Thomas Sankara
Speech before the General Assembly of the United Nations
Delivered: In French, at the United Nations General Assembly, in New
York City, on 4 October 1984.
Source of the translation into English: United Nations (1984), United
Nations General Assembly Official Records, 20th Plenary Meeting,
Thursday, 4 October 1984, at 10.40 a.m., New York, (A/39/PV.20), pp.
405-410.
This edition: Marxists Internet Archive, January 2019.
I bring the fraternal greetings of a country covering 274,000 square
kilometres, where 7 million men, women and children refuse henceforth
to die of ignorance, hunger and thirst, even though they are not yet
able to have a real life, after a quarter of a century as a sovereign
State represented here at the United Nations.
I come to this thirty-ninth session of the General Assembly to speak
on behalf of a people which, on the land of its ancestors, has chosen
from now on to assert itself and to take responsibility for its own
history, in both its positive and negative aspects, without any
complexes.
I come here, mandated by the National Council of the Revolution of
Burkina Faso, to express the views of my people on the problems that
have been included on the General Assembly's agenda, which form the
tragic background of the events which are sadly undermining the
foundations of the world late in this twentieth century. It is a world
of chaos, in which the human race is tom apart by struggles between
the great and the not-so-great, attacked by armed bands and subjected
to violence and plunder. It is a world in which the nations, eluding
international jurisdiction, command groups beyond the law, which, with
gun in hand, live by preying on others and organizing the most
despicable kinds of trafficking.
I do not intend to enunciate dogmas here. I am neither a messiah nor a
prophet. I possess no truths. My only ambition is a twofold
aspiration: first, to be able to speak in simple language, the
language of facts and clarity, on behalf of my people, the people of
Burkina Faso, and, secondly, to be able-to express in my own way the
feelings or that mass of people who are disinherited--those who belong
to that world maliciously dubbed "the third world"--and to state, even
if I cannot make them understood, the reasons that have led us to rise
up, all of which explains our interest in the United Nations, the
demands of our rights drawing strength in the clear awareness of our
duties.
Nobody will be surprised to hear us associate the former Upper Volta,
now Burkina Faso, with that despised rag-bag, the third world, which
the other worlds invented at the time of our independence in order
better to ensure our intellectual, cultural, economic and political
alienation. We want to fit in there without at all justifying this
great swindle of history, still less accepting that we are a backward
world left behind by the West. Rather, we do so to affirm our
awareness of belonging to a three-continent whole and to state, as one
of the non-aligned countries, our deeply felt conviction that a
special solidarity unites the three continents of Asia, Latin America
and Africa in the same battle against the same political traffickers
and economic exploiters.
Thus to recognize our presence in the third world is, to paraphrase
José Marti, to affirm that we feel on our cheek every blow struck
against every other man in the world. So far, we have turned the other
cheek. The slaps in the face have been redoubled and the evil-doers
have felt no tenderness in their hearts. They have trampled on the
truth of the just. They have betrayed the word of Christ. They have
turned His cross into a club, and after putting on His robe they have
tom our bodies and souls to shreds. They have obscured His message,
making it a Western one, whereas we saw it as a message of universal
liberation. Now our eyes have been opened to the class struggle and
there will be no more blows dealt against us. It must be proclaimed
that there will be no salvation for our peoples unless we turn our
backs completely on all the models that all the charlatans of that
type have tried to sell us for 20 years. There can be no salvation for
us unless we reject those models; there can be no development without
that break.
Now all the new "master minds" are awakening, roused by the dizzy
increase of millions of men in rags and frightened by the threat to
their digestion of this multitude hounded by hunger. They are
beginning to change their tune and are again anxiously seeking among
us miraculous ideas for new forms of development for our countries. In
order to understand this it is necessary only to read the proceedings
of innumerable colloquys and seminars.
I certainly do not wish to ridicule the patient effort of those honest
intellectuals who, because they have t, ;s to see, have observed the
terrible consequences of the ravages caused in the third world by the
so-called development specialists.
I fear that the results of all the energies seized by the Prósperos of
all kinds may be turned into a magic wand to be used to turn us back
in to a world of slavery, dressed up according to the taste of our
times. This fear is justified by the fact that the African petite
bourgeoisie with its diplomas, if not that of the whole third world,
is not ready--whether because of intellectual laziness or simply
because it has sampled the Western way of life--to give up its
privileges. It therefore forgets that all true political struggle
requires a rigorous theoretical debate, and it refuses to do the
thinking necessary in order to invent the new concepts needed to wage
the kind of struggle to the death that is ahead of us. A passive and
pathetic consumer group, it overflows with the "in" words of the West,
just as it overflows with its whisky and champagne, in salons where
there is a dubious kind of harmony. One will search in vain-- the
concepts of Blackness or the African personality now being a little
outdated--for truly new ideas from the brains of our so-called
intellectual giants. Words and ideas come to us from elsewhere. Our
professors, engineers and economists are content simply to add a
little colouring, because they have brought from the European
universities of which they are the products only their diplomas and
the surface smoothness of adjectives and superlatives. It is urgently
necessary that our qualified personnel and those who work with ideas
learn that there is no innocent writing. In these tempestuous times,
we cannot leave it to our enemies of the past and of the present to
think and to imagine and to create. We also must do so.
Before it is too late--and it is already late--this élite, these men
of Africa, of the third world, must come to their senses; in other
words, they must turn to their own societies, they must look at this
wretchedness that we have inherited, to understand that the battle for
thought that will help the disinherited masses not only is not a vain
one but can become credible at the international level. They must
provide a faithful picture for their own peoples, a picture that will
enable them to carry out profound changes in the social and political
situation so that we can free ourselves from the foreign domination
and exploitation that can lead our States only to failure.
This is something that we understood, we, the people of Burkina Faso,
on that night of 4 August 1983, when the stars first began to shine in
the heavens of our homeland. We had to take the lead of the peasant
uprisings in the countryside, threatened by desertification, exhausted
by hunger and thirst, and abandoned. We had to give some sense of
meaning to the revolts of the unemployed urban masses, frustrated and
tired of seeing the limousines of the alienated élite flash by
following the head of State, who offered them only false solutions
devised and conceived in the brains of others. We had to give an
ideological soul to the just struggles of our masses mobilized against
the monstrosity of imperialism. Instead of a minor, short-lived
revolt, we had to have revolution, the eternal struggle against all
domination. Others have noted this before me and yet others will say
after me how broad the gap now is between the rich peoples and those
that aspire only to have enough to eat, enough to drink, to survive
and to defend their dignity, but nobody could believe how much of the
food of our people has gone to feed the rich man's cow.
In the case of Upper Volta, the process was even more crystal clear.
We demonstrated the essence of all the calamities that have crushed
the so-called developing countries.
The truth about aid, represented as the panacea for all ills and often
praised beyond all rhyme or reason, has been revealed. Very few
countries have been so inundated with aid of all kinds as has mine.
Aid is supposed to help development, but one can look in vain in what
used to be Upper Volta to see any sign of any kind of development. The
people who were m power through either naivety or class selfishness
could not or else did not want to gain control over this inflow from
the outside or grasp the scope of it and use it in the interests of
our people.
Analysing a table that was published in 1983 by the Sahel Club,
Jacques Giri, in his book entitled The Sahel Tomorrow, concluded quite
sensibly that aid to the Sahel, because of its content and because of
the machinery in place, was only aid for survival. He emphasized that
only 30 per cent of that aid would enable the Sahel simply to remain
alive. According to Jacques Giri, this outside aid was designed only
for the continued development of the unproductive sectors, imposing
intolerable burdens on our small budgets, completely disrupting our
countryside, creating deficits in our trade balance and, in fact,
speeding up our indebtedness.
Here are just a few standard facts to describe what Upper Volta used
to be like: 7 million inhabitants, with more than 6 million peasants;
infant mortality at 180 per 1,000; life expectancy of 40 years; an
illiteracy rate of 98 per cent, if literacy is considered to mean
being able to read, write and speak a language; one doctor for 50,000
inhabitants; 16 per cent receiving schooling; and lastly, a gross
domestic product of 53,356 CFA francs, that is, just over $100 per
capita.
The diagnosis obviously was a very bad one. The source of the evil was
political and so the only cure must be a political one.
Of course, we encourage aid that can help us to manage without aid,
but in general the aid and assistance policies merely led us to become
completely disorganized, to enslave ourselves, to shirk our
responsibility in our economic, political and cultural areas..
We have chosen a different path to achieve better results. We have
chosen to establish new techniques. We have chosen to seek forms of
organization that are better adapted to our civilization, abruptly and
once and for all rejecting all kinds of outside diktats, so that we
can create the conditions for a dignity in keeping with our ambitions.
We refuse simple survival. We want to ease the pressures, to free our
countryside from medieval stagnation or regression. We want to
democratize our society, to open up our minds to a universe of
collective responsibility, so that we may be bold enough to invent the
future. We want to change the administration and reconstruct it with a
different kind of civil servant. We want to get our army involved with
the people in productive work and remind it constantly that, without
patriotic training, a soldier is only a criminal with power. That is
our political programme.
At the economic level, we are learning to live simply, to accept and
to demand of ourselves the austerity that we need in order to carry
out our great designs.
Thanks to the revolutionary solidarity fund, which is fed by voluntary
contributions, we are now beginning to deal with the cruel questions
posed by the drought. We support and have applied the principles of
the Declaration of Alma-Ata/ expanding our primary health care. We
endorse as a State policy the global strategy of GOBI FFF advocated by
UNICEF.
We believe that through the United Nations Sudano-Sahelian Office, the
United Nations should enable those countries affected by drought to
establish a medium- and long-term plan to achieve selfsufficiency in
food.
To prepare for the twenty-first century, we have begun, by creating a
special tombola section, an immense campaign for the education and
training of our children in a new school. The programme is called
"Let's teach our children". Through committees to defend the
revolution, we have established a vast house-building programme--500
units in three months--and we are also building roads, small water
collectors, and so forth. Our economic ambition is to work to ensure
that the use of the mind and the strength of each inhabitant of
Burkina Faso will produce what is necessary to provide two meals a day
and drinking-water.
We swear that in future in Burkina Faso nothing will be done without
the participation of the people of Burkina Faso themselves, nothing
that has not been decided by us, that has not been prepared by us.
There shall be no more attacks on our honour and dignity.
Strengthened by this conviction, we want our words to cover all those
who suffer, all those whose dignity has been crushed by a minority or
a system.
Let me say to those who are listening to me now that I speak not only
on behalf of Burkina Faso, my country which I love so much, but also
on behalf of all those who suffer, wherever they may be.
I speak on behalf of those millions of human beings who are in ghettos
because their skin is black, or because they have a different kind of
culture, those whose status is hardly higher than that of an animal.
I suffer, too, on behalf of those Indians who have been massacred,
trampled on and humiliated and who, for centuries, have been confined
to reservations, so that they do not have any aspirations to any
rights whatsoever, so that their culture cannot become enriched
through contact with other cultures, including that of the invader.
I speak out on behalf of those who are unemployed because of a
structurally unjust system which has now been completely disrupted,
the unemployed who have been reduced to seeing their lives as only the
reflection of the lives of those who have more than themselves.
I speak on behalf of women throughout the entire world who suffer from
a system of exploitation imposed on them by men. As far as we are
concerned, we are willing to welcome all suggestions from anywhere in
the world that will help us to promote the full development and
prosperity of the women of Burkina Faso. In return, we will share with
all countries the positive experience we are now undertaking with our
women, who are now involved at all levels of the State apparatus and
social life in Burkina Faso, women who struggle and who say with us
that the slave who will not shoulder responsibility to rebel does not
deserve pity. That slave will alone be responsible for his own
wretchedness if he has any illusions whatsoever about the suspect
indulgence shown by a master who pretends to give him freedom. Only
struggle helps us to become free, and we call on all our sisters of
all races to rise up to regain their rights.
I speak on behalf of the mothers of our poor countries who see their
children dying of malaria and diarrhoea, unaware that to save them
there are simple methods available but which the science of the
multinationals does not offer to them, preferring to invest in
cosmetics laboratories and engage in cosmetic surgery to satisfy the
whims and caprices of a few men and women who feel they have become
too fat because of too many calories in the rich food they consume
with regularity. That must make even members of this Assembly
dizzy--not to mention the peoples of the Sahel. We have decided to
adopt and popularize the methods that have been advocated by WHO and
UNICEF.
I speak on behalf of the child, the child of the poor man, who is
hungry and who furtively eyes the wealth piled up in the rich man's
shop, a shop that is protected by a thick window, a window which is
defended by an impassable grille, the grille guarded by a policeman in
a helmet with gloves and a bludgeon, the policeman placed there by the
father of another child, who comes there to serve himself or rather to
be served because these are the guarantees of capitalistic
representativeness and norms of the system.
I speak on behalf of the artists--poets, painters, sculptors,
musicians, actors and so on--people of good will who see their art
being prostituted by the show-business magicians.
I cry out on behalf of the journalists who have been reduced to
silence or else to lies simply to avoid the hardships of unemployment.
I protest on behalf of the athletes of the entire world whose muscles
are being exploited by political systems or by those who deal in the
modern slavery of the stadium.
My country is the essence of all the miseries of peoples, a tragic
synthesis of all the suffering of mankind but also, and above all, the
synthesis of the hopes of our struggles. That is why I speak out on
behalf of the sick who are anxiously looking to see what science can
do for them--but that science has been taken over by the gun
merchants. My thoughts go to all those who nave been affected by the
destruction of nature, those 30 million who are dying every year,
crushed by that most fearsome weapon, hunger.
As a soldier, I cannot forget that obedient soldier who does what he
is told, whose finger is on the trigger and who knows that the bullet
which is going to leave his gun will bring only a message of death.
Lastly, I speak out in indignation as I think of the Palestinians,
whom this most inhuman humanity has replaced with another people, a
people who only yesterday were themselves being martyred at leisure. I
think of the valiant Palestinian people, the families which have been
splintered and split up and are wandering throughout the world seeking
asylum. Courageous, determined, stoic and tireless, the Palestinians
remind us all of the need and moral obligation to respect the rights
of a people. Along with their Jewish brothers, they are anti-Zionists.
Standing alongside my soldier brothers of Iran and Iraq, who are dying
in a fratricidal and suicidal war, I wish also to feel close to my
comrades of Nicaragua, whose ports are being mined, whose towns are
being bombed and who, despite all, face up with courage and lucidity
to their fate. I suffer with all those in Latin America who are
suffering from imperialist domination.
I wish to stand side by side with the peoples of Afghanistan and
Ireland, the peoples of Grenada and East Timor, each of those peoples
seeking happiness in keeping with their dignity and the laws of their
own culture.
I rise up on behalf of all who seek in vain any forum in the world to
make their voices heard and to have themselves taken seriously.
Many have already spoken from this rostrum. Many will speak after me.
But only a few will take the real decisions, although we are all
officially considered equals. I speak on behalf of all those who seek
in vain for a forum in the world where they can be heard. Yes, I wish
to speak for all those--the forgotten--because I am a man and nothing
that is human is alien to me.
Our revolution in Burkina Faso takes account of the ills of all
peoples. We are also inspired by all the experiences of mankind, from
the very first breath of the first human being.
We wish to enjoy the inheritance of all the revolutions of the world,
all the liberation struggles of the third-world peoples. We are trying
to learn from the great upheavals that have transformed the world. We
have drawn the lessons of the American revolution, the lessons of its
victory against colonial domination, and the consequences of that
victory. We endorse the doctrine of non-interference by Europeans in
American affairs and non-interference by Americans in European
affairs. In 1823, Monroe said "America for the Americans". We would
say "Africa for the Africans; Burkina Faso for the Burkinabe". The
French revolution of 1789, which disrupted the foundations of
absolutism, has taught us the rights of man linked to the rights of
peoples to freedom. The great revolution of October 1917 transformed
the world and made possible the victory of the proletariat, shook the
foundations of capitalism and made possible the dreams of justice of
the French Commune.
Open to all the wishes of the peoples and their revolutions, learning
also from the terrible failures that have led to truly sad
infringements of human rights, we want to preserve from each
revolution only that essence of purity that prohibits us from becoming
servants to the realities of others, even though in our thinking we
find that there is a community of interests among us.
There must be no more deceit. The new international economic order,
for which we are struggling and will continue to struggle, can be
achieved only if we manage to do away with the old order, which
completely ignores us, only if we insist on the place which is ours in
the political organization of the world, only if we realize our
importance in the world and obtain the right to decision-making with
respect to the machinery governing trade, economic and monetary
affairs at the world level.
The new international economic order is simply one among all the other
rights of peoples--the right to independence, to the free choice of
the form and structure of government, the right to development-- and
like all the rights of peoples it is a right which can be gained only
through the struggle of the peoples. It will never be obtained by any
act of generosity by any Power whatsoever.
I continue to have unshakeable confidence--a confidence I share with
the immense community of non-aligned countries--that, despite our
peoples' battering-ram cries of distress, our group will preserve its
cohesion, strengthen its power of collective negotiation, find allies
among all nations, and begin, together with all who can still hear us,
to organize a really new system of international economic relations.
I agreed to come to speak before the Assembly because, despite the
criticism of certain major contributors, the United Nations remains
the ideal forum for our demands, the place where the legitimacy of
countries which have no voice is recognized. This was expressed very
accurately by the Secretary- General, when he wrote:
"The United Nations reflects in a unique way the aspirations and
frustrations of many nations and groups all over the world. One of its
great merits is that all nations---including the weak, the oppressed
and the victims of injustice"--that is, us--"can get a hearing and
have a platform even in the face of the hard realities of power. A
just cause, however frustrated or disregarded, can find a voice in the
United Nations. This is not always a well- liked attribute of the
Organization, but it is an essential one."
The meaning and scope of the Organization could not be better defined.
Therefore, it is absolutely essential for the good of each of us that
the United Nations be strengthened and provided with the means to take
action. That is why we endorse the Secretary-General's proposals to
this end, to help the Organization break the many deadlocks which have
been carefully preserved by the great Powers in order to discredit it
in the eyes of the world.
Since I recognize the admittedly limited merits of the Organization, I
cannot but rejoice to see new Members join us That is why the
delegation of Burkina Faso welcomes the admission of the 159th Member
of the United Nations, the State of Brunei Darussalam.
The folly of those who, by a quirk of fate, rule the world makes it
imperative for the Movement of Non-Aligned Countries--which, I hope,
the State of Brunei Darussalam will soon join--to consider as one of
the permanent goals of its struggle the achievement of disarmament,
which is an essential aspect of the principal conditions of our right
to development.
In our view, there must be serious studies of all the factors which
have led to the calamities which have befallen the world. In this
connection, President Fidel Castro stated our view admirably at the
opening of the Sixth Conference of Heads of State or Government of
Non-Aligned Countries, held at Havana in September 1979, when he said:
"Three hundred billion dollars could build 600,000 schools, with a
capacity for 400 million children; or 60 million comfortable homes,
for 300 million people; or 30,000 hospitals, with 18 million beds; or
20,000 factories, with jobs for more than 20 million workers; or an
irrigation system for 150 million hectares of land--that, with the
application of technology, could feed a billion people."
If we multiply those numbers by 10--and I am sure that that is a
conservative figure--we can see how much mankind wastes every year in
the military field, that is, against peace.
It is easy to see why the indignation of the peoples is easily
transformed into rebellion and revolution in the face of the crumbs
tossed to them in the ignominious form of some aid, to which utterly
humiliating conditions are sometimes attached. It can be understood
why, in the fight for development, we consider ourselves to be
tireless combatants for peace.
We swear to struggle to ease tension, to introduce the principles of
civilized life into international relations and to extend these to all
parts of the world. That means that we can no longer stand by
passively and watch people haggle over concepts.
We reiterate our determination to work actively for peace; to take our
place in the struggle for disarmament; to take action in the field of
international politics as a decisive factor, free of all hindrance by
any of the big Powers, whatever may be their designs.
But the quest for peace also involves the strict application of the
right of countries to independence. On this point, the most
pathetic--indeed, the most appalling--example is found in the Middle
East, where, with arrogance, insolence and incredible stubbornness, a
small country, Israel, has for more than 20 years, with the
unspeakable complicity of its powerful protector, the United States,
continued to defy the international community.
Only yesterday, Jews were consigned to the horrors of the crematorium,
but Israel scorns history by inflicting on others the tortures it
suffered.
In any event, Israel--whose people we love for its courage and
sacrifices of the past--should realize that the conditions for its own
tranquillity are not to be found in military strength financed from
outside. Israel must begin to learn to be a nation like other nations,
one among many.
For the present, we declare from this rostrum our militant, active
solidarity with the fighters, both men and women, of the wonderful
people of Palestine, for we know that there is no suffering that has
no end.
Analysing the economic and political situation in Africa, we cannot
fail to stress our serious concern at the dangerous challenges to the
rights of peoples hurled by certain nations which, secure in their
alliances, openly flout international morality.
We are naturally pleased at the decision to withdraw foreign troops
from Chad so that the Chadian people themselves, without
intermediaries, can find the way to put an end to that fratricidal war
and finally be able to dry the tears that have been shed for so many
years. But, despite the progress made here and there in the struggle
of the African peoples for economic emancipation, our continent
continues to reflect the essential reality of the contradictions
between the big Powers and to be oppressed by the unbearable scourges
of today's world.
That is why we cannot accept and must unreservedly condemn the
treatment of the people of Western Sahara by the Kingdom of Morocco,
which has been using delaying tactics to postpone the day of reckoning
that will in any event be forced upon it by the will of the Saharan
people. I have visited the regions liberated by the Saharan people,
and I have
come to believe more firmly than ever that nothing will stop its
progress towards the total liberation of its country under the
militant and enlightened leadership of the Frente POLISARIO.
I do not wish to dwell too long on the question of Mayotte and the
islands of the Malagasy archipelago; since the facts are clear and the
principles obvious, there is no need to dwell on them. Mayotte belongs
to the Comoros; the islands of the archipelago belong to Madagascar.
With regard to Latin America, we welcome the initiative of the
Contadora Group as a positive step in the search for a just solution
to the explosive situation in the region. Commander Daniel Ortega,
speaking here [16th meeting] on behalf of the revolutionary people of
Nicaragua, made concrete proposals and posed some basic, direct
questions. We hope to see peace in his country and throughout Central
America on and after 15 October; this is what world public opinion
calls for.
Just as we condemned the foreign aggression against the island of
Grenada, so we condemn all foreign intervention. Thus, we cannot
remain silent about the foreign military intervention in Afghanistan.
And yet there is one point that is so serious that each of us must
give a very open and clear explanation of it. That question, as
members can imagine, is that of South Africa. The unbelievable
insolence of that country with respect to all nations of the
world--even those that support the terrorism which it has erected into
a State system designed physically to liquidate the black majority of
that country--and the contempt that it has shown for all our
resolutions constitute one of the most serious and overwhelming
concerns of the world today.
But the most tragic factor is not that South Africa has outlawed
itself from the international community because of its apartheid laws,
not even that it continues to occupy Namibia illegally and keep it
under its colonialist and racist boot or that it continues with
impugnity to subject its neighbours to the laws of banditry. No, what
is the most abject and the most humiliating for the human conscience
is that it has made this tragedy a matter of everyday reality for
millions of human beings, who have only their own body and the heroism
or their bare hands to defend themselves. Sure of the complicity of
the big Powers and the active support of certain among them, as well
as of the criminal collaboration of some pathetic African leaders, the
white minority simply ignores the feelings of all those people,
everywhere in the world, who find the savage methods of that country
to be absolutely intolerable.
There was a time when international brigades went to defend the honour
of nations that suffered aggression. Today, despite the agonizing open
wounds that are suffered, all we do is vote for resolutions that do
nothing more than call on a nation of pirates, which "destroys a smile
as hail kills flowers", to mend its ways.
We shall soon be celebrating the one-hundred- and-fiftieth anniversary
of the emancipation of slaves in the British Empire. My delegation
supports the proposal of Antigua and Barbuda for the commemoration of
that event, which is of very great importance to African countries and
the black world. For us, all that can be said throughout the world
during the commemorative ceremonies must emphasize the terrible cost
paid by Africa and the black world in the development of civilization.
Nothing was given us in return, which no doubt explains the tragedy on
our continent today. It is our blood that nourished the rise of
capitalism, that made possible our present condition of dependence and
consolidated our underdevelopment. But we cannot hide the truth any
more; it cannot be ignored. The figures cannot be simply haggled away.
For every black man who came to the plantations, five died or were
crippled. And here I do not mention the disorganization of the
continent and its consequences.
While the entire world, thanks to you, Mr. President, with the help of
the Secretary-General, will be commemorating that anniversary and
noting this truth, it will understand why we long for peace among
nations and why we demand our right to development with absolute
equality through the organization and distribution of human resources.
It is because we belong to one of the races that has suffered the most
that we in Burkina Faso have sworn that we shall never accept any
splitting up of our country or any denial of justice. It is the memory
of that suffering that causes us to stand side by side with the
Palestine Liberation Organization [PLO] against the armed bands of
Israel. It is the memory of that suffering which, on the one hand,
causes us to support the African National Congress of South Africa
[ANC] and the South West Africa People's Organization [SWAPO] and, on
the other, makes absolutely intolerable the presence in South Africa
of men who say they are white and feel entitled on that account to set
the whole world on fire. It is that memory of suffering that makes us
put all our faith in the United Nations, with the common
responsibility, the common task and the common hopes of us all.
We demand that throughout the world the campaign to free Nelson
Mandela be intensified so that his presence here at the next session
of the General Assembly will be a victory of collective pride. In
memory of our suffering and as a collective pardon, an international
humanitarian prize should be given for all those who have contributed
to the defence of human rights through their work and research. We
call for cutting all budgets for space research by one ten-thousandth
and devoting that amount to research in the field of health and to
improving the human environment which has been disrupted by those
"fireworks" which are harmful to the ecosystem.
We also propose that the structures of the United Nations be reviewed
and revised so that an end may be put to the scandal of the right of
veto. The perverse effects of its abuse have, of course, been offset
by the vigilance of some States that possess the veto right. However,
nothing can justify that right--neither the size of the country nor
its wealth.
If the argument used to justify that inequity has been the cost paid
during the Second World War, then those nations that have arrogated
those rights to themselves should know that each of us has an uncle or
a father who--like thousands of other innocent people recruited from
the third world to defend the rights that had been flouted by the
Hitlerite hordes-- also suffered and died from Nazi bullets.
Therefore, let those major Powers, which miss no opportunity to
question the right of peoples, not be so arrogant. The absence of
Africa from the club of those that have the right of veto is an
injustice which must be ended.
Lastly, my delegation would be failing in its duty if it did not call
for the suspension of Israel and the pure and simple exclusion of
South Africa from the United Nations. When, in the course of time,
those countries have done what they must do to justify their presence
in the international community, then we would be only too happy to
welcome them here and to guide their first steps.
We should like to reconfirm our confidence in the United Nations. We
are grateful for the work which its agencies have done in Burkina Faso
and for their presence side by side with us in the difficult times in
which we are living. We are grateful to the members of the Security
Council for having allowed us twice this year to preside over the work
of the Council. We only hope the Council will recognize the principle
of the struggle against the extermination of 30 million human beings
each year through hunger, which today is more devastating than nuclear
weapons.
Our confidence and faith in the United Nations leads me to thank the
Secretary-General for his visit, which we greatly appreciated; he came
to see for himself the harsh reality of our life and to get a true
picture of the aridity or the Sahel and the tragedy of
desertification.
I cannot conclude without paying a tribute to the President of the
General Assembly, who, with his great intelligence and perception,
will guide the work of this thirty-ninth session.
I have travelled many thousands of kilometres to be here. I have come
to ask each member to work together to put an end to the contempt of
those who are unreasonable, to eliminate the tragic spectacle of
children dying of hunger, to do away with ignorance, to ensure the
triumph of the legitimate rebellion of peoples and to put an end to
the use of weapons so that they can be laid down and fall silent, and
to ensure that mankind will survive and that together, with the great
poet Novalis we can all sing together:
"Soon the stars will come back to the Earth where they have long been
gone; soon the sun will return, the star will shine again among the
stars, all the races of the world will gather together again after a
long separation, the old orphaned families will find one another again
and every day there will be new discoveries, more people will embrace
one another; then the inhabitants of the old days will come back to
the Earth, the ashes will be relit in each tomb, the flame of life
will bum again, the old houses will be rebuilt, the old times will
come again and history will be the dream of the present extended to
infinity."
Down with international reaction! Down with imperialism! Down with
neo-colonialism! Down with "puppetism"!
Eternal glory to the peoples who are struggling for their freedom!
Eternal glory to the peoples who stand shoulder to shoulder to defend
their dignity! Eternal victory to the peoples of Africa, Latin America
and Asia in their struggle!
Fatherland or death: we shall triumph.
Thomas Sankara Internet Archive
