{{A Sierra Leonean Government official has proposed legal action against Spain to demand reparation over 1839 slavery incident.}}
Information and Communication minister Alpha Kanu, who is also government spokesman, was quoted suggesting the Spanish government should pay for the capture and trafficking of Sierra Leoneans as slaves in an incident which led to the famous rebellion and commandeering of the La Amistad.
This happened some 164 years ago, and it inspired the Steven Spielberg film, Amistad.
It represents one of the most significant moments in Sierra Leone`s transatlantic slave trade history.
The famous Spanish slave ship was transporting the Africans captured in Sierra Leone when Sengbe Pieh, probably the most famous Sierra Leonean slave, led the historic revolt that saw the seizure of the ship.
Although their effort to sail back to Africa was foiled by their captors, the slaves ended up in what is now the US city of New Haven where they were eventually freed following a landmark court case.
Former US President John Quincy Adams, an ardent anti-slavery campaigner, represented the so-called ‘Amistad Africans’ when the 1841 US Supreme Court hearing declared their capture “illegal”.
Only 35 of them had survived and were freed and returned to Sierra Leone.
{{Crime}}
The Amistad Committee was set up 25 years ago, dedicated to keeping the legacy of the ‘Amistad Revolt’ alive.
Friday was the 25th anniversary of that committee and the Sierra Leone minister was a keynote speaker at the event.
He said because the slaves were captured after Britain and the US had banned slave trade, the act of the captors amounted to “crime against humanity.”
“New Haven and Sierra Leone have a right to ask the Spanish Government to pay reparations for the injustice done to our people…Why shouldn’t we ask?” Mr Kanu said.
He added that any reparation money was to go to the Sierra Leone Government, the people of New Haven, and living relatives of the former captives.
The same minister in 2008, while representing President Ernest Bai Koroma in a similar occasion in the same city, apologized for the role Africans played in the slave trade.
He said then it was Africans who captured fellow Africans and sold them off to Europeans.
“We were the cause” and “for once I think someone should apologize,”
he stated then in front of the Amistad statue erected in honor of six of the slaves who died in New heaven.
NMG
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