JavaScript is disabled in your web browser or browser is too old to support JavaScript. Today almost all web pages contain JavaScript, a scripting programming language that runs on visitor's web browser. It makes web pages functional for specific purposes and if disabled for some reason, the content or the functionality of the web page can be limited or unavailable.

Monday, February 24, 2025

Reparations for Caricom

by

20130731

Dur­ing the 34th Reg­u­lar Cari­com meet­ing in Ch­aguara­mas in Ju­ly, 15 Cari­com states agreed to seek repa­ra­tions for slav­ery and the geno­cide of na­tive peo­ples from Eu­ro­pean coun­tries.

The de­ci­sion has been near­ly 30 years in the mak­ing ac­cord­ing to St Vin­cent and the Grenadines Prime Min­is­ter Dr Ralph Gon­salves. Gon­salves has been a stead­fast cam­paign­er for the cause. For the past few months, he has been lob­by­ing Cari­com heads of gov­ern­ment to put repa­ra­tions on their agen­da.

In a tele­phone in­ter­view on Tues­day, Gon­salves ex­plained that it was he who con­tact­ed the hu­man rights law firm Leigh Day & Co. The firm will be rep­re­sent­ing Cari­com.

Leigh Day & Co re­cent­ly won the case of the Kenyan Mau Mau rebels who were tor­tured by the British gov­ern­ment in the 1950s and 60s. The Mau Mau sur­vivors were award­ed US$21.5 mil­lion. Gon­salves said, how­ev­er, Cari­com was not whol­ly in­flu­enced by the Mau Mau rul­ing.

"For about 30 or so years there's been a move­ment from the grass­roots and civ­il so­ci­ety, among in­tel­lec­tu­als and pro­fes­sion­als, mak­ing claims for repa­ra­tions for na­tive geno­cide and slav­ery. There was no par­tic­u­lar im­pe­tus," said Gon­salves. He added that there were sev­er­al prece­dents for repa­ra­tions among Na­tive Amer­i­cans in the US, the Maoris in the Aus­tralia, and Jews in Ger­many.

Three months ago, the St Vin­cent and the Grenadines Na­tion­al Repa­ra­tions Com­mit­tee was formed. The com­mit­ted is led by at­tor­ney Jo­mo Thomas. Sim­i­lar or­gan­i­sa­tions al­so ex­ist in An­tigua and Bar­bu­da, Bar­ba­dos, Ja­maica and Suri­name. Oth­er Cari­com mem­ber states have pledged to form repa­ra­tions com­mit­tees while a re­gion­al repa­ra­tions com­mis­sion has al­so been formed. Bar­ba­di­an Prime Min­is­ter Fre­un­del Stu­art cur­rent­ly leads the com­mis­sion. Oth­er mem­bers of the com­mis­sion in­clude Gon­salves, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad Bisses­sar, and the pres­i­dents of Haiti, Guyana and Suri­name, Michel Martel­ly, Don­ald Ramo­tar and De­si Bouterse re­spec­tive­ly.

Haiti is a "spe­cial case" ac­cord­ing to Gon­salves and will be af­ford­ed at­ten­tion as such. Fol­low­ing the 1804 Hait­ian Rev­o­lu­tion for in­de­pen­dence, Haiti was or­dered to pay repa­ra­tions to France–a mas­sive debt that many be­lieve was un­just and added to the coun­try's tur­bu­lent his­to­ry.

The call for repa­ra­tions is be­com­ing part of the na­tion­al con­cious­ness in St Vin­cent and the Grenadines, said Gon­salves, through ra­dio pro­grammes, pub­lic speech­es and news­pa­pers. Gon­salves has al­so writ­ten schol­ar­ly works on the sub­ject. He is one of many who have tack­led the sub­ject, in­clud­ing his­to­ri­an Hi­lary Beck­les. Beck­les was in­vit­ed to speak on the sub­ject at the re­cent Cari­com meet­ing and present find­ings from his June pub­li­ca­tion, Britain's Black Debt: Repa­ra­tions owed the Caribbean for Slav­ery and In­dige­nous Geno­cide.

Gon­salves added that the call for repa­ra­tions raised im­por­tant ques­tions. "From a his­tor­i­cal stand­point I un­der­stand how Eu­rope un­der­de­vel­oped the Caribbean. If you read the the­sis of Wal­ter Rod­ney (the book How Eu­rope Un­der­de­vel­oped Africa) you'll see the par­al­lels. An im­por­tant ques­tion of rec­on­cil­i­a­tion be­tween our­selves and the for­mer colo­nial pow­ers is raised and that is why I want to see this con­ver­sa­tion start­ed in earnest," he said.

Cari­com's call for repa­ra­tions has al­ready come un­der some crit­i­cisms, how­ev­er. The In­ter Press Ser­vice re­port­ed on Ju­ly 29 that the Pan Afrikan Repa­ra­tions Coali­tion in Eu­rope has warned Cari­com that a "top down ap­proach" to repa­ra­tions would not aid the Caribbean's in­dige­nous and African de­scen­dant pop­u­la­tions. The group al­so stat­ed that the mon­ey re­ceived by the Mau-Mau rebels was not on par with the tor­ture suf­fered by the group and urged Caribbean lead­ers to en­sure that grass­roots par­tic­i­pa­tion guides the quest for repa­ra­tions.

Chair­man of the Eman­ci­pa­tion Sup­port Com­mit­tee, Khafra Kam­bon said the ESC sup­port­ed the call for repa­ra­tions 100 per cent. In a tele­phone in­ter­view with the T&T Guardian Kam­bon said Cari­com was act­ing on a "feel­ing from the ground" and need­ed im­mense, con­tin­ued sup­port to make repa­ra­tions a re­al­i­ty.

"Be­cause this was de­ci­sion made by gov­ern­ments, doesn't mean that their agree­ment on it has to be con­demned. We think that the most crit­i­cal thing now is for it to get that grass­roots sup­port. This ef­fort can­not be left to gov­ern­ment alone. It's up to the peo­ple who are con­cerned about repa­ra­tions to show the gov­ern­ment sup­port. There will be pres­sure on Cari­com to com­pro­mise or aban­don this cause and to avoid that there has to be a mass move­ment," he said.

Kam­bon said repa­ra­tions were "legal­ly jus­ti­fi­able" and nec­es­sary to ad­dress­ing the lega­cy of crimes against hu­man­i­ty. "Chat­tel slav­ery and na­tive geno­cide are some of the most crit­i­cal moral is­sues of our time. A large body of hu­man­i­ty was de­grad­ed by these crimes and con­tin­ue to suf­fer the ef­fects of those crimes both at phys­i­o­log­i­cal lev­el, be­cause the trau­ma re­mains un­ad­dressed, and at a ma­te­r­i­al lev­el, be­cause the world was turned in­to a very un­equal place as an out­come of that."

He added: "Sys­tems have de­vel­oped to main­tain that in­equal­i­ty. Those who were the vic­tims of the crimes con­tin­ue to suf­fer the ef­fects of the crimes and those who were ben­e­fi­cia­ries con­tin­ue to reap the ben­e­fits."

It is not yet clear how much Cari­com would ex­pect the Eu­ro­pean coun­tries - they have de­cid­ed to ap­proach Britain, France and the Nether­lands - to pay. Gon­salves and the leader of Ja­maica's repa­ra­tions com­mit­tee, Verene Shep­perd, re­ferred to the 1834 �20 mil­lion pay-out to British plan­ta­tion own­ers af­ter eman­ci­pa­tion in an AP ar­ti­cle. That sum is equiv­a­lent to �200 bil­lion to­day ac­cord­ing to the AP.

Any mon­ey re­ceived is not go­ing to be hand­ed to in­di­vid­u­als, Gon­salves said on Tues­day, but is more like­ly to go to­wards eco­nom­ic, so­cial and cul­tur­al pro­grammes.

Oth­er cas­es of repa­ra­tions:

In 2008 Tas­ma­nia (an is­land state in the Aus­tralian Com­mon­wealth) award­ed Tas­man­ian Abo­rig­ines �2.2 mil­lion in repa­ra­tions. The awards was dis­trib­uted in the form of a fund for in­dige­nous chil­dren be­tween 106 claimants. The award went to what is ref­ered to as the "stolen gen­er­a­tion" when Abo­rig­i­nal chil­dren were forcibly re­moved from their fam­i­lies in ef­forts to fos­ter in­te­gra­tion.

In 2010, Na­tive Amer­i­cans and some black Amer­i­can farm­ers were award­ed US$4.5 bil­lion in repa­ra­tions. The award in­clud­ed rights to land use which have been over­seen by the US gov­ern­ment since 1887. The repa­ra­tions for farm­ers specif­i­cal­ly ad­dress dis­crim­i­na­tion in the award­ing of loans and sub­si­dies by the US De­part­ment of Agri­cul­ture.

In May 2013, the Ger­man gov­ern­ment agreed to pay near­ly US$1 bil­lion to ag­ing Holo­caust sur­vivors. The mon­ey will be dis­bursed be­tween 2014 and 2017. Dur­ing the Holo­caust, mil­lions of Jew­ish peo­ple were killed and tor­tured in con­cen­tra­tion camps.

In June 2013, the British gov­ern­ment award­ed 5,200 Mau Mau rebels with US$21.5 mil­lion in repa­ra­tions. In the 1950s and 60s, many mem­bers of the Mau Mau were beat­en and even sex­u­al­ly as­sault­ed in ef­forts to sup­press their re­bel­lion against colo­nial­ism.


Related articles

Sponsored

Weather

PORT OF SPAIN WEATHER

Sponsored