"The Case for Repa­ra­tion" will be ad­dressed in a pan­el dis­cus­sion tonight at the Au­dio-Vi­su­al Room at Nalis, Aber­crom­by Street, Port-of-Spain, from 7 pm.

This dis­cus­sion, which moves to the Point Fortin East Sec­ondary School on Sat­ur­day at 5 pm, is the Eman­ci­pa­tion Sup­port Com­mit­tee's (ESC) third in­stal­ment of the Kwame Ture Memo­r­i­al Lec­ture Se­ries.

"The dis­cus­sion promis­es to be a vi­brant one as each speak­er shares his point of view through the eyes of Africans dis­persed through­out the Caribbean. Al­though the per­spec­tives may dif­fer, some sim­i­lar­i­ty may be found in their vo­cal­i­sa­tion," the ESC said in a news re­lease. Two of the pan­el­lists chair their na­tion­al repa­ra­tions com­mis­sion.

Stat­ing its in­tent for "in­formed and sen­si­ble con­ver­sa­tion" on repa­ra­tion, the ESC cit­ed vary­ing opin­ions of no­table per­son­al­i­ties on the is­sue, in­clud­ing econ­o­mist and in­ter­na­tion­al lawyer Court­ney Bar­nett and UWI Pro Chan­cel­lor Dr Hi­lary Beck­les:

The val­ue of repa­ra­tions owed to Africans who worked on British plan­ta­tions in the Caribbean has been es­ti­mat­ed, at its low­est, to be �200 bil­lion, ac­cord­ing to Court­ney Bar­nett, econ­o­mist and in­ter­na­tion­al lawyer.

On the oth­er hand, eco­nom­ic his­to­ri­an and UWI Pro Chan­cel­lor Dr Hi­lary Beck­les says repa­ra­tion for slav­ery goes be­yond a dol­lar val­ue. At the re­cent launch of his book Britain's Black Debt: Repa­ra­tions for Caribbean Slav­ery and Na­tive Geno­cide, he not­ed, "Repa­ra­tions, or the con­cept of re­pair­ing dam­age, is based on the search for a high­er lev­el of hu­man­i­ty and is in­tend­ed to lay the foun­da­tion for heal­ing the hu­man fam­i­ly."

The dis­cus­sion of repa­ra­tion in the Caribbean is a dy­nam­ic one since it piv­ots around de­bates on re­mu­ner­a­tion as well as the dis­course of heal­ing and re­pair­ing the psy­che of the African de­scen­dants in the Caribbean, the ESC said in a news re­lease.

St Vin­cent and the Grenadines Prime Min­is­ter Dr Ralph Gon­salves has not­ed repa­ra­tion is not about peo­ple get­ting hand­outs, but about re­pair­ing his­tor­i­cal dam­age and seek­ing to find a way for­ward.

Re­gard­less of point of view, Dr Beck­les in­sists repa­ra­tion needs "in­formed and sen­si­ble con­ver­sa­tion" on what has been de­scribed as "the worst crime against hu­man­i­ty," the ESC said.

The pan­el­lists are Bar­ba­di­an lawyer and au­thor David Comis­siong; An­tiguan play­wright and renowned Caribbean cul­tur­al work­er Dor­brene O'Marde, and Khafra Kam­bon, chair­man of the ECS.

Comis­siong, a mem­ber of the Bar­ba­dos Na­tion­al Repa­ra­tions Com­mis­sion, is a for­mer sen­a­tor and cur­rent pres­i­dent of the Peo­ple's Em­pow­er­ment Par­ty. Comis­siong who was born in An­tigua, schooled in Trinidad and To­ba­go and Bar­ba­dos, has been a dri­ving force be­hind the Pan African move­ment in Bar­ba­dos.

O'Marde, chair of An­tigua's Na­tion­al Repa­ra­tions Com­mis­sion, is best known as a play­wright, di­rec­tor and pro­duc­er (the­atre and mu­sic), colum­nist, speak­er, a ca­lyp­so writer, judge and an­a­lyst. He has writ­ten and di­rect­ed five full-length plays with the Haram­bee Open Air The­atre group which he helped form and led for 15 years. His plays in­clude Fly on the Wall, Tan­gled Web and This World Spin One Way.

Kam­bon, an econ­o­mist, bi­og­ra­ph­er of George Weekes and a black pow­er ad­vo­cate, re­cent­ly pre­sent­ed a pa­per at the 11th An­nu­al Kon­vwa on Repa­ra­tions in Mar­tinique ti­tled: Com­plet­ing the Eman­ci­pa­tion Process: Repa­ra­tions and the ques­tion of Self-Re­pair.

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