Chief Taku drew a direct line from the General Act of the Berlin Conference of 1885, which partitioned Africa among European powers, to the enduring structural injustices that continue to cripple African development today.
Quoting the very words of the colonial pact — which claimed to bring “the blessings of civilization” to Africans — Taku described how the so-called “protection of natives” masked a genocidal campaign against African spiritual systems, cultural heritage, and sovereignty.
“The colonial agenda specifically targeted African civilization, spiritualism, creative ingenuity, and cultural heritage,” he declared. “Missionaries and European professionals did not merely observe these crimes — they participated in them.”
He cited chilling examples of European doctors and explorers who looted human remains and sacred artifacts, including Dr. Theodor Berké, who extracted over 100 human remains from the Bangwa and Anyang peoples between 1901 and 1904, now kept in European museums.
German officers, he noted, went as far as coordinating “punitive expeditions” to seize cultural objects for European institutions like the Berlin Museum für Völkerkunde.
Chief Taku outlined how European treaties, from the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907 to the United Nations Charter of 1945, have long recognized the obligation to return looted property and to provide reparations for wartime and colonial plunder — obligations that have been consistently denied to Africa.
He invoked the words of legal scholar Professor Max Hilaire, who described the post–World War II order as a “Westphalian shield of impunity” that protected European powers while excluding African claims.
“While the Geneva Conventions and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights were being signed,” Taku said, “Africa was still bleeding under colonial and genocidal systems justified by those very signatories.”
