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.