Caribbean: After Elizabeth’s death, the issue of reparations for slavery returns

The ascension of King Charles to the British throne has brought back to the debate the demand by politicians and activists in Caribbean countries that the British monarch cease to be head of state and that London pay reparations for slavery.

Its prime minister JamaicaAndrew Holness, said his country would mourn the death of Queen Elizabeth, while his counterpart Antigua and Barbuda Gaston Brown called for flags in the country to be flown at half-mast.

However, in some parts of the Caribbean, questions are being raised about the role the new monarch should play.

Earlier this year some Commonwealth leaders expressed their reservations during a meeting in Kigali, Rwanda, about Charles taking over the leadership of the 54 countries after Elizabeth’s death.

The eight-day tour of the heir to the British throne William and his wife Kate in Belize, Jamaica and the Bahamas was characterized by calls for reparations for slavery.

“As the role of the monarchy is changing, we feel this may be an opportunity to advance the reparations debate in our region,” said Nyabi Hall-Campbell, a 44-year-old university head of the National Reparations Commission in the Bahamas.

Hall-Campbell sent a message of condolence to the Queen’s family and pointed to the fact that Charles acknowledged “the appalling atrocity of slavery” at a ceremony last year to mark Barbados’ declaration of a presidential parliamentary democracy.

More than 10 million Africans were sold as slaves by European countries between the 15th and 19th centuries. Those who survived the harsh journey were forced to work on plantations in the Caribbean and America.

Rosalea Hamilton, a reparations campaigner in Jamaica, said Charles’ comments at the Kigali summit on slavery offered “a degree of hope that he will learn from history, understand the suffering many countries have suffered to this day”. and respond to the need for reparations.

Britain’s new king did not address the issue of reparations at the meeting in Kigali.

The Advocates Network, chaired by Hamilton, published an open letter during William and Kate’s visit to Jamaica calling on Britain to “apologise and pay reparations”.

The Jamaican government announced last year that it plans to seek reparations from Britain for the forced transport of some 600,000 Africans to work on sugarcane or banana plantations that have enriched Britons.

At the same time, David Denny, secretary general of the Caribbean Movement for Peace and Integration, said that “we must all work to remove the royal family as heads of state”.

Jamaica has hinted that it may soon follow Barbados’ example. A poll conducted in August showed that 56% of Jamaicans want the British king to stop being their head of state.

Alain Chastanet, the former prime minister of Saint Lucia and now the leader of the opposition, said he supported the “general,” as he called it, sentiment toward turning his country into a presidential democracy.

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