Latest News | News Break Nigeria Caribbean nations seeking reparations for the slavery era have agreed a 10-point list of demands to put to European governments, their London lawyers said Tuesday. Caribbean Community (CARICOM) heads of government, meeting in Saint Vincent on Monday and Tuesday, approved the plan seeking a full formal apology, a repatriation programme and debt cancellation. The 15-country organisation is targeting Britain, France and The Netherlands in particular. “Reparations for the slave era is an issue that has resonated increasingly in recent years,” said Barbadian academic Hilary Beckles, chairman of the CARICOM reparations commission. “Reparations for slavery, and the century of racial apartheid that replaced it into the 1950s, resonate as a popular right today in Caribbean communities because of the persistent harm and suffering linked to the crimes against humanity under colonialism.” The commission asserts that victims of crimes against humanity and their descendants have a legal right to reparatory justice and that those who have been enriched by the proceeds of the slave trade have a case to answer. Besides a “sincere formal apology”, the right of repatriation for descendants of “stolen people” and debt cancellation to clean up the “colonial mess”, CARICOM is seeking a development programme for their member states’ indigenous communities and the funding of cultural institutions such as slavery museums.Graphic illustration of slave trade It also wants European countries to take responsibility for the high incidence of hypertension and type two diabetes in the Caribbean and to participate in eradicating illiteracy. The final demands are “psychological rehabilitation” and a technology transfer on the premise that the Caribbean was “denied participation in Europe’s industrialisation”. Martyn Day, from London law firm Leigh Day, said: “This is a very comprehensive and fair set of demands on the governments whose countries grew rich at the expense of those regions whose human wealth was stolen from them.” He said CARICOM had called for an international meeting. “A conference in London between representatives of CARICOM and the slave nations, to include the governments of Holland, the UK, France as well as potentially other nations who profited from the slave trade, will enable our clients to quickly gauge whether or not their concerns are being taken seriously,” he said. Day told AFP that formal letters would be sent to European countries in April. His law firm last year secured compensation from Britain for more than 5,200 elderly Kenyans who were tortured and abused during the 1950s Mau Mau uprising against colonial rule. The 15 CARICOM members are Antigua and Barbuda, the Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Dominica, Grenada, Guyana, Haiti, Jamaica, Montserrat, Saint Lucia, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Suriname, and Trinidad and Tobago.
Posted on: Tue, 11 Mar 2014 20:09:15 +0000
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