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?
Please read the declaration before responding to this ragebait post
By all means. Here it is. After reading, please feel free to come back and comment. I find this point interesting:
Calls for the prompt and unhindered restitution of cultural properties, objets d’art, monuments, museum pieces, artefacts, manuscripts and documents, and national archives that are of spiritual, historical and cultural or other value to countries of origin without charge, and urges the strengthening of international cooperation on reparations for any damage done, recognizing that this leads to the promotion of nations.
These people! How dare them to claim back what’s theirs!?
Abstaining means against 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.
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.
It’s not. Most of the nations that suffered this crimes voted in favor.
“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
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.
i did not ask for nazi apologia bro, i dont care. you thought it was weird ukraine voting for this, i showed its a totally expected outcome given recent trends in the country, you can believe all the fairy tales your corporate overlords that form your government tell you to believe
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.
Or how exactly paying those financial compensations would work.
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?
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.
Here’s the map of the vote to really drive the point home.
It’s always the same map
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.
You only posted half of the title.
Declaration of the Trafficking of Enslaved Africans and Racialized Chattel Enslavement of Africans as the Gravest Crime against Humanity
The “Gravest Crime against Humanity” part honestly explains why so many countries abstained.
The slave trade was an absolute atrocity and certainly one of the gravest crimes against humanity but should we label it as the gravest crime? Do we really need to introduce a ranking between slavery, the holocaust and dozens of other genocides instead of agreeing that they are/were all bad without picking one as the worst?
Yeah, exactly. Why make it a competition? The wording is honestly just bizarre
Future cyberpunk dystopias be like
It’s possibly the fact that it specifies the enslavement of Africans too. I don’t know much about this, but would that sound like it’s minimising other countries experiences, or current slavery?
Edit: clarified a sentence
Sadly, I would bet that it’s the jewish lobby that pushed a lot of countries to oppose this. They have this need to make the holocaust be the worst thing that has ever happened to any people in the history of time.
The holocaust certainly bad, it’s among the worst mass killings of all time, and the fact that it happened in relatively modern times makes it worse because the world generally isn’t as brutal as it once was. Is it worse than the Mongol invasions, which may have killed more than 10% of the entire world’s population at the time? Worse than historical wars in China which killed tens of millions at a time when the entire world’s population was under 200 million? Where would you rank African slavery in that? Is it less bad because fewer people died, or worse because there are things worth than death? I don’t really think it should be something you rank at all. And, I’d also oppose any attempt to rank any of them as “the gravest crime against humanity”, because what’s the point of that?
Your comment is a bit weird. The second section describes exactly why it makes no sense to be ranking crimes against humanity, which would include this resolution picking one winner.
Why then lead with the first section?
Because, while I agree that it’s bad to rank various crimes against humanity, I don’t like how Israel tries to weaponize the holocaust as a shield against any kind of criticism.
Comparing to the Holocaust, yeah. And it is true. One of these atrocities was way bigger.
The holocaust doesn’t even rank in the top five in terms of numbers.
the holocaust wasn’t the biggest in numbers during WWII
The abstaining countries mostly has a Problem with “the gravest crime against humanity”, because there should be no ranking in crimes against humanity.
Where do you place the Holocaust, the holodomor, the crusades? The conquest of the americas?
Yeah, sure, it was a semantic problem. Not a reperations problem. /s
Bullshit excuse
Bullshit counterargument
The transatlantic slavery trade lasted 400 years there was definitely more death caused by it than the Holocust .
How about this one? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Chinese_Famine
Your dad was probably alive when it happened
If it’s about duration https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans-Saharan_trade lasted longer and it had more victims.
For sure, for sure. 15 million humans forcibly relocated and an estimated 30-60 million deaths over 400 years is certainly among the gravest human tragedies.
On the other hand could you imagine if tragedies like the holocaust or holodomor or the Chinese three years famine were extended to even a fraction of those 400 years? Or if a handful more cities had been nuked? Or if we let the 50 million people living in modern slavery die in bondage? What about the billions of people that have died from preventable diseases over centuries of neglect?
…Why are you even bothering to argue about this? There’s no objectivity in these conversations, and yet you insist that everyone but you is wrong.
On the other hand could you imagine if tragedies like the holocaust or holodomor or the Chinese three years famine were extended to even a fraction of those 400 years?
If they extended to 400 years then yes they would be worst than the slave transatlantic trade
There’s no objectivity in these conversations, and yet you insist that everyone but you is wrong.
You don’t abstain from a resolution about slavery that include reparations to the victims because you think another crime against humanity is worse.
They could even vote for this then introduce another resolution citing the holocaust as the gravest crime against humanity
If someone walked up to me and told me to label anything as the gravest, worst thing to happen in human history I would definitely abstain. It’s just not possible to say that [as a representative of millions of people] unless you’re OK with diluting the conversation around serious ongoing problems with hyperbole.
Sorry to the millions of people being genocided in Gaza, the real gravest tragedy is something else (or vice versa). There is no correct objective answer to such loaded propositions.
You don’t abstain from a resolution about slavery that include reparations to the victims because you think another crime against humanity is worse.
You shouldn’t frame honest attempts at reparations and progressive policy in black/white terms. The point of this resolution is the same as everything in the UN: toothless posturing that goes nowhere to the domestic political benefit of everyone involved.
The Nay votes can say they’re defending whatever tragedy plays best to their audience, the Yea can play off their moral superiority (either in opposition to Nays or for support of their tragedy) and the Abstainers get gold stars for their deft diplomatic balancing. And it didn’t cost anyone anything but ink!
Us peons are supposed to slurp up the drama and pump our echo chamber full of our chosen narrative (see: this post). But there’s another secret option: stop engaging with rage porn content, it’s better for your health.
Side thing, but I don’t see the Crusades as at the same level of the Holocaust or the Holodomor. They were religious wars of conquest not campaigns of extermination. They were brutal, sure, but if you add them, then you have to start piling a bunch of other wars in there too, like the Mongol conquests, the Timurid conquests, the Arab conquests, the Ottoman conquests, the Aztec conquests etc. Which kind of dilutes the point of “grave crimes”.
There is nothing particularly unique about the Crusades, and at the time, the Roman Empire that invited them and tried to sanction them actually had a legitimate claim of them being reconquests of Roman territory (even though they ended up killing it off anyway in 1204).
But you recognise a ranking is not helping the thing?
Yes, obviously there is no total order. There is a partial order though.
That’s why I prefaced my whole comment with «Side thing,…». I’m doing an «um ackchyually» about the history of the Crusades, nothing more.
The crusades involved kicking muslims and jews out of the land. It was definitely a genocide and there is some genocide that are worse than others
The Reconquista in Spain, yes. In the Levant/Outremer? That’s just not what happened.
PS. I know that in the US, (CW: Hegseth) the christian nationalists are using crusading iconography to promote their deranged fascist apocalypticism. They are instrumentalizing the past the way fascists always do. Knowing and insisting on the actual history is a kind of negation of that instrumentalization. Don’t be tempted to just mirror a reverted image of their anti-intellectualism back to them.
Fixed.
the thread on .world about this one is pretty gross.
I wonder why…
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.
Why am I even surprised by the US being the US anymore.
“Hey you know this thing thats super bad?”
“Of course we’ve known it’s bad for many years now”
“Well we should officially condemn it.”
“Whoa whoa let’s hold up and think about that for a second.”
Just think of all the money the US could make though! There must be a way to profit from it.
I don’t know the wording on the declaration itself, but it’s distinctly possible that the US prison system is in direct opposition to it.
Cries quietly in Indigenous slaughter
I hope your time will come too, it’s crazy how overshadowed this topic is
If you know the us votes against anyways, why abstain?
