Envoy backs Jamaican reparations push

Ambassador to CARICOM David Comissiong has thrown his support behind Jamaica’s latest push for reparations, expressing confidence that the British Privy Council would affirm that slavery was never lawful under English law.

Jamaica has formally petitioned King Charles III as the Jamaican head of state to refer key legal questions surrounding chattel slavery and Britain’s obligations to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, Jamaica’s highest court.

The petition, filed by Jamaica in its capacity as a constitutional monarchy, asks the king to refer three questions to the Privy Council.

They include whether the seizure, transportation and enslavement of Africans as chattel was ever lawful under English law; whether those acts in Jamaica breached international law; and whether the United Kingdom has a legal obligation to provide a reparatory remedy to the people of Jamaica.

Speaking to Barbados TODAY on the sidelines of the Barbados @ 60 Timeline launch at Pelican Village on Wednesday, Comissiong said Jamaica’s move had the backing of CARICOM.

“Jamaica’s presentation of this petition to King Charles III does not come as a surprise to us in CARICOM. In fact, CARICOM has given Jamaica its solidarity and support.”

Ambassador Comissiong explained that Jamaican lawyers had identified a legal provision allowing petitions to be made to the King, asking him to place legal questions before the Privy Council for its opinion.

“One of the questions they have placed is, was slavery legal under British law at the time that it was practised in the British Empire back in the 19th, 18th, 17th century.”

He said there were “pros and cons” to Jamaica’s approach, particularly because Barbados and other CARICOM states that have become republics no longer have the same constitutional avenue available to them.

“For those of us who have become republics, we are conscious that a fundamental principle of reparations is the self-help, self-repair remedy of reappropriating your full nationhood, sovereignty, and self-determination.”

Still, he believes Jamaica’s petition could represent a significant breakthrough for the regional reparations campaign.

“If the King responds positively, and if those three questions are put to the Privy Council, and if the Privy Council gives a positive answer, particularly in relation to that question about the illegality of slavery when it was practised, that will be a very big victory and a big step forward for our reparations cause.”

But Ambassador Comissiong cautioned that such a ruling would not automatically result in compensation.

“That by itself will not deliver reparations,” he said. “It is one thing to declare that slavery was illegal back then, but it’s another thing to go from that to actually establish and win a judgment for actual payment of compensation.”

Nevertheless, he said an affirmation by the Privy Council that slavery was unlawful would be a “major step forward”.

“I have no doubt that they will come to the conclusion that slavery, certainly the racialised chattel slavery that was inflicted on our ancestors, was never legal under the constitutional regime of Britain,” Ambassador Comissiong said.

With Barbados set to host a regional reparations conference from September 17 to 19, he said the gathering would provide an opportunity to bring together the various strands of the movement.

“This conference will give us an opportunity to pull together all the different strands of the reparations movement that have really come to the fore over the last year or so,” he said.

Ambassador Comissiong said the conference would also help CARICOM, the African Union, Ghana and Jamaica align their various reparations initiatives and “plan the next collectively take forward our reparations campaign”.

(SB)