Libia sì ma povertà in Africa no. L'Italia non mantiene le promesse

Giovedí 11.06.2009 15:33

All’attenzione che l’Italia mostra nei confronti della Libia e del suo leader Muemmer Gaddafi, non corrisponde uguale sollecitudine dei governi di Roma nel sostegno delle popolazioni sahariane che lottano da anni contro la carestia e la fame. Lo stato italiano ha disatteso in modo clamoroso l’impegno preso in modo solenne nel corso della riunione del G7 di Gleneagles del 2005 di incrementare il volume degli aiuti verso la regione suhasahariana.

A condannare l’Italia, ed a giudicare la sua azione questi quattro anni, “un completo fallimento”, è One, l’associazione filantropica che ha tra i sui fondatori Bono e vede tra i suoi sostenitori Bill Gates.

Silvio Berlusconi, anche allora alla guida del Paese, aveva promesso nel maggio del 2006 che entro la fine del 2008 l’ammontare degli aiuti sarebbe arrivato a superare i 5 miliardi di euro, tre miliardi e mezzo di euro in più rispetto al livello precedente. A 6 mesi e mezzo dalla scadenza del termine, One mette in evidenza nel report presentato mercoledì, ha rispettato solo per il 3% l’impegno assunto e non avrebbe alcuna intenzione di colmare il gap, al contrario, l’esecutivo starebbe preparandosi a tagliare ulteriormente lo stanziamento. Il presidente di One, James Drummond, afferma che l’Italia, per altro il Paese che ha in questo momento la presidenza del G8, ha perso completamente la credibilità sui temi della lotta alla povertà.

Nel suo report, l’associazione condanna anche la Francia, che ha disatteso il suo impegno di incrementare gli aiuti a 8,4 miliardi di euro da 3,1 miliardi di euro. Negli ultimi due anni Parigi ha tagliato in modo pesante il flusso degli aiuti con una delle zone dell’Africa con cui ha forti legami storici e culturali dovuti al passato coloniale.

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WHO IS FOOLING WHO?

Awkward photo? There may be more to come as Colonel Gaddafi visits Rome

• John Hooper in Rome
• The Guardian, Thursday 11 June 2009

Silvio Berlusconi welcomes Muammar Gaddafi, who arrived wearing a photo of Omar Mukhtar, a resistance leader against Italian colonialism. Photograph: Alessandro Di Meo/EPA

One of them likes to call himself an "emancipator of women". The other likes women to call him "papi". So when two of the world's most flamboyant and eccentric politicians – the Libyan leader, Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, and Italy's prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi – met yesterday in Rome, women figured large.

The Libyan leader was accompanied by his all-female, 40-strong bodyguard squad, its members dressed in khaki uniforms and red berets. And the schedule for his controversial first visit to Italy included, at his own request, a meeting tomorrow with large numbers of Italian women. Very large numbers.

The plan was for "only" 700. But officials said yesterday that such was the colonel's drawing power the event had had to be moved to a concert hall with a capacity for 1,000.

Berlusconi has had more than a little trouble lately with embarrassing photos. So it must have been with a sinking ­feeling that he watched the Libyan leader descend the aircraft steps with another one pinned to his chest.

The photograph Gaddafi wore to several of the ceremonies on the opening day of his visit did not show young women in underwear by Berlusconi's poolside, let alone a former Czech prime minister in the altogether. But it was discomforting for his hosts all the same: it showed the Libyan resistance leader, Omar Mukhtar, the "Lion of the Desert", on the day before he was hanged by ­Italian colonialists in 1931.

Gaddafi flew in with a 300-strong retinue, on three Airbuses. As ever, he brought with him a giant Bedouin tent, which was erected in a Rome park.

Security for his visit was tight. But that is partly because, while Gaddafi may have bones to pick with Italy, some Italians have bones to pick with him.

Officially yesterday it was all smiles as the colonel praised Italy for having "turned a page on the past". Relations have improved since Berlusconi's ­government agreed last year to pay $5bn (about £3bn) reparations for Italy's ­colonial rule. Italy, Gaddafi said, had "apologised, and that is what allowed me to be able to come here today". But not everyone is happy about the visit. Gaddafi is set to encounter protests over a deal that allows Italian patrols to return would-be migrants, including asylum seekers, to Libyan ports. Yesterday he dismissed claims that the deal prevented asylum seekers from applying for protection, in a way that visibly disconcerted his host, normally a champion of political incorrectness.

"This is one of the lies that is put about," the colonel declared at a joint press conference after his talks with ­Berlusconi. "The Africans do not have problems of political asylum. People who live in the bush, and often in the desert, don't have political problems. They don't have oppositions or majorities or elections."

The Libyan leader, who is also chairman of the African Union, went on: These are things that only people who live in cities know. [Other Africans] don't even have an identity. And I don't mean a political identify; they don't even have a ­personal identity. They come out of the bush and they say: 'In the north, there's money, there's wealth' – and so they go to Libya, and from there to Europe."

According to the UN, an unusually high proportion of the migrants who cross from Libya are ­asylum seekers fleeing wars and disorder. But Gaddafi was having none of it. "Please, don't take seriously this business about political asylum. The idea they are all asylum seekers makes you laugh sometimes."

Gaddafi tries to shame Italians

The Libyan leader turned up in Rome with a photo pinned to his chest, designed to provoke his hosts

By Jack Bremer

FIRST POSTED JUNE 11, 2009

If there was one world leader who could upstage Silvio Berlusconi in terms of embarrassing behaviour it was Colonel Gaddafi of Libya. And yesterday he duly obliged when he arrived in Rome for a state visit, accompanied by his all-female troupe of 40 bodyguards, turned out in khaki uniforms and red berets, and with a special request for a meeting with 700 Italian women.

This is the sort of thing 'Papi' Berlusconi understands, of course, and a concert hall has been booked so that Italian women prominent in the fields of business, politics and culture arts can be assembled for a speech from the Libyan leader.

But what got Berlusconi's goat was that when Gaddafi came down the aircraft steps at Rome's Ciampino airport, he had a photograph pinned to his chest - a black and white picture of the Libyan resistance leader, Omar Mukhtar, the so-called 'Lion of the Desert', taken on the day before he was hanged by the Italians on September 16, 1931.

Gaddafi insisted on wearing the picture to the various state functions he attended on Wednesday, to remind his hosts that Mukhtar had led the guerilla war against Italy's ambition to open up 'The Fourth Shore' in Libya - in effect, to re-establish a Roman Empire in north Africa. Asked by his executioner if he had any last words, Mukhtar replied only: "From Allah we have come, and to Allah we will return."

It was a mystery why Gaddafi felt the provocative photo was necessary, given that one of the purposes of the trip was to shake hands on Berlusconi's recent agreement to pay £3bn in reparations for Italy's colonial rule of Libya from 1911 until the end of World War Two.

Gaddafi praised Berlusconi for having "turned a page on the past". Italy, he said, had apologised and "that is what allowed me to be able to come here today
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Lettera a Gheddafi (giugno 2009)

Al Leader della Gran Giamahiria Araba Libica Popolare Socialista (Per conoscenza, alle e ai rappresentati del governo italiano e dell’Unione europea) Gentile Muammar Gheddafi, noi non facciamo né vogliamo far parte delle 700 donne che lei ha chiesto di incontrare il 12 giugno durante la sua visita in Italia. Siamo, infatti, donne italiane, di vari paesi europei e africani estremamente preoccupate e scandalizzate per le politiche che il suo Paese, con la complicità dell’Italia e dell’Unione europea, sta attuando nei confronti delle donne e degli uomini di origine africana e non, attualmente presenti in Libia, con l’intenzione di rimanervi per un lavoro o semplicemente di transitarvi per raggiungere l’Europa. Siamo a conoscenza dei continui rastrellamenti, delle deportazioni delle e dei migranti attraverso container blindati verso le frontiere Sud del suo paese, delle violenze, della “vendita” di uomini e donne ai trafficanti, della complicità della sua polizia nel permettere o nell’impedire il transito delle e dei migranti. Ma soprattutto siamo a conoscenza degli innumerevoli campi di concentramento, a volte di lavoro forzato, alcuni finanziati dall’Italia, in cui donne e uomini subiscono violenze di ogni tipo, per mesi, a volte addirittura per anni, prima di subire la deportazione o di essere rilasciati/e. Alcune di noi quei campi li hanno conosciuti e, giunte in Italia, li hanno testimoniati. Tra tutte le parole e i racconti che abbiamo fatto in varie occasioni, istituzionali e non, o tra tutte le parole e i racconti che abbiamo ascoltato, scegliamo quelli che anche Lei, insieme alle 700 donne che incontrerà, potrà leggere o ascoltare. Fatawhit, Eritrea : “Il trasferimento da una prigione all’altra si effettuava con un pulmino dove erano ammassate 90 persone. Il viaggio è durato tre giorni e tre notti, non c’erano finestre e non avevamo niente da bere. Ho visto donne bere l’urina dei propri mariti perché stavano morendo di disidratazione. A Misratah ho visto delle persone morire. A Kufra le condizioni di vita erano molto dure (…) Ho visto molte donne violentate, i poliziotti entravano nella stanza, prendevano una donna e la violentavano in gruppo davanti a tutti. Non facevano alcuna distinzione tra donne sposate e donne sole. Molte di loro sono rimaste incinte e molte di loro sono state obbligate a subire un aborto, fatto nella clandestinità, mettendo a forte rischio la propria vita. Ho visto molte donne piangere perché i loro mariti erano picchiati, ma non serviva a fermare i colpi dei manganelli sulle loro schiene. (…) L’unico metodo per uscire dalle prigione libiche è pagare.” (http://www.storiemigranti.org/spip.php?article67). Saberen, Eritrea: “Una volta stavo cercando di difendere mio fratello dai colpi di manganello e hanno picchiato anche me, sfregiandomi il viso. Una delle pratiche utilizzate in questa prigione era quella delle manganellate sulla palma del piede, punto particolarmente sensibile al dolore. Per uscire ho dovuto pagare 500 dollari.” (http://www.storiemigranti.org/spip.php?article67). Tifirke, Etiopia: “Siamo state picchiate e abusate, è così per tutte le donne”. (Dal film “Come un uomo sulla terra”). Siamo consapevoli, anche, che Lei e il suo Paese non siete gli unici responsabili di tali politiche, dal momento che gli accordi da Lei sottoscritti con il governo italiano prevedono ingenti finanziamenti da parte dell’Italia affinché esse continuino ad attuarsi e si inaspriscano nei prossimi mesi e anni in modo da bloccare gli arrivi dei migranti sulle coste italiane; dal momento, inoltre, che l’Unione europea, attraverso le sue massime cariche, si è espressa in diverse occasioni a favore di una maggiore collaborazione con il suo Paese per fermare le migrazioni verso l’Europa. Facciamo presente innanzitutto a Lei, però, e per conoscenza alle e ai rappresentati del governo italiano, alle ministre e alle altre rappresentanti del popolo italiano che Lei incontrerà in questa occasione, così come alle e ai rappresentanti dell’Unione europea, una nostra ulteriore consapevolezza: quella per cui fare parte della comunità umana, composta da donne e uomini di diverse parti del mondo, significa condividere le condizioni di possibilità della sua esistenza. Tra queste, la prima e fondamentale, è che ogni donna, ogni uomo, ogni bambino, venga considerato un essere umano e rispettato/a in quanto tale. Finché tale condizione non verrà considerata da Lei né dalle autorità italiane ed europee noi continueremo a contestare e a combattere le politiche dell’Italia, della Libia e dell’Unione europea che violano costantemente i principi che stanno alla base della sua esistenza e fino a quel momento, quindi, non avremo alcuna voglia di incontrarla ritenendo Lei uno dei principali e diretti responsabili delle pratiche disumane nei confronti di una parte dell’umanità. Firmatarie: Federica Sossi, Alessandra Sciurba, Isabelle Saint-Saens, Glenda Garelli, Anna Simone, Floriana Lipparini, Cristina Papa, Enrica Rigo, Maria VIttoria Tessitore, Barbara Bee, Maddalena Bonelli, Chiara Gattullo, Elisa Coco, Gabriella Ghermandi, Elisabetta Lepore, Barbara D’Ippolito, Paola Meneganti, Anna Maria Rivera, Judith Revel, Vanessa Giannotti, Enza Panebianco, Angela Pallone, Di Lauro Gabriella, Sara Prestianni, Valentina Maddalena, ( per adesioni individuali semir@libero.it ) FONTE

African Diaspora..........History

African Diaspora

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Over a period of almost four centuries, four milion Africans were transported to North America and the Caribbean Islands in the Atlantic slave trade. Captured from their homeland and seperated from their tribes and families they were enslaved in a new world, where all familiar customs were absent. The African diaspora is the story of how Africans, though scattered disperesed, managed to retain their traditions and reform their identities in a new world. Elements of African culture such as religion, language, and folklore endured and were their links to their past lives. In the process of americanization, Africans formed another culture known as Afro-Americans or Creoles.

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Afro-American Culture

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The transatlantic slave trade was the largest forced migration in the world. It created permanent ties between Africa and North America. Africans were shipped from many regions of Africa but mostly from those areas along the coast. The Bantu, along the Guinea coast had largest homogenous culture followed by the Mande, thus the culture of African-Americans was influenced the most by the people of these regions.

In the colonies the economic demand for slaves and the demographics of the slave population had an enormous effect on the developement of Afro-American culture. Never did their exist one Afro-American culture, for each area had a different social, economic, and political relience on slavery, which characterized a unique slave culture. For example, areas that depended on plantation farming such as the deep South and the Chesepeake had a huge number of slaves, while in comparison the North had relitively few slaves. As a result, the southern colonies more frequently imported new African slaves which constantly re-established African traditions. Each area in the colonies had the developement of a specific Afro-American culture.

Though Afro-American culture was specific to each area, there were several general cultural themes that ran throughout the Afro-American population in the colonies, one was religion. Christianinty is an execellent example of how Africans merged their own beliefs with the existing religion, and produced a theology of their own. Christianity spread rapidly throughout the slave communities during the Great Awakening, a surgence of evangelical Christianiy which swept the colonies. This movement illuminated the mystical and magical elements of Christianinty, a side which the Africans could understand and identify with. It is ironic, for white slaveholders originally used Christianinty as a tool to perpetuate obedience and docility in slaves; yet, Africans recognized the hypocrsy in the white's version of Christianity, realizing they were equal in God's eyes. Africans took the tool ment to manipulate them and used Christianinty to give them hope for the future and to strenghten their bonds between one another. While slaves were Christianized and assimilated to white culture they kept elements of their native culture alive.

African Americans blended old style with new when cooking, smithing, woodcarving, storytelling, and gospel singing traditions. Africans added their own spices and cooking style to some pre-existing European dishes. Slaveowners were also influenced by African cooking styles which is an example of the blending of the cultures. Many African traditions were kept alive by placing familiar, symbols (such as the snake) in smithed gates and window frames. The wood that the carver chose played an important role in native culture preservation. This meticulous tradition lead the way for woodcarvers to make canes, statues, and sculptures such as chains, to show the bondage they endured. The carvings were very detailed and had relevance to the family and friends of the woodcarver. Songs that began in the fields of the plantations to pass the work day evolved into a new type of music, gospel. Gospel music combined the themes of salvation and freedom of Christianity with a native style of singing and dancing. These examples show the integration of native culture with traditional european culture.

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Language

In the past the Pigeon English spoken by Africans was seen as proof that Africans were not intelligent enough to learn the English language. Through recent studies, we have learned that in the English spoken by African Americans, ties to African Languages can be traced. The Creole languages like Gullah and Pigeon English, still spoken in parts of the U.S. today, reflect pieces of the African culture that survived slavery, not an inability to learn English.

The English spoken by the slaves was greatly influenced by their native languages. Gullah was influenced by the languages of the Fante, Ga, Kikongo, Kimbundu, Mandinka, Twi, Ewe, Ibo and Yorba. As time went on, the Creole languages (influenced and) were also influenced by the languages of settlers, such as, French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, as well as Native Americans such as theCreek, Cherokee and many others. By mixing parts of the languages spoken around them, African-Americans created a way to express themselves and communicate with others in the "New World."

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

For more specific regional information on the diaspora, refer to:

William D. Pierson. Black Yankees(Boston, 1988)

Charles Joyner. Down by the Riverside(Chiacgo, 1984)

Ira Berlin, "Time, Space, and the Evolution of Afro-American Society on the British Mainland North America"American Historical Review 85, 1(1980)

Joseph E. Holloway, ed. Africanisms in American Culture(Indiana, 1990)

For further information on the diaspora in the Carribean, Brazil, and Latin America refer to:

Michael L. Conniff and Thomas J. Davis, Africans in the Americas(New York, 1994)

For further information on religion refer to:

Albert J. Raboteau, Slave Religion(New York, 1978)

For further information on cultural aspects refer to:

Black People and their Culture, Selected Writings from the African Diaspora,(Washington D.C., 1976)

To learn more about the African Diaspora, here are some cool links:

The roots of Afro-American music can be explored in Native African Music.

Look at Documents of the History of African Descents throughout the World or the Library of Congress

links to brush up on African history.

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