Yesterday, a Declaration of the trafficking of enslaved Africans and Racialized Chattel Enslavement of Africans as the Gravest Crime against Humanity was voted at UNO. As usual, Israel and the USA voted against. How did your country vote? Any thoughts about it?
Yet again the genocide of first nations peoples/aboriginals is kind of forgotten. All crimes on a massive scale should be remembered by the international community and when one is elevated as the worst I fear that it will incentivise forgetting of the others and potential rascism clash poits.
Abstaining means no in my book
I don’t know it can either mean political cowardice or a political compromise. None of those options are meant to be flattering but to me, if the vote was close I would have been angrier about an abstention.
“against :3” they’re using that emote in UN votes now?
So Serbia is the only European country with balls?
Maybe Turkey’s balls are located east of the Bosporus strait
Turkiye also voted in favor. I get the reservation, but it’s EU.
Well Turkie has notoriously independent politics despite being in NATO(and EU candidate lol) so no surprise here at all.
Fair.
Proudly in favor
If you know the us votes against anyways, why abstain?
For! And would you look at that… Practically all of europe abstaining, color me shocked (¬_¬)
Also… Argentina? YUCK! Sadly not a surprise either.
If you know who Milei is the Argentina vote makes sense.
I got 3 things to say on this:
If the vote was to recognize it as the worst thing humanity has done, I’d vote against. I feel like there are a couple other things that were even worse. Even only considering enslavement, out of all of history, I would have reservations against saying this was the absolute worst of it.
Every country that abstained was just against it, and didn’t have the balls to vote it.
Yeah, the US is an asshole. They’re screwing it all up across the globe and they’re also why Cuba is still fucked. Eat the rich.
As bad as African slavery was, I kinda agree with you that it might not actually be the worst thing humans have done to each other.
Specifically, how many native populations were genocided by colonizers the world over?
Or hitler killing like 6 million unarmed Jews, or the other slave trades that lasted far longer, or the terrible human experiments Japan did to people during ww2, or when hundreds of black people were blocked from having their syphilis cured for 50 years because scientists just wanted to see what happens, or the tons of times entire cities would be raped and pillaged and taken over with no male child left alive… I mean, there’s been so many atrocious acts done by humanity… To actually vote and say this was the worst one is just tacky.
Considering that the death toll caused by the triangle trade is estimated to be between 6 million and 60 million Africans with a general consensus of ~17 million, I think you may need to re-evaluate just how brutal it was.
Many people will point out correctly that Africa already had a slave trade structure before America and Europe got involved; but the fact is the Western slavery was far worse than the slavery in Africa. For example, the fact that slaves’ children were born into slavery was uniquely American slavery. Basically, African nations did not dehumanize their slaves, and it’s incredible what brutal things humans can do to each other the moment one side doesn’t view the other side as thinking human beings, but rather cattle to be done with as they please.
Study more history. This isn’t the thing with the most dead, the most raped, or the most cruelty, or the longest lasting. It was really fucked up, sure. But the worst thing humanity has ever done?
Hell… Religion might be the worst thing humanity has ever done.
Abstention might as well be an against vote
Here’s the map of the vote to really drive the point home.
It’s always the same map
USA I made a little poem
Our president is child Making our reputation be defiled Seen as a big whiny bully While hiding his crimes obscurely
Trump is just confirming the reputation US already had
wtf ireland, sweden, ukraine, united kingdom, canada, japan, iceland, hungary?
Abstaining feels like it is just as bad as voting no.
what do you think is weird about ukraine lol? https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FkDakZLWAAEnkyy?format=jpg&name=4096x4096
Not sure what a blacked out vote means, but tons of countries voted in ways I don’t agree with on this one too, so not sure why anyone should be singled out (my original point, call out collectively the failures).
sorry, lemmy was giving me issues uploading the image so i copied the wrong link, this is the one
Yeah, thats not a great look, but I also understand that since 2014 Ukraine has been in a war for its very existence with Russia, and that some neo nazi groups have done a lot of the fighting and dying for them.
I do not condone neo nazis, but I also understand Ukraine’s position not to shit on some of their best war fighters during a war for existence.
Its a complicated issue, and I think I would feel a stark difference had Ukraine been the aggressor, or had a repressive government (both things Russia is).
I believe that Ukraine will have to reckon with this if they survive the war, just like all countries will have to reckon with the far-right groups gaining traction and power in their countries.
It’s more that those in the Donbass region have been fighting a war for their own existence against Kiev since 2014. Kiev has far more Nazis than a few small bands.
Everyone should have voted no. The African enslavement was really fucked up, but “the worst human attrocity in history, ever”? The world has done some really, really, fucked up things. I don’t really even know why this particular slavery would be picked out from the other slaves over thousands of years except that is was pretty recent and large scale. Why is the world even voting on this shit while on the verge of world war three, while it seems that half the rich elites running the governments are pedophiles?
Yeah no my understanding has evolved based on the skim of the article and the actual wording becoming more clear - didn’t think they were going for champions of all time when I initially reacted.
I was surprised to see all the nordics abstaining from voting (really, almost all of Europe). I would say that abstaining is a long-shot from voting “no”, especially if you see it as overwhelmingly likely that this will go through without your vote. Voting no is explicitly stating that you’re against the formulation, while voting yes is saying that you’re explicitly for it. Abstaining can indicate that you are (for example) for the intent, but have reservations about the specific wording. In that case, you may not want to stop the declaration from going through, but still want to signal that you have reservations and don’t want to unequivocally support it.
Yeah in a parliamentarian position I guess abstention is different from saying no, especially when the legislation has the votes.
But I guess what I was trying to articulate is that it feels like they are respecting? the no votes by abstaining, IE not contradicting.
This feels like a serious cop out on an issue as absurdly black and white as actual Chattel slavery.
Edit: Good point though about reservations on the text, we don’t know what it said, although that defense can also apply to the No’s as well, which is why I shied away from it.
What we do know is that the full title includes “as the Gravest Crime against Humanity” and I can fully respect countries having reservations against that when there are other similarly horrible crimes. I don’t know why Germany abstained but I figure that some people might be pretty angry at them if they declared the slave trade was worse than the holocaust.
Yeah the wording there seems odd. Why do we have to specify that its the greatest? There are plenty of terrible crimes to go around, and it seems a bit off to make it a competition as to which one was the worst. Plus, we probably don’t even know about most crimes against humanity because they happened in e.g. ancient Mesopotamia wheres no records were kept
I think scale is the issue.
Basically, it was legal to rape, murder and/or kidnap Africans. It was so profitable that the main slave dealers were African tribes/nations who would sell their prisoners of war to the slave trade - thus encouraging more war and more slavery.
Estimates of African deaths (on the low side) are double that of the Holocaust.
This went on for 400 years. (Nazi power lasted only about 12 years by comparison.)
And even to this day, the African slave trade is responsible for much of the racism and division we see. So, yeah, slave trade shaped our world in many ways.
Also, they could rape their slaves, so they could have more slaves to trade and exploit. I’m not sure if that number, twice the Holocaust, is correct for deaths. Wikipedia says that 12 - 12.8 million Africans were successfully trafficked to the Americas, as records show. This is only the recorded number, and it doesn’t take into account the descendants of 350 years of surviving.
Absolutely fair for them, I guess. I do think it’s objectively the worst thing that ever happened as even some countries in the EU seem to back, and it’s not even close. That doesn’t mean other terrible things were perpetrated by the same kind of people.
yup, the reason I left them off my initial list of call outs precisely.
Edit: Curious if any grammar pros have an thoughts on the statement specifically, what is implied by it? Does it mean gravest of all time? Gravest currently occurring? Those are my concerns and things we / (I) don’t precisely know from the context of this post.
I skimmed over the full text earlier, it gives reasons for why it was the gravest crime against humanity, and in general did seem like it meant the gravest that ever happened (that we know of at least).
It also mentions (and really is about) reparations which I suspect mightve influenced the abstains even more than the assertion that it was the gravest crime. Easier to weasel yourself out of doing anything/keep reparations low if you can say you never really voted yes on that.
See this is the meat of it, great points, thanks for doing the hard work!
Good insight. That is more to consider than initial thoughts.
Lemmy doesn’t understand three states. You’re either with us or you’re a literal Nazi paedophile.
Europe kind of had its own grave “crime against humanity” thanks to Mr Hitler, so perhaps that has a bearing?
Or perhaps not - I’m not sure what scoring such things really achieves.
Europe in general just abstaining. Mostly.
It really feels like standing their ground on past “glories” to me.
I think it’s more about not paying financial compensations for their involvement in slavery and their enrichment with it. One could use the vote “yes” as a legal argument to pursue compensation.
They could have acknowledged it at least. Maybe it could be a first step to treat their black population with the respect they deserve for literally building their cities.
Acknowledged? It’s always been acknowledged. This was a vote to say it was the single worst thing ever done by humanity… Ever.
This. Not the slave trades that lasted far longer, or any of the wars or rapings or genocides or slaughtering of children or ww2 human experiments or anything else. It was a vote to say that this one thing was the shittiest thing humanity has ever done.
Yes, exactly. Your point being?
You’re a bit of a dumb one, eh?
Maybe it’s in my genes. Wouldn’t you say?
Or how exactly paying those financial compensations would work.
Why is that surprising? Ireland is sometimes better, I would suppose, but Sweden, Ukraine, UK, Canada, Japan, Iceland, and Hungary are all pretty damn right-wing and pro-imperialist.
because us liberals idolize other western countries as enlighted white paradises
Checks out.
Sweden, Ukraine, UK, Canada, Japan, Iceland, and Hungary are all pretty damn right-wing and pro-imperialist.
What an absolutely preposterous statement.
gringo otroletravaladna
How so? All are dictatorships of capital that rely on exploiting the global south, or play a role as a vassal state for imperialist countries.
How tf do Ukraine and Hungary exploit the global south?
yeah i dont its not like ewwwwrope in general is connected to the usonian war machine, yes you are right if things are not 2 + 2 they must not be real, it’s not like there is a complex mechanism designed specifically to mechanize atrocities and commodify them yes you are right im sorry.
Ukraine is more of a vassal than one of the bigger imperialists, it’s used similarly to how Israel is by the US Empire. It’s itself being harvested for rare Earth minerals and shackled with tons of debt while at the same time being used to attack enemies of the west. Hungary is both a NATO and EU member state, it’s firmly on the side of the imperialist system.
Imperialism essentially is monopoly capitalism at its most developed stage, turned international. In the modern day, the US Empire is at the helm of this, with the EU and other NATO countries being used to protect this system of international extraction. By being in NATO, Hungary plays a part in defending this system, and by being in the EU, it benefits from imperialist spoils.
the thread on .world about this one is pretty gross.
I wonder why…
the UK:
I guess there is some good in Serbistan.
Need to make sure it stays that way.
