The Sierra Leone Community in Minnesota will host its 50th Independence Day Celebration on April 23, featuring an exhibit about the reason the nation may be home to ‘the most important historical site in Africa for the United States.

For thousands of African American slaves Bunce Island , a small, sequestered landmass off the coast of Sierra Leone, was the last memory of Africa before crossing the Atlantic Ocean and entering North America.

“I truly think that Bunce Island is most important historical site in Africa for the United States,” historian Joseph Opala said. “An important part of American history is on that tiny, isolated island in Sierra Leaone.”

The Sierra Leone Community Association in Minnesota is taking the 50th anniversary of the small, African nation’s independence as an opportunity to highlight this historic connection between the two nations during a celebration at the East Side Neighborhood Services building on April 23rd beginning at 7 p.m.

The event will include the Minnesota debut of the Bunce Island Exhibit, consisting of 20 large display panels featuring the culmination of nearly three decades of Opala’s study of the island, which is home to a notorious British slave castle.

Funding for the purchase of the exhibit, which will make the Twin Cities one of about a dozen sites in the U.S. to host the display, was provided by a grant from the Minnesota Humanities Center , Jonathan Rose , president of the SLCM said.

“The exhibit goes well beyond the independence day celebration,” he said. “[Sierra Leone is] a small country, but this is an opportunity to learn that we have significance in the history of this country.”

In addition to the exhibit, the celebration, which is predicted to attract between 500-750 people, will feature Sierra Leonean food, music, dance and an address from keynote speaker, State Rep. Jeff Hayden .

To carry out the theme of the affair, “Continuing Education for a Better Future,” SLCM will award between six and 10 scholarships to high school seniors and college freshmen as part of the event for the first time, Rebecca Johnson , the SLCM secretary said.

“We want to let young people know there is life after high school,” she said. “That way, they can aspire to higher education and use knowledge to lift the community.”

Students of Sierra Leonean decent will write short essays about how they would help the nation progress and grow as young leaders as part of the application process for the scholarships, Rose said.

After the 50th celebration, the exhibit will spend a few weeks on the University of Minnesota campus before finding its permanent home somewhere in the Twin Cities. SLMC members plan to take the exhibit on several educational trips to community grade schools, according to Rose and Johnson.

Opala said the exhibit, which has two parts—Slave Castle and Links to North America—is significant because it was the only slave castles that almost exclusively exported to North America.

“Most Americans have this strange misconception that most of the slaves from Africa went to United States,” the Oklahoma native who lives in Sierra Leone, said. “The truth is, 96 percent went to Brazil or The West Indies, meaning only 4 percent went to North America.”

He said this is the reason many famous African Americans, including actor Isaiah Washington , who donated $25,000 to computer the computer animations for the exhibit, have traced their heritage back to Sierra Leone in recent years.

Sierra Leone’s 50th Independence Day Celebration will extend beyond the night of festivities with events including both Muslim and Christian prayer services in the days following the event, Rose said.

He also said he hopes both Sierra Leoneans and non-Sierra Leoneans are able to learn and understand connections between them as part of the celebration, particularly with the current turmoil in many African nations.

Opala, who is currently working on a $5 million project to preserve Bunce Island and build a museum there, agrees. According to him, the exhibit will highlight the shared history between all Sierra Leoneans and Americans.

“Wherever we’re from, we’re all part of the American story,” he said. “This is Sierra Leone’s part of the American story that they have to tell.”

Sierra Leone 50th Independence Anniversary Celebration

DATE: Saturday, April 23, 2011

TIME: 7:00 pm- 2:30 am

PLACE: East Side Neighborhood Services
1700 Second Street Northeast
Minneapolis, MN 55413

THEME: Continuing Education for a Better Future

Academic scholarships will be issued on Friday, April 22, 2011.

KEYNOTE SPEAKER: State Rep. Jeff Hayden

DONATIONS: $20.00 (IN ADVANCE) and $25.00 (AT THE GATE)

Exhibits from Bunce Island (A primary hub during the transatlantic slave trade) will be displayed at the event.

Contacts: Hassan @763-228-0650; Kehf @ 612-251-7134

The fundamental stimulus of the attack on Libya is greed, not the protection of the Libyan people. In fact, the people of Libya have suffered more during this bombardment by Western powers and their allies than during the entire 41 years of the leadership of Muammar al-Gaddafi.

There are several rationales that have been advanced in the public for the reason for the assault on Libya. The attackers have said that Gaddafi has used force against his own people. They say that they are trying to prevent revenge attacks on the people who have risen against the leader of Libya. They also say that Gaddafi’s government has lost its legitimacy. None of these arguments make much sense in reality, and they conceal the attempt at exploitation, appropriation of Libyan petroleum and colonial incursion to demonstrate the will of the West in Africa.

We have yet to have a clear view of the attacks made upon the Libyan people by their government. If anything, the actions of the Libyan government in Tripoli appear restrained despite the agitation caused by a vocal minority. In the United States in 1965, when I was a young college student, I witnessed the actions of the National Guard on the streets of South Central Los Angeles. Nearly 40 people were killed in a confrontation with American government authorities.

Governments fight to maintain their legitimacy; this is the law of sustaining power. When President Bush reached the lowest point of his popularity among the American people, he was still considered the president. Gaddafi has not lost any legitimacy because groups of his people, influenced by social media, went to the streets to demonstrate against him. Popularity has rarely been the standard by which governments must be overthrown.

Furthermore, there were no African mercenaries fighting against the people of Libya as reported by the media; the Black people that the Western media experts saw were Libyans.

Although we can and should argue about the need for what Ron Daniels calls the “act of internal criticism” in African governments, there can be no argument about the necessity for Africans to solve their own problems. We must be clear that the attack on Libya is an attack on Africa.

One of the reasons that the French, the Americans and the British could not reach an agreement with the African Union to bomb Libya is because the political intelligence of African leaders has grown tremendously since the crises in Sudan, Côte d’Ivoire, Tunisia and Egypt. The African Union knows that Gaddafi’s leadership on questions of African unity is among the most prominent.

Few African leaders have been as active in assisting the continent economically and administratively as Gaddafi. He has used his country’s wealth to create a strong economy in Libya as well as to support civil servants in other African nations. We must not be beguiled by the Western media in its rush to remove one of the strongest African leaders from his post.

Gaddafi has minced no words about his support for and belief in the United States of Africa. Indeed, he knows that if Africa is divided between Northern and Southern states, or if Africa keeps existing as 54 independent states, the Western nations and the North American nations of Canada and United States will eat each part of Africa alive. They will not be able to swallow a continent that is united, firm in its convictions and dedicated to the liberty of its territory.

No one has shouted any louder than Gaddafi that Africa must be for the Africans. In this he reminds us of the clarion voice of Marcus Garvey.

With the fall of Tunisia, Libya and possibly Morocco and Algeria, France will have succeeded in its major plan to bring those states, especially oil-producing Libya, into a grand Mediterranean Basin clique. In such a scenario, the northern part of Africa will be declared the southern ridge of the European nation to the north. Gaddafi has been one of the major opponents of this neo-hegemony over African territory.

A United Africa would be a step toward overcoming disease, transportation problems, famine and land disputes. In our judgment we should not be so fast to criticize Gaddafi just because Western governments call for such an action. If they say that he is punishing his people, denying them free speech and keeping them from education, this must be proven.

Furthermore, why hasn’t the Western world rolled into Israel or the West Bank and saved the Palestinian people who suffer true slaughter and discrimination at the hands of Israel? What is Gaza, if not the pits of hell? When shall we hear high-sounding words from the leaders of the Western world in support of those Arabs? Africans must beware of the gifts of Europe.

Since Kwame Nkrumah, Africa has rarely had a visionary as broad in thinking and as dedicated in commitment as Gaddafi. Perhaps in his desire to strengthen the continent and to make Africa powerful he went too far with his donations to the governments of Senegal, Chad, Burkina Faso and Zimbabwe and did not do enough for the Libyan people.

No African nation was among those who came out to attack Libya on March 19. President Sarkozy of France has reported that some Arab nations supported the campaign against Libya, but even if that proves to be so, one must not read too much into this without some appreciation of the Arab distress with Gaddafi’s pro-African stance.

Transformations are produced by those who are focused on long-term goals, not by those who make convenient alliances with the enemies of their people. As Nkrumah was fond of saying, “We face neither East nor West; we face forward.”

It has been Gaddafi who has made Nkrumah’s mantra his own: “Africa must unite or perish.” Why would this language threaten the West? The Libyan leader has encountered, and continues to encounter, attempted setbacks and hurdles.

The work of the Brother Leader, as he is sometimes called, has been to raise African consciousness to the point that some of the nations on the continent of Africa begin to reject the loyalty they hold for their colonial masters. Some African leaders seem to fear other Africans.

Gaddafi has proposed that Africa do away with travel restrictions, create a common currency and ease trade tariffs and barriers. This African solidarity is not only a threat to the West – some who identify as Arabs have a difficult time accepting the Africanity promoted by Gaddafi.

With the proper safeguards and cooperation of the African world, the Libyan people can sort out their own internal squabbles. The great danger of the attacks on Libya is that they are being used by the U.S. to test the effectiveness of AFRICOM, the African Command, and this adventure will open the door to direct military intervention in Africa. We already know that the U.S. and the former colonial powers of France and England are re-inventing Cold War policies to enlarge and protect their economic interests on the continent.

The great danger of the attacks on Libya is that they are being used by the U.S. to test the effectiveness of AFRICOM, the African Command, and this adventure will open the door to direct military intervention in Africa.

The attack on Libya is also a challenge to Brazil, Venezuela, China, Iran and Russia for influence on the continent. However, beyond the economic argument is the moral argument for African people.

Why should a group of dissidents be able to challenge their state and cause international hegemonic forces to invade their land? Who is to blame for this political folly? We do not see the collapse of the Libyan government, and we support the masses of Libyan people against the tyranny of a minority.

When Africa needed Gaddafi, he was always present. Now that Libya needs Africa, let it be said that Africa will be present on the side of the legitimate government of the people of Libya.

Sarah Ibrahim, Press Officer for World Medical Camp Libya discusses the grassroots organizing that has raised hundreds of thousands of dollars in just weeks and delivers medical supplies to the most dangerous areas of the Libyan conflict.

OTTAWA, Canada—It seems lazy to sit at a computer and offer freewheeling commentary via Facebook on the winter of discontent sweeping the Middle East. The sight of people standing up for their basic rights takes me back to a time when I was in Doha editing an English newspaper owned by Qatar’s foreign minister.

Some nights, I wake up dreading the prospect of running a newspaper in such tumultuous times. Other days, I miss being a part of history unfolding.

Until two weeks ago, the revolutionary zeal that was dethroning regimes in Tunisia and Egypt and rocking regimes in Yemen, Jordan and Algeria seemed like a faraway event that could be written about without too much restraint, albeit with a wary eye on what this might mean to the ruling family in Qatar. We might even have gotten away with saying that liberty and democracy are universal human values. However, with widespread rioting in next door Bahrain – a tiny island sandwiched between Saudi Arabia and Qatar – the dynamic in The Peninsula’s newsroom would have been palpably different. Editors would have become hawks, with Saturday’s call by a Bahraini opposition figure to overthrow the Al-Khalifa ruling family setting off panic attacks. Reading about demonstrations in Oman, I’d have broken into a cold sweat.

One misplaced word, a verb too strong or an empathetic headline that went too far, and the sword would fall. The laws would allow the paper to be shut down, publication suspended for a period of time or the editor facing charges of sedition, fomenting dissent or almost anything else. It’s a treacherous environment in the land that is also home to the so-called beacon of Arab freedom, Al Jazeera television.

As the Mideast faces its democratic moment, Al Jazeera has positioned itself in Canada and abroad as the most reliable news source in both Arabic and English. It reminds me of Peter Arnett reporting from Baghdad for CNN in 1991, with the same air of triumphalism. However, it is already evident that the Qatari channel’s breathless coverage of Tahrir Square in Egypt has given way to a more measured tone when it comes to the Pearl Square demonstrations in next door Bahrain and the riots in Kuwait.

Al Jazeera’s double standard may come home to roost and I can’t wait to see how the station’s much-ballyhooed journalism will cover an uprising in the streets of Doha. With the world’s second highest per capita income (after Liechtenstein), though, Qatar may be the last of the region’s emirates to come under the revolutionary spell that started with the ouster of Tunisia’s Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. Ironically, the Tunisian dictator is now a guest of Saudi Arabia, by far the most repressive of the sheikhdoms that have a throttle-hold on the world’s petroleum supplies and has a penchant for harbouring the world’s despots, beginning with the “Butcher of Uganda” Idi Amin.

For more than a half-century in this retrograde region, power has passed down to the eldest son or through palace coups staged with tacit support from Western powers, mainly the U.S. or Britain. In every other country of the world, citizens pay taxes in return for public services and infrastructure. The six “rentier” states of the Gulf – Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the U.A.E. and Oman – pay their citizens a fixed stipend from cradle to grave for the privilege of being notional owners of the oil and gas that their lands have been blessed with.

Of course, this stipend is paltry compared to what the state – read ruling family – reaps from this bounty, and dwindling oil reserves as in Bahrain and Oman mean there is not enough to go around. If Tunisians and Egyptians are now having trouble recouping the billions looted by their ousted rulers, the blurring of state revenues and private ruling family holdings in the Gulf makes the distinction purely academic. The inevitable tipping point will come when citizens realize they are being short-changed or when the tribal alliances that hold these states together break down.

The people, including majority expatriate populations in most of these states, are co-opted into this dubious “rentier” mentality through a tax-free environment that nurtures the myth that money is easy. Democracy and civil liberties are bartered for higher wages and huge perks that draw people from all over the world, including the world’s most industrialised nations. The days of cheap oil may be over in the West, but conversely, the price spike only hardens the lack of freedoms in these petro-economies.

However, as is already clear in Bahrain, Oman and Kuwait, these nations are not immune to global forces, especially when an authoritarian sentinel such as Hosni Mubarak falls. Although not a Sheikh (one privileged to be born into the ruling family), Mr. Mubarak behaved like one and came to be the Big Daddy in the Arab world. His country had a deeply unpopular peace treaty with Israel and yet he managed to cling to power for 30 years, balancing one interest against another, partially bankrolled by the U.S. Treasury.

Mr. Mubarak also saw the portent that was Al Jazeera, exclaiming during a visit to the TV station in 2003: “All that trouble from this little matchbox!” One of the first things he tried soon after his people took to the streets was to block Al Jazeera’s signal in Egypt. In the end, he was convinced that the station funded by Qatar’s rulers fuelled the uprising in his country and forced him out of office. He blamed his downfall on everybody except himself, including a seemingly democratic media institution funded by an equally unaccountable foreign Arab government.

The Peninsula and Al Jazeera were birthed in the same year (1996), but there the similarities end. The English newspaper has remained a shackled creation that has no editorial independence and primarily serves as a conveyor of news from the rest of the world. With a much bigger budget and ambition, Al Jazeera has taken the region by storm with its idiosyncratic take on the world’s hotspots and the demolishing of sacred cows along the way. It has fallen afoul of virtually every government in the region at one time or another, except, of course, its Qatari bankrollers.

As the genie of Tahrir Square rolls across a vast desert swathe, the Al-Saud, the Al-Sabah, the Al-Khalifa, the Al-Thani, the Bin Said and the Al-Nahyan ruling families are clearly circling their wagons. Just this week, the Al-Sauds announced a $36 billion – repeat $36 billion – in handout payments to its citizens as a way to ensure they remain politically stillborn while sucking off the state’s teat. It’s the world’s most elite club of wealthy rulers and accountability to their people has never crossed their minds.

Journalists at their supine media organizations may well, though, decide to be in the vanguard of a revolt, just as a key moment in the Tahrir revolution came when reporters at Egypt’s official Al-Ahram newspaper gave in to their bridled conscience and refused to make up stories for a regime on the defensive. At one point, the journalists there forced the management to issue an apology to its readers, confessing to what it called “unprofessional and unethical coverage” of the uprising. “We failed to hear the thundering message of change,” the apology read.

It doesn’t take a political scientist to see the writing on the wall. As Jill Crystal foretold in Oil and Politics in the Gulf (1990), crude oil is both blight and blessing. “Oil revenues, by precluding the coalition building that is crucial to stability, have left these regimes vulnerable. Oil and the tensions it produces carry the seeds of change…. In the future, these rulers may find themselves particularly ill-equipped to handle domestic conflict.” That hour of reckoning may be at hand at the gates of my former home in Doha.

Although many women in Cameroon are economically empowered and active in civil society, they often lack the opportunity to enter politics and participate in their country’s male-dominated political sector.

Henriette Ekwe Ebongo, a journalist and publisher of Bebela — a weekly independent newspaper — and a founding member of Transparency International in Cameroon, made that point March 7 at a roundtable discussion at the U.S. Department of State. Ekwe was in Washington to be honored at the 2011 International Women of Courage Awards.

Ekwe was selected for this award in recognition of her lifelong devotion to advancing press freedom, freedom of expression, the recognition of human rights, good governance and gender equality.

The Women of Courage Awards were established in 2007 by then–Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to recognize and honor women around the globe who have shown exceptional courage and leadership in promoting women’s rights and advancement.

Ekwe said that in Cameroon, men dominate the political sphere. As a result, many Cameroonian women have concentrated their efforts in civil society and in creating their own nongovernmental organizations, or in working with organizations like the World Bank or the International Monetary Fund.

“Many of them [those women] have created organizations to defend women and to defend children,” she said. “They feel that they are respected much more in civil society organizations than they are in political parties.”

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Ekwe lamented that the Cameroonian delegation that attended the Fourth World Conference on Women in 1995 in Beijing (along with more than 300 other women’s organizations), told no one in Cameroon upon their return of the platform that had been adopted in Beijing, which called for at least 30 percent of the any country’s decisionmakers to be women.

“We have many problems with getting women into politics,” she said. In Cameroon, there are only 21 women members of parliament (MPs) out of a total of 180, and 29 women mayors out of a nationwide total of 360, she said.

Ekwe said many women in Cameroon are educated, and many are business savvy as well, working in the markets and in many other businesses.

She explained that if a family has to choose between sending a son or a daughter to school, they don’t educate the daughter. The son is educated while the daughter is kept at home. She said many men don’t want their wives to become MPs because they don’t want to feel inferior to their wives.

Asked about the country’s electoral process and presidential elections scheduled for October 2011, she said, “If we have free, fair and credible elections, then I think we will be free to talk, we will be free to criticize.” The current president has ruled Cameroon since 1982.

Asked what she foresees for the future of her country, Ekwe said any progressive change in Cameroon will be brought about by young people who have been inspired by the role of young people in Tunisia and Egypt.

Here are the other 2011 International Women of Courage awardees:

• Kyrgyzstan President Roza Otunbayeva

• Maria Bashir, the prosecutor general in Herat province, Afghanistan

• Guo Jianmei, a director and lawyer at the Women’s Studies and Legal Aid Center in China

• Agnes Osztolykan, a member of parliament and the Politics Can Be Different Party in Hungary

• Eva Abu Halaweh, executive director of the Mizan Law Group for Human Rights in Jordan

• Ghulam Sughra, founder and chief executive officer of the Marvi Rural Development Organization in Pakistan

• Marisela Morales Ibañez, deputy attorney general for special investigations against organized crime in Mexico

• Yoani Sanchez, innovator, blogger and founder of “Generación Y” blog in Cuba

• Nasta Palazhanka, the deputy chairwoman of the Malady Front (Young Front) nongovernmental organization of Belarus