By Omar Bah
The Minister of Information, Lamin Queen Jammeh, has said the reintegration of African descendants should not be an impossibility for the government to consider.
A group of African descendants who traced their ancestral origins to The Gambia have renewed calls for their reintegration to be fast-tracked.
According to Minister Jammeh, the process of getting them reintegrated should not be very complicated.
“It is just a question of initiating it at some point and rigorously standing by it. After all, on a global level, it would just promote global reintegration especially for Africans who have lost trace of their origin. So, I think consideration should be given to them without unnecessary delay,” Minister Jammeh told The Standard yesterday.
He said once they are able to trace their origin, they should be given the opportunity to reintegrate without delay.
“There would of course be some other analysis – so it cannot be straight away, given there has to be a process but once that process is done, I see no reason we should not reintegrate them. I will also join the believers of the theory that they should be reintegrated,” he stated.
The founder of Blaxit, a YouTube channel dedicated to the campaign of reconnecting African descendants to their ancestral heritage, Juliet Ryan, has appealed to the government to fast track the process of reintegrating those who have decided to return.
“These are Africans who unfortunately had their ancestors stolen, kidnapped in a genocide that is a most murderous and woeful way. They are prisoners of war and that is what they have to be seen as,” she noted.
She said those who survived slavery and want to come back to Africa are treated worse than those who enslaved them.
“We don’t know who we are and we don’t know where we come from because we have lost our history, family lineage and language has been erased. So, when we come back you should understand that we have been traumatised. There is systemic endemic of anti-Africanist in these western countries,” she said.
She added that the only way Africa can stand on its feet is to unite.
