Bones Of Freed Slaves 'haunt' St. Helena Island
Fakhir Rizvi Published November 23, 2017 | 10:00 AM
The only pointer of what lies inside the stone storehouse within the grounds of the prison is a printed note pasted to an old grey doo
Jamestown, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 23rd Nov, 2017 ) :The only pointer of what lies inside the stone storehouse within the grounds of the prison is a printed note pasted to an old grey door.
"This is to mark the temporary resting place of 325 liberated African slaves brought to St. Helena against their will. They now wait in this room for their final resting place," it reads. Candles and a bouquet of wilting white arum lilies sit in front of the wooden door on the remote British island of St.
Helena in the middle of the South Atlantic Ocean. Nine years ago, the skeletons of the former slaves were discovered during the construction of the island's first airport. Since then the remains have been kept in cardboard boxes in the prison storehouse.
Every Sunday, Annina Van Neel Hayes, 30, an environmentalist born in Namibia, pays homage to the forgotten dead by laying flowers in front of the padlocked door.
It was she and her friends who put up the epitaph.
"Still 10 years later, nothing is being done," she said, suggesting that proper reburial of the former slaves' remains "has never been a priority of St. Helena government". After abolishing its slave trade in 1807, Britain intercepted mainly Portuguese slave ships sailing near St.
Helena, which lay on the notorious slave-trading route from Africa to America and the Caribbean. The island's leather-bound archives reveal horrendous details of events nearly 180 years ago. One ship, intercepted on December 2, 1840, carried 245 slaves. Another, seized on January 17, 1841, was from Angola heading to Brazil with 308 slaves "in good health" and 108 "sick" slaves.
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