(Akiit.com) The All-African People’s Revolutionary Party (A-APRP) is hosting the 52nd Anniversary of African Liberation Day
Between May 21, 2010 to May 31, 2010 at the following locations:

Africa: Guinea Bissau, Ghana, Gambia, Senegal, Kenya, Zimbabwe
Europe: London
Caribbean: St. Thomas
Canada: Toronto
U.S.A.: Southern Region-Atlanta; Midwest Region-Illinois;
Northeast Region-Washington DC; Western Region-California

On behalf of the All-African People’s Revolutionary Party (A-APRP) and its women’s wing, the All-African Women’s Revolutionary Union (A-AWRU), we are issuing this press release to announce the commemoration of African Liberation Day (ALD), 2010.

African Liberation Day was first observed In 1958 on the occasion of the First Conference of Independent African States held in Accra, Ghana. At that time, the 15th of April was declared Africa Freedom Day, “...to symbolize the determination of the people of Africa to free themselves from foreign domination and exploitation”. Later in 1963, upon the founding of the Organization of African Unity (OAU), 31 Heads of African states declared May 25th as African Liberation Day. This important, historic event has been observed and institutionalized in various places worldwide, every year since its inception.

African Liberation Day provides a forum for us to become more aware of the history and current reality of Africa, and the world. It is a chance to hear directly from women, men and youth who are on the frontline of struggle for Pan-Africanism, and other struggles for justice. It allows us to engage interactively with others who are dedicated and committed to the creation of Pan-Africanism.

The program will feature dynamic panel presentations, cultural performances, solidarity statements, vendors, food, leaflets and a rare opportunity to build and strengthen the international Pan-African network of organizations.
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(Akiit.com) Activists say the Obama administration has placed the war on terror above democracy in the Horn of Africa.

Activists say the Obama administration has placed the war on terror above democracy in the Horn of Africa.

Chris Flaherty, an American documentary film producer who’s married to a woman from Ethiopia, started a hunger strike early last week in front of the White House to convince President Obama to push for democracy in Ethiopia. Occasionally, someone would wander over to Flaherty to look at his homemade poster boards with photos of Birtukan Mideksa, a young woman judge and Ethiopian dissident arrested shortly after announcing her candidacy, challenging the current prime minister, Meles Zenawi.

Literally wed to Ethiopia’s Washington-area Diaspora, Flaherty is part of a wider campaign that has emerged in recent years to urge the United States to promote democracy in Ethiopia. The next Ethiopian election is scheduled for May 23. Many Ethiopians in the D.C. area are concerned that the Obama administration overlooks democratization of Ethiopia in favor of strategic security interests; some actively lobby the U.S. government.

”There is considerable pressure from the Ethiopian Diaspora, which is almost completely anti-the current Ethiopian government,” said the State Department’s Ethiopia desk officer, who agreed to speak to The Root on background.

Last month, an estimated 500 Diaspora activists attended a pro-democracy conference at the Doubletree Hotel in Arlington, Va. At the podium, Flaherty announced his hunger-strike plans. The day before starting the strike, Flaherty issued an open letter to Obama, urging him to make a statement calling for Mideksa’s release. Flaherty recently released a film on Ethiopia’s political struggles, which includes an interview with Mideksa while she was on a visit to Washington. The documentary aired last Friday on the Africa Channel, an English-language cable network focused on Africa.

A group called Ethiopian American Civic Advocacy published a statement last year addressed to the U.S. Congress and the administration, ”to convey to you our growing concerns over ongoing human rights violations, war crimes, government-sponsored brutality, ethnic cleansing, suppression of independent media, torture and illegitimate detentions of those who criticize the government.”

Some in Congress have been responsive to the lobbying. In March, Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wis.) issued a statement on the ”Fragile State of Democracy in Africa.” Regarding Ethiopia he noted, ”Several key opposition leaders remain imprisoned, most notably Mideksa, the head of the Unity for Democracy and Justice Party. There is no way that elections can be fair, let alone credible, with opposition leaders in jail or unable to campaign freely.”

But the Obama administration has resisted openly criticizing America’s most valued partner in the Horn of Africa. The relatively stable Ethiopian government is America’s trusted ally in the war on terrorism, and receives half a billion dollars annually in aid and millions more in military assistance.

Pro-democracy activism has been on the rise since 2005, since Ethiopia’s last general election. The ruling party, the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front, did the unprecedented by providing access to state-owned media for opposition candidates. Most believe there was pressure to appear democratic to Western donors, which provide substantial financial aid to Ethiopia. The opposition took advantage of the opportunity and debated the state of the country, criticizing the ruling party. The government didn’t anticipate the momentum that the opposition would gain among the people, explains Abebe Belew, host of a political weekly radio show on Washington-based Addis Dimts Radio.
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(Akiit.com) VATICAN CITY — African cardinals denounced the “cultural imperialism” of wealthy countries in their aid, trade and health care policies for Africa, saying Wednesday that the West’s promotion of abortion rights and condoms is destroying the continent’s moral fabric.

African prelates attending the three-week meeting on the role of the Catholic Church in Africa said their countries needed economic development partnerships that are based on trust and fairness, not ones that exploit Africa’s natural resources and put conditions on aid.

“We want to be helped, but helped in the name of truth, with respect of what we are and what we want for ourselves,” Cardinal Theodore-Adrien Sarr of Dakar, Senegal, told a news conference.

He and Cardinal Wilfred Fox Napier of Durban, South Africa, denounced “hidden” agendas of international aid groups and countries that promote abortion rights and condoms to fight HIV, saying the West was trying to impose its views on Africa.
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(Akiit.com) CAPE COAST, Ghana — From the rampart of a whitewashed fort once used to ship countless slaves from Africa to the Americas, Cheryl Hardin gazed through watery eyes at the route forcibly taken across the sea by her ancestors centuries before.

“It never gets any easier,” the 48-year-old pediatrician said, wiping away tears on her fourth trip to Ghana’s Cape Coast Castle in two decades. “It feels the same as when I first visited - painful, incomprehensible.”

On Saturday, Barack Obama and his family will follow in the footsteps of countless African-Americans who have tried to reconnect with their past on these shores. Though Obama was not descended from slaves - his father was Kenyan - he will carry the legacy of the African-American experience with him as America’s first black president.

For many, the trip will be steeped in symbolism.

“The world’s least powerful people were shipped off from here as slaves,” Hardin said Tuesday, looking past a row of cannons pointing toward the Atlantic Ocean. “Now Obama, an African-American, the most powerful person in the world, is going to be standing here. For us it will be a full-circle experience.”

Built in the 1600s, Cape Coast Castle served as Britain’s West Africa headquarters for the trans-Atlantic slave trade, which saw European powers and African chiefs export millions in shackles to Europe and the Americas.

The slave trade ended here in 1833, and visitors can now trek through the fort’s dungeons, dark rooms once crammed with more than 1,000 men and women at a time who slept in their own excrement. The dank air inside still stings the eyes.

Visiting for the first time, Hardin’s 47-year-old sister Wanda Milian said the dungeons felt “like burial tombs.”

“It felt suffocating. It felt still,” said Milian, who like her sister lives in Houston, Texas. “I don’t know what I expected. I didn’t expect to experience the sense of loss, the sense of hopelessness and desolation.”

Those who rebelled were packed into similar rooms with hardly enough air to breath, left to die without food or water. Their faint scratch marks are still visible on walls.

Down by the shore is the fort’s so-called “Door of No Return,” the last glimpse of Africa the slaves would ever see before they were loaded into canoes that took them to ships that crossed the ocean.

Today, the door opens onto a different world: a gentle shore where boys freely kick a white soccer ball through the surf, where gray-bearded men sit in beached canoes fixing lime-green fishing nets, where women sell maize meal from plates on their heads.
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(Akiit.com) Inspired by actress Mia Farrow, members of Congress announced Tuesday that they were beginning a limited hunger strike to show solidarity with the people in Sudan’s Darfur region and demand President Barack Obama’s help in ending the suffering there.

“Among President Obama’s priorities, Darfur has to take its place,” Farrow, 64, told reporters on the Capitol campus, just after following her doctor’s orders and ending her own 12-day hunger strike.

More than a dozen members of the Congressional Black Caucus appeared alongside her to announce that they, too, were taking up the “Fast for Life” campaign - going a few days at a time consuming only water - through Congress’ adjournment in August.

Rep. Donald Payne, D-N.J., chairman of the House subcommittee on Africa, said he had fasted last week for three days and said the group has requested a meeting with Obama.
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