Image provided by: University of Oregon Libraries; Eugene, OR
About The skanner. (Portland, Or.) 1975-2014 | View Entire Issue (July 21, 2021)
Page 8 The Skanner Portland & Seattle July 21, 2021 News Jamaica Seeking $10.6 Billion in Slave Trade Reparations from Great Britain By Stacy M. Brown NNPA Newswire Senior National Correspondent J amaica has put a price tag on slavery and is sending the British government the bill. State officials of the Ca- ribbean nation said they are asking Great Britain to pay $10.6 billion (USD) in reparations. The former British col- ony served as the center of the slave trade, where Africans were kid- napped, enslaved, and forced to work on sugar cane, bananas, and other plantations. That free and inhu- mane labor greatly en- riched the slave owners. “We are hoping for re- paratory justice in all forms that one would ex- pect if they are to really ensure that we get justice from injustices to repair the damages that our ancestors experienced,” Olivia Grange, Minister of Sports, Youth, and Culture, told the Reuters news service. “Our African ancestors were forcibly removed from their home and suffered unparalleled atrocities in Africa to carry out forced labor to the benefit of the British Empire. Redress is well State officials of the Caribbean nation said they are asking Great Britain to pay $10.6 billion (USD) in reparations. overdue.” In the U.S., Congress- woman Sheila Jack- son-Lee has pushed H.R. 40, a bill to form a commission to study reparations for African American victims of the transatlantic slave trade. “Has anyone addressed the question of slavery and its comprehensive impact on Black Ameri- cans in this country? This is what H.R. 40 will do,” Jackson Lee remarked. While H.R. 40 doesn’t “ Redress is well over- due place a specific monetary value on reparations, it does focus on investi- gating and presenting the facts and truth about the unprecedented cen- turies of brutal enslave- ment of African people, racial healing, and trans- formation. The bill would fund a commission to study and develop proposals for providing reparations to African Americans. The commission’s mis- sion includes identifying the role of federal and state governments in supporting the institu- tion of slavery, forms of discrimination in pub- lic and private sectors against freed slaves and their descendants, and lingering adverse effects of slavery on living Afri- can Americans and soci- ety. Congresswoman Jack- son Lee, who sits on numerous House com- mittees, including the Judiciary, Budget, and Homeland Security, has made the reparations legislation her top prior- ity during the 117th Con- gress. “I think if people begin to associate this legisla- tion with what happened to the descendants of en- slaved Africans as a hu- man rights violation, the sordid past that violated the human rights of all of us who are descendants of enslaved Africans, I think that we can find common ground to pass this legislation,” Con- gresswoman Jackson Lee pronounced. In Jamaica, officials displayed shackles, coffles, slave collars, cot- ton screws, bear traps, branding irons, and oth- er items used to control slaves as stirring evi- dence for the case for reparations. “We need a sense of outrage directed at those who could do such things to other human beings,” Verene Shepherd, a Ja- maican resident, wrote in a petition on the Face- book page of the coun- try’s National Council on Reparations. “Reparations now,” Shepherd declared. According to the Na- tional Library of Jamaica, about 600,000 Africans landed in Jamaica during the slave trade. “Seized from Spain by the English in 1655, Jamaica was a British colony until it became independent in 1962,” the Reuters report noted. “The West Indian coun- try of almost three mil- lion people is part of the Commonwealth, and the British monarch remains head of state.” Britain prohibited trade in slaves in its em- pire in 1807 but did not formally abolish the practice of slavery until 1834. To compensate slave owners, the British government took out a 20-million-pound loan – or $27.7 million U.S. – and only finished paying off the subsequent interest payments in 2015. Slaves and their de- scendants have never re- ceived compensation. “I am asking for the same amount of money to be paid to the slaves that were paid to the slave owners,” Mike Henry, a member of the ruling Ja- maica Labour Party, told Reuters. “I am doing this because I have fought against this all my life, against chattel slavery, which has dehu- manized human life.”
