Akash Sama­roo

Lead Ed­i­tor-Pol­i­tics

akash.sama­roo@cnc3.co.tt

The Cari­com Repa­ra­tions Com­mis­sion (CRC) has re­spond­ed sharply to com­ments made by Re­form UK spokesman Zia Yusuf re­gard­ing slav­ery repa­ra­tions.

Yusuf, Re­form UK’s home af­fairs spokesper­son, op­pos­es fi­nan­cial com­pen­sa­tion for slav­ery, stat­ing that the Unit­ed King­dom is “not an ATM for eth­nic griev­ances” and that the “bank is closed.”

He has al­so pro­posed a pol­i­cy to de­ny visas to na­tion­als of any coun­try that for­mal­ly de­mands repa­ra­tions from the UK for its role in the transat­lantic slave trade.

On March 25, the UN Gen­er­al As­sem­bly adopt­ed a his­toric res­o­lu­tion de­clar­ing the transat­lantic slave trade the “gravest crime against hu­man­i­ty” and call­ing for repara­to­ry jus­tice. The Unit­ed States vot­ed against the mea­sure, join­ing Is­rael and Ar­genti­na, while the Unit­ed King­dom ab­stained, along­side the Eu­ro­pean Union, cit­ing con­cerns over the le­gal ba­sis for repa­ra­tions.

Yusuf has ar­gued that calls for slav­ery repa­ra­tions are in­sult­ing be­cause the transat­lantic trade was abol­ished more than 200 years ago.

How­ev­er, Pro­fes­sor Sir Hi­lary Beck­les, chair­man of the CRC, ad­dressed these claims dur­ing a me­dia con­fer­ence host­ed by the Com­mis­sion yes­ter­day.

Sir Hi­lary em­pha­sised that the ef­fects of slav­ery con­tin­ue to re­ver­ber­ate to­day.

“It was not a long time ago. It is very much present for all of us. There are still many peo­ple in the Caribbean who have knowl­edge of their great-grand­par­ents and great-great-grand­par­ents who were en­slaved,” he said.

He added that those who ben­e­fit­ed from “the crim­i­nal­i­ty of this sys­tem” have a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to en­gage with the de­scen­dants of the vic­tims.

“We have been clean­ing up this colo­nial mess left be­hind by slav­ery and coloni­sa­tion, span­ning three to four hun­dred years. And those who ben­e­fit­ed from it walked away, leav­ing a mess that the vic­tims now have to re­pair,” Sir Hi­lary said.

The CRC chair­man not­ed that Britain prof­it­ed from the forced labour of ten mil­lion African peo­ple over two cen­turies.

“But yet these na­tions ab­stained from agree­ing to this res­o­lu­tion. We know why, and the ar­gu­ments they have used are un­ac­cept­able from both his­tor­i­cal and po­lit­i­cal per­spec­tives,” he added.

He al­so high­light­ed the le­galised de­hu­man­i­sa­tion in­her­ent in chat­tel slav­ery.

“The no­tion that chat­tel slav­ery—and the cre­ation of prop­er­ty rights over hu­man be­ings—was le­gal be­cause they made it so on­ly adds to the crim­i­nal­i­ty and grav­i­ty of the sit­u­a­tion,” Sir Hi­lary said.

The CRC is call­ing for con­tin­ued di­a­logue on the is­sue with the “best minds” avail­able.

“Cari­com has been call­ing for a sum­mit where gov­ern­ments can sit, dis­cuss, and de­bate this, in the spir­it of de­cen­cy. This is what we are hop­ing for,” he said.