THE CARICOM Reparation Commission (CRC) met in Barbados March 28-29 for its 26th meeting and second Special Conference, where the Royal Visits to the Caribbean were discussed, among other reparations-related matters, including past and upcoming events — from the African Union (AU)-CARICOM Summit last September to plans for Reparations Summits in 2022 and beyond.

The CRC’s Strategic Approach at a time when the reparations issue placed on eight years ago has now gone global and the meeting heard reports on latest related national and regional developments.
Also discussed were reparations for native genocide for the region’s first people, as well as qualification of descendants of deceptive East Indian indentureship for inclusion in the calls and cause for reparations from Britain and the European Union (EU) member-states that participated in and benefitted from the Slave Trade.

Chairman of the Saint Lucia National Reparations Committee (NRC) Earl Bousquet, who is also the island’s Commissioner on the CRC, told the Guyana Chronicle that the meeting discussed the Royal Visits in the context of the reparations-related responses from The Bahamas, Belize and Jamaica after being visited by Prince William and his wife Kate Middleton.

“The visits being in the context of observance and celebration of the Queen of the British Commonwealth’s Platinum Jubilee, the responses have so far been a wake-up call to the Royal Family, that after six decades of independence and republicanism, Caribbean citizens no longer sing ‘God Save The Queen’ and most no longer see the royals like they were ‘Born to reign over us’ like we were taught during centuries of colonial miseducation.”

According to Bousquet, who is also a Guyana Chronicle columnist, “The Royal Visits were supposed to have been a Royal Caribbean charm offensive, but instead they put the Caribbean’s reparations demand on the Royal agenda in a way never planned, which is a natural welcome boon for the CRC and the CARICOM governments that gave it birth in 2013.”
He pointed out, however, that the commission did not take a position on the issue of how to respond to the Royal Visits, instead leaving it to national committees in the nations to be visited, to decide how best to welcome the Royals — and give them the reparations message to take back to Britain.

EAST INDIAN INDENTURESHIP
Bousquet said the meeting also discussed different views on the issue of East Indian indentureship and the reparations agenda, as well as the role of British Guiana’s Gladstone family in and contribution to the Cross-Atlantic Slave Trade.

Bousquet said the CRC and CARICOM are now operating “in an environment where the work started in 2013 has mushroomed regionally and internationally” with the reparations movements having been “revived everywhere since then, including the USA and UK, Africa and Europe, India and the remaining European colonies in the Caribbean.”

He said the CRC was also “preparing for upcoming reparations summits involving Africa and India.”
Bousquet said the CRC meeting “also called for NRCs to do more to observe the second half of the United Nations Decade for People of African Descent.”

He noted too that the national reparations committees are working with and through the CARICOM Secretariat, as well as the Centre for Reparations Research (CRR) and the Vice- Chancellor of the University of the West Indies (UWI), Sir Hilary Beckles, on how best to improve and/or increase national participation in the rest of the decade.

FAR AHEAD
He noted that Guyana is fortunate to be far ahead of other CRC member states in its ability to fund activities related to the Decade and that the UN is making an extraordinary appeal to nations everywhere, including the Caribbean, to do more to ensure the second half of the decade does not end like the first.
Another event on the CRC and NRC’s agenda for 2022, Bousquet said, is the second AU-CARICOM Summit on September 7.

He noted that the Barbados meeting had been planned before the Royal Visits began “and they were not an original agenda item, but had to be added in light of their taking place while the Caribbean’s reparations representatives met in Bridgetown, where Prince Charles last November said, on his mother’s behalf, that the Royals are now sorry for slavery.”

According to Bousquet, “National Committees in nations to be visited have basically affirmed they will ensure the Royals hear the reparations message before flying back home.”

He concluded that the overall responses to the three Royal Caribbean Visits so far have underlined the advances made across the region in people’s understanding and support for CARICOM’s call for reparations.
“And if there’s anything that can be agreed upon by all after the current visits will have ended, is that no future Royal Visits to the Caribbean will ever be the same again.”