Reparations at front of CARICOM Emancipation Day celebrations

Barbados joins the Caribbean Community in observing the 186th anniversary of the freeing of enslaved people’s in the British West Indies on Saturday, with the chairman of the regional bloc, St Vincent and the Grenadines Prime Minister Dr Ralph Gonsalves, suggesting that this year’s observance is taking on greater international significance on the issue of reparations.

Dr Gonsalves noted that all but two CARICOM member states mark and celebrate Emancipation Day on August 1. The final abolition of slavery in Haiti came in 1793, 11 years before independence in 1804. In 1863, slavery was abolished in Suriname, then the Dutch main slave colony.

The Vincentian leader used a message to mark the occasion to step up the community’s persistent drumbeat of calls for reparations for slavery by the former colonial powers in the Caribbean: Britain, France, Spain and the Netherlands.

Even as the British Government passed the 1833 Emancipation Act which declared an end to slavery on August 1, 1834 followed by a four-year transition period, it compensated slave owners for loss of “property” with an unprecedented payout of £20 million – equivalent to approximately £20 billion today, in one of history’s biggest ever government bailouts.

He said: “The overwhelming majority of the population of CARICOM member-countries are of African descent. Joyously, people of all ethnicities in Caricom join in commemorating and celebrating Emancipation Day; all rightfully claim this historic day as their own.

“In our region, and elsewhere, we need to have a more thorough-going public education programme on the meaning and significance of reparatory justice for the Caribbean.

“Further, our governments must ramp up the political, diplomatic, and international legal struggle for reparations. All hands are required on deck as a matter of urgency.”.

A Prime Ministerial Sub-Committee on Reparatory Justice is headed by the Prime Minister of Barbados. A CARICOM Reparations Commission is chaired by historian Professor Sir Hilary Beckles, Vice Chancellor of the University of the West Indies.

The commission has advanced a ten-point reparations agenda, which has been adopted by CARICOM leaders, and that in each country, a National Reparations Commission has been established.

Dr Gonsalves declared: “Solid ground work has been done thus far, but we must not lose any momentum or be side-tracked. The circumstances are now propitious for escalating a coordinated push for reparatory justice.

“And CARICOM must engage the African Union fully on this.”

He noted that several CARICOM member-states have been strengthening their links with Africa in profound ways; so too, CARICOM and the African Union.

He said: “Much more is required to be done, and urgently, too. At the United Nations Security Council, a new institutional linkage of much consequence has been forged known as the A3 Plus One (the African 3: Niger, South Africa, and Tunisia, plus St Vincent and the Grenadines); this represents a collaboration between the regions of continental Africa and a representative country (St Vincent and the Grenadines) of the sixth region of the African Union, namely the African Diaspora.”

Dr Gonsalves said that abundant, high-quality research has been done and published on Reparations for Native Genocide and the Enslavement of Africans.

He declared: “More is still required to be done, but there is more than enough for us to proceed upon in our many-sided struggle.

“So, let us highlight reparatory justice on Emancipation Day, 2020, even as the individual countries in CARICOM engage in commemorative and celebratory activities of a cultural, social, political, and religious nature.”

He also urged the Caribbean Community to remember that June 13 this year was the 40th anniversary of the assassination of the Guyanese-born academic, Walter Rodney.

“No one has yet been brought to court for the killing of Walter. The next government of Guyana must address this matter fully; it is a gaping wound in our collective consciousness which must be healed,” Dr Gonsalves said.