: https://afrikanhistoryandconsciousness.blogspot.com/ or http://steustatiusafrikanburialground.org/ (as of July 2022)
The St. Eustatius Afrikan Burial Ground Alliance is a movement that protests the excavations of Afrikan free and enslaved Afrikans at an 18th-century Afrikan burial ground in St. Eustatius (see https://www.change.org/LeaveOurAncestorsInPeace). The protests started in April 2022 and were initially led by the political party Ubuntu Connected Front Caribbean. Located in St. Eustatius and with allies around the world, the St. Eustatius Afrikan Burial Ground Alliance broadened the scope of the struggle focusing on other Afrikan burial grounds in St. Eustatius such as the Afrikan Burial Ground Godet Plantation St. Eustatius (Godet/Fort Amsterdam). One of the aims is to further broaden the scope of our struggle to the Pan-Afrikanism level, connecting with and working with Afrikan-centered organizations and movements that are also fighting for the preservation of our ancestors’ endangered Afrikan burial grounds around the world and taking control of our narrative that has been distorted.
Afrika is spelled with a “k” instead of a “c” based on the following insights:
- It is a Pan-Afrikan spelling which relates both to the Afrikan continent and to the Diaspora;
- It reflects the spelling of “Afrika” in all Afrikan languages;
- It includes the concept of “ka”, the vital energy which both sustains and creates.
About Ubuntu Connected Front (UCF)
Ubuntu Connected Front is a political party in the Netherlands founded in 2017. It participated in the 2021 Parliamentary election and although it did not receive enough votes to win a seat in the House of Representatives, it was the most popular party in St. Eustatius, receiving 50,8% of the votes. Motto: “Equality is a human right, not a privilege”. UCF focuses on equal rights for people of Afrikan descent.
Ubuntu means "humanity" in Afrikan Bantu languages. It is often translated as "I am because we are", or "humanity towards others". It is Ubuntu Connected Front’s core belief that all people have rights, which promotes equality of treatment and eliminates marginalization and deprivation.
Black Agenda. The 'Black Agenda' of Ubuntu Connected Front (UCF) can be found in the "Manifest for NL Transformation" at the UCF website (Chapter 5).
The Black Agenda consists of three pillars:
1. Recognition concerns the impact of our slavery past as a crime against humanity.
2. Justice is about historical restoration of rights.
3. Development aims to achieve equal development opportunities for people of Afrikan descent throughout the diaspora meaning “Equality is a human right, not a privilege”.
Article in The Daily Herald of July 5, 2022
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