CARICOM seeks audience with former colonial masters –as it strengthens case for reparation
Head of the CARICOM Reparation Commission, Sir Hilary Beckles
Head of the CARICOM Reparation Commission, Sir Hilary Beckles

GUYANA Reparations Committee Chair, Dr Eric Phillips reports that the governments of the Caribbean have agreed to move forward on dispatching a letter to former colonial powers, seeking to have an audience with them before year-end.The Committee, in December, had submitted a comprehensive report to the former Administration for perusal, and to be forwarded to the CARICOM Reparation Commission. The regional

 Guyana Reparations Committee Chair, Dr Eric Phillips
Guyana Reparations Committee Chair, Dr Eric Phillips

Commission is headed by distinguished Caribbean academic, Sir Hilary Beckles.
Dr Phillips told the Guyana Chronicle that the Region has a strong, evidence-based case that the Europeans would find difficult to defend, and that it is now a matter of due process.
He said that should Guyana succeed in its endeavour, the money awarded would not go to the Africa Cultural and Development Association (ACDA), but a National Endowment Fund.
“No individual cheques will be handed out; the Fund will focus on development, education, scholarships and the promotion and development of business,” Dr Phillips said.
He also noted that a Board will be nominated and elected to manage the Fund, and that the nationally-elected group will have a mandate to ensure that there is reparation both mentally and physically.
In the Region, Dr Phillips said, the reparation spirit is alive and well. He reported of a conference in Antigua, in New York with the African-American Reparations Committee, and of the CARICOM Heads of State, at their meeting in Barbados, voting to move the process forward.

FUNDING
According to Phillips, the local Committee has been meeting weekly, and is hoping to get some funding in the budget to carry out its educational programmes on radio, television and other forms of the media. These will also include poetry and singing competitions.
“We are supporting that effort towards educating people. Right now in England, there are two BBC programmes, Series 1 and 2, which talk about the 46,000 former British slave owners; and so, we will be bringing those tapes to share the information here. It [reparation] is a very active topic right now, globally and in CARICOM. We are waiting on the Budget, so that we can get some funding and go out in the field and do more things,” Dr Phillips said.
Sir Hilary, in a speech to the House of Commons in 2014, noted that the British Parliament in 1833 determined that the 800,000 enslaved people in the Caribbean were worth, as chattel property, £47M. This was their assessed market value.
The Parliament determined that all slave owners should receive just and fair compensation for the official taking away of their property, and provided the sum of £20M in grants to the slave owners as fair compensation for the loss of their human chattel.

PROPERTY
“And we know that this Parliament determined that the enslaved people would receive none of this compensation. The argument made in this House was that ‘property’ cannot receive property compensation. This Parliament, in its Emancipation Act, upheld the law that Black People were not human, but property,” he had said in his address.
The international historian revealed that what the British Parliament hid from the world is that it had also determined that the remaining £27M would be paid by the enslaved people to their enslavers, by means of a four-year period of free labour, called Apprenticeship.
British slave ships brought 5.5 million enslaved Africans into their Caribbean colonies over a period of 180 years, and when slavery was abolished in 1838, there were just 800,000 persons remaining, a retention/survival rate of 15 per cent.
“CARICOM Governments, like the Government of Great Britain, represent nations that are independent and equal. As such, they should proceed on the basis of their legitimate equality, without fear of retribution, in the best interest of humanity, and for a better future for us all,” Professor Beckles had urged in his address to the House of Commons.
The General Assembly of the United Nations, on December 23, 2013, proclaimed the International Decade for People of African Descent, commencing January 1, 2015 and ending on December 31, 2024, with the theme, ‘People of African descent: Recognition, justice and development’.

By Tajeram Mohabir

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