ACAS BulletinsNovember 11, 2015
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BlogNews, Announcements, and Analysis from ACAS Dear friends and colleagues of the struggle, An online celebration of the life of Jennifer Davis was held on Saturday, July 11. Although it is sad that there will not be a gathering in person, there is a silver lining that her memorial service can now be viewed online. This is a sad moment in history when, in the last few years, we have lost so many who were heroes in the struggle against apartheid especially in South Africa but, here in the States, Jennifer’s co-worker at ACOA/Africa Fund, Dumisani Kumalo, Immanuel Wallerstein, Ann Seidman, Sean Gervasi, and others. For more information: Jennifer-davis.org Facebook: Remembering Jennifer Davis On Martin Luther King Jr. Day 2018, ACAS expresses its solidarity with people living in African countries and in the African diaspora who were so brutally disparaged in the racist remarks made by President Trump on Jan 11, 2018. As concerned scholars of Africa, with friends, colleagues, and family members in these regions, we are outraged by his bigoted, offensive, and inaccurate characterizations. Sadly, such comments from the White House have become the norm. We demand that President Trump retract his statements and apologize for the harm he has caused. To students and visitors who hail from the African continent and from diaspora countries, we reiterate that you are our valued friends and colleagues. Those of us who were born in the United States have a great deal to learn from you. Please continue to work with us to improve the tenor of American civic discourse and American understanding and appreciation of peoples on the African continent and in the African diaspora. We also are dismayed at your Administrations’s plans to cut funding of UN Peacekeeping funds for more than a dozen African countries and for announced plans to cut funding for HIV-AIDS remediation in Africa as well as reducing contributions to the World Health Organization (WHO) as it coordinates research and action against Zika, Ebola, and malaria, diseases that threaten Haiti and parts of Africa as well as these United States. David Love’s article, “Deportation of African and Other Black Immigrants Is Quietly Increasing And No One Is Taking Note” (Altanta Black Star March 20, 2017) investigates a topic ACAS is following closely. Immigrants living in the US are increasingly insecure and worried about real dangers presented by the new strategies used under the Trump administration to harass, detain, and deport immigrants.
As Love writes: “Since the 2016 election, the ICE raids on Black immigrant communities have intensified. For example, in January, 86 men and women were deported to Mogadishu, the capital of Somalia, after being detained and imprisoned, as Africanews.com reported. In November, 108 immigrants were deported to Ghana and 20 people also were deported to Liberia, while 53 others were processed for deportation. Earlier this month, ICE deported 130 people to Senegal, six times the number recorded by the agency in its 2016 report.” The Association of Concerned Africa Scholars (ACAS) registers its outrage and its opposition to the Presidential Executive Order, “Protecting The Nation From Foreign Terrorist Entry Into The United States,” issued by Donald Trump on January 27, 2017, which has cut off legal immigration and travel to the United States from three African nations: Sudan, Somalia and Libya as well as from Iran, Iraq, Syria and Yemen. This ban directly affects refugees from Somalia, Libya, Iraq, and Syria where the U.S. military actions contribute to the exodus of thousands of refugees. Ironically, this ban is directed toward refugees in a continent whose nations have opened their borders to refugees and people fleeing violence while the U.S. is closing boundaries and building walls. This ban is an ill-advised, religiously-based attack on the rights of people from these majority Muslim nations. This unwise action will not make the U.S. safe, is in opposition to American values, and will fuel anti-American sentiment in Africa and around the world. This scatter-shot action is a threat to all refugees, to the global system of protection for refugees and other displaced people, and to the future of human rights and of U.S. democracy. In addition, this EO violates the Geneva Convention on Refugees which obliges all member states to take in those fleeing war. In stating that he plans to favor Christian refugees, the President makes clear that this is a religion-based discrimination. Such discrimination has been condemned by many leaders of U.S. Protestant, Catholic, and Evangelical churches. It also violates the ban on government establishment of religion in the first amendment of the US Constitution as well as U.S. law that bars discrimination “in the issuance of an immigrant visa because of the person’s race, sex, nationality, place of birth or place of residence.” (8 U.S. Code § 1152). This EO violates the most basic of humanitarian norms at the core of our democracy and puts severe burdens on families in Africa, the other affected countries, and the United States. It will have a severe impact on students and scholars who have or would have sought to have, ties and links with US institutions of higher education. With many other organizations in the United States and around the world, we therefore call for the immediate rescinding of this executive order and a new U.S. policy to accept more of those fleeing the conflicts around the world. ACAS January 31 2017 ACAS Executive expresses its concern at the Zanzibar election annulment, and agrees with the sentiments of a group of scholars of Zanzibar as below. (see link to full statement and initial signatories)
ZANZIBAR SCHOLARS’ STATEMENT OF CONCERN |
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