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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.”