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Blacks face 'systematic discrimination', entitled to reparations: Analyst

Abayom Azikiwe said African Americans are entitled to reparations from the US government for their suffering during and after the era of slavery.

The high rate of police killings and poverty among African Americans indicates “systematic discrimination and national oppression” of blacks and they are entitled to reparations from the US government, an African-American journalist in Detroit says.

“If you look at the number of police killings that have been taking place just over the last several years, if you look at the impact of the economic downturn on African Americans, if we look at the high rate of unemployment and poverty among African Americans, it clearly points to systematic discrimination and national oppression,” said Abayomi Azikiwe, editor at the Pan-African News Wire.

“The US goes round the world through the State Department and proclaims itself to be the paragon of the human rights campaign throughout the world, but as we look at the actual information that is submitted to the United Nations, it clearly points to the opposite direction,” Azikiwe said in a phone interview with Press TV on Tuesday.

Experts from the United Nations have warned that African Americans in the US were facing a "human rights crisis" and they should receive reparations for slavery.

The US had not yet confronted its legacy of "racial terrorism," which has largely been fueled by impunity for police officers who have killed a number of black men across the country in recent months, according to the UN working group on people of African descent.

Those police killings "and the trauma they create are reminiscent of the past racial terror of lynchings," said the report, which was presented to the UN Human Rights Council on Monday.

The UN experts also expressed concern about the "legacy of colonial history, enslavement, racial subordination and segregation, racial terrorism and racial inequality."

"There has been no real commitment to reparations and to truth and reconciliation for people of African descent," the report said.

Azikiwe said African Americans are "entitled to reparations from the US government" for their suffering during and after the era of slavery. “The US government should no longer be able to avoid this question in international bodies,” he said.

“The United States should be brought before the United Nations Human Rights Commission and other United Nations bodies, including the Security Council, over the issue of their treatment of African Americans in the United States.”


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