Caribbean nations to hunt $33 trillion in slavery reparations
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aribbean nations will demand $33 trillion (£26.5 trillion) and a proper apology from European nations over their position within the transatlantic slave commerce.
Caricom, a political and financial union of 15 Caribbean nations, has established a ten-point plan to barter a monetary settlement with Britain, France, Spain and Denmark as a part of a means of “international reconciliation”.
The plan will embrace a full formal apology, training and well being funding, transfers of expertise and debt cancellation.
A report produced by an American consulting agency Brattle for Caricom estimates that Britain owes $19.6 trillion, whereas Spain owes $6.3 trillion and France $6.5 trillion. Jamaica is owed $9.5 trillion.
Verene Shepherd, a Jamaican professor of historical past and vice-chairwoman of the reparations fee for Caricom, advised the Times that Caricom wanted “a negotiating figure” to start with.
“The crime is huge. The responsibility for what happened is huge.”
Caricom’s web site notes that some European governments have solely printed a “statement of regret” fairly than a full apology.
It provides: “Such statements do not acknowledge that crimes have been committed and represent a refusal to take responsibility for such crimes. Statements of regrets represent, furthermore, a reprehensible response to the call for apology in that they suggest that victims and their descendants are not worthy of an apology. Only an explicit formal apology will suffice within the context of the CRJP.”
The King of Netherlands has supplied a proper apology for his nation’s hyperlinks to slavery, however the British Government has not. In 2021, King Charles known as Britain’s involvement within the slave commerce the “darkest days of our past” whereas on a go to to Barbados.
Speaking within the House of Commons in April, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak denied that the UK would supply a proper apology or “commit to reparatory justice” by reparations.
He mentioned he believed that “trying to unpick our history is not the right way forward, and it’s not something that we will focus our energies on”.
Last yr, former BBC correspondent Laura Trevelyan donated £100,000 in reparations to the University of West Indies (UWI) in Grenada over her household’s possession of greater than 1,000 enslaved Africans.
Arley Gill, a lawyer and chair of the island nation’s Reparations Commission, advised the Telegraph that she hoped that King Charles would “revisit the issue of reparations and make a more profound statement beginning with an apology, and that he would make resources from the Royal family available for reparative justice”.
“He should make some money available. We are not saying that he should starve himself and his family, and we are not asking for trinkets.
“But we believe we can sit around a table and discuss what can be made available for reparative justice.”