Carib leaders to view draft reparations document

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Caribbean leaders who are scheduled to meet at their main annual summit in Antigua in early July are to examine and approve a draft document which would demand payment from European nations such as Britain and The Netherlands for the TransAtlantic slave trade officials said this week.

A regional reparations sub-committee meeting which Barbadian Prime Minister Freundel Stuart chaired out of Barbados as the work week began and also included the participation of Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves of St. Vincent has finalized the draft that will be further looked over by regional attorneys general and later forwarded to presidents and prime ministers when they assemble for four days in Antigua from July 1.

Gonsalves’ persistence, that of leading academics in the University of The West Indies system, as well as the regional Rastafarian Movement have been credited with the renewed passion to win reparations from European for the region in recent years.


More than 70 persons participated in the four-hour video conference including national delegations from most of the 15 members of the grouping. CARICOM said that the draft will not be released before leaders examine and approve it but officials said that it makes out a case for compensation “for the lasting effects of slavery on the Caribbean population” including poor diet, inhumane working conditions, brutality and other stressful conditions that have led to chronic diseases such as high blood pressure in too many people.

Once approved as is widely expected, the document is to form the basis of negotiations with Britain, Spain, Portugal, France, The Netherlands and others, which have participated in the slave trade. Failure to reach a consensus would lead to a lawsuit at the Hague-based International Court of Justice and even though the case is likely to drag on for years, the regional committee has already said that it is prepared to wait it out in the name of justice for the descendants of the African slave trade.

The grouping also plans to hire a group of eminent lawyers to work with the British firm, which has been retained by governments to prepare and fight their case for reparations.

Leaders at their main summit in Trinidad a year ago decided to throw their political support behind the fight by civil society groups to win reparations following intense lobbying from those bodies.

Regional attorneys general are also being brought on board to help refine the draft for on passage to leaders. Some of those who attended this week’s video conference favor a physical presence in Europe to serve the letters but a final decision will be made as to exactly how this will be accomplished.

Additionally, a group of eminent private and state Caribbean attorneys will be drafted in to liaise with the British firm of Leigh Day which had successfully sued and made Britain pay for brutalizing the Mau Mau Tribe in Kenya several decades ago. The firm has already said that it is confident that the region has a strong case and like academics and doctors in the University of the West Indies system, has linked a string of chronic diseases rampaging through the Caribbean to the horrors of slavery and poor diet on plantations.

 

[DOS_patos]

Article is from 2014

 

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http://m.amsterdamnews.com/news/2018/nov/29/caribbean-wins-reparations-payments/

In what is being represented as a major victory in the fight to make Europe pay reparations to the Caribbean for the brutal transatlantic slave trade, the umbrella University of the West Indies is reporting that the University of Glasgow in the United Kingdom has agreed to begin making reparations payments in the near future after talks with a regional commission.

Dr. Hilary Beckles, the UWI vice chancellor, this week reported that agreement had been reached with the U.K. school to pay the value of Sterling 200 million for its part in the English slave trade to the Caribbean.

The announcement comes as regional governments continue to press governments in England, France, Spain, the Netherlands, Portugal, Denmark and others to attend a summit to discuss reparation payments to the 15-nation Caribbean Community and to decide whether the region should take the case to court to force those who benefited from the slave trade to compensate today’s descendants.

“The University of Glasgow has recognized that Jamaican slave owners had adopted the University of Glasgow as their university of choice and that £200 million of value was extracted from Jamaica and the Caribbean,” Beckles said in an announcement on Jamaica News Network program, “Insight,” as the workweek began. Beckles is the chairperson of the umbrella Caribbean Reparations Commission, which has been mandated by regional governments to force Britain and other European slave traders to own up and pay up for their role in genocide.

Governments had sent demand letters to European governments in the past year, urging them to sit down and talk about the past. Britain and France were among the most strident in their refusal to cooperate in any meaningful way with the commission. Critics say the move by the university will certainlyundermine its position because the school is now acknowledging its role in the slave trade.

Beckles said the school had recently delved into its records only to find that there was “a massive influx of grants and endowments from Jamaica.” The two schools are now drafting a memorandum of understanding that will govern the reparation payments and relations going forward. The term “reparatory justice” is expected to be included.

“We are not on the street corners asking for handouts,” said Beckles. “We are looking for partnerships and development.”

The money will come in cash and kind, scholarships, exchangeprograms and other activities. “They are looking at the possibility of partnering with us and having a massive institute for chronic disease research that is going to prevent the proliferation of these diseases in the future,” said Beckles.

In browsing through its records, researchers found that the university had benefited directly from the Caribbean slave trade in the 18th and 19th centuries, equivalent to Sterling 200 million at today’s value. Researchers had worked for approximately two years on the project.

In a previous discussion onuniversities and the slave trade, Beckles named North Carolina and Georgetown University in the Washington, D.C. area as thosewhose trails lead back to the Caribbean.

“The people who owned Dukes plantation in Barbados had split their money between Barbados and North Carolina and founded Duke University, the owners of which recently donated land to UWI for a major agricultural project,” said Beckles. “Meanwhile, when Georgetown University was going through bankruptcy in the 19th century, it sold 200 of the more than 400 slaves it owned in order to get back on its feet.”

He added, “A slave trader whooriginally lived in Antigua fled after a slave revolt there and moved toBoston and provided the initialfunding for the Harvard Law School.”