The 15th National Games, underway across Guangdong Province, Hong Kong, and Macao SARs, showcases the spirit of unity and connectivity driving the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area (GBA), according to a senior Hong Kong official.
Rosanna Law Shuk-pui, Secretary for Culture, Sports and Tourism of Hong Kong, said that the event has strengthened emotional bonds across the GBA and also reflected the development goals rooted in unity and common origin.
"The first thing (the National Games) profoundly reflects is the convenience of the 'one-hour living circle' in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, as well as the 'one-journey, multi-stop Tour' travel experience. This time people get to see our high-speed rail and other aspects of our well-developed transportation in the GBA. So I often say that people can watch a swimming competition in Shenzhen today and go to Macao tomorrow to watch a table tennis match," she said.
The official added that the Games not only deepen public understanding of multi-destination travel, but also deliver tangible economic benefits for Hong Kong. She noted that exchanges between athletes from Hong Kong and other regions underscore the unifying power of sports.
"We also feel that the National Games give us a very good opportunity. Our sectors, including catering, retail and others, have become extremely lively. The national team and sports teams from across the country have helped us a lot. For example, our handball team performed very well this time, but actually our goalkeeper went to Beijing to train for a few months, which led to today's outstanding results," she noted.
The 15th National Games,running from Nov 9 to 21, mark the first time that the three Chinese regions are co-hosting the country's highest-level and largest national multi-sport event.
China's National Games reflect unity, connectivity in Greater Bay Area: official
Ghanaian President John Dramani Mahama has underscored the need for the international community to properly recognize the historical injustices committed against Africa and support efforts to advance reparations for Africans and people of African descent.
Mahama made the remarks in an interview with the China Media Group (CMG) which was aired Friday and recorded during the Ghanaian President's trip to Beijing in October.
Earlier this year, Mahama had issued a call for collective action in securing justice for Africans and individuals of African descent through reparations at the 38th Ordinary Session of the African Union.
Located in West Africa along the northern shore of the Gulf of Guinea and bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the south, Ghana boasts a more than 500-km coastline and abundant agricultural, fishery, forestry and mineral resources. Yet its history, like much of the African continent, has been deeply scarred by centuries of foreign aggression.
From the 15th century onward, Western colonial powers invaded coastal areas of what is now Ghana, plundering resources and conducting the slave trade, casting a long colonial shadow over the African continent which hung for centuries.
In 1955, the successful convening of the Bandung Conference -- which gathered representatives of Asian and African states in Indonesia -- ignited a new wave of national liberation movements these continents, accelerating the collapse of the global colonial system.
Ghana's independence in 1957 lit the first torch of freedom in sub-Saharan Africa and was hailed as the dawn of Africa's awakening.
Africa's first tragedy, the transatlantic slave trade, constituted an extremely grave atrocity, Mahama said.
During that period, an estimated 12 to 15 million Africans were forcibly taken from the continent and sent to the Caribbean, the Americas and Europe. They contributed to the building of modern Western civilization, yet received no compensation for their labor, whether working on sugar plantations or constructing railways, roads and bridges, he noted.
Mahama outlined his wish that the United Nations takes action to recognize the slave trade as "the greatest crime against humanity" and takes steps to ensure reparations are paid back to the descendants of those who suffered.
"We believe that first and foremost, it should be recognized as the greatest crime against humanity. We must condemn the activity of slavery of the people who were shipped to what I call the 'New World', that's the Western world. It's estimated that as many as 2 million did not arrive at the destination because they were either too sick or they died on board, and they were just tossed over into the ocean. That was genocide. And so it's an issue that the first step is for us to accept. And so Ghana wants to move a motion in the UN next year asking the world to recognize the slave trade as the greatest crime against humanity. And so we'll continue to push on the African [Union] Champion on Reparations when I spoke even at the UN, I raised the issue of reparations and so I do think that that is to do with slavery," he said.
Mahama also stressed the impact of colonialism, which further entrenched injustice and led to global inequality as African nations were ruthlessly exploited.
"With regards to colonialism, the Berlin Conference (1884–1885) partitioned Africa and the European nations took colonies in Africa, ran those colonies, exploited their natural resources and transferred those natural resources, oil palm, gold, minerals, cocoa and other products, to develop their countries. And it's only from the late 1950s that countries like Ghana got independent. And so that was an injustice. Colonialism was an injustice against African countries," he said.
Ghanaian president urges reparative justice for Africa, citing slavery, colonial exploitation
