CARICOM, The Slave Trade, and the Quest for Reparations

What I have learned about when your country is in the financial shit do to bad politics and bad management from the fools in power is that you can always look towards the other guy to blame for it (meaning your rival party) and that you can always look for the other guy (meaning either tax payer or in this case other countries) to pay for it. And we can see just that in the Caribbean countries that have been becoming  increasingly poorer and poorer. Do to either bad economics, the loss of the drug trade that seemed to easily flow through them in the 1980's, bad leaders and leadership (we know all about that in the good-old-USofA) and the whatnot. Now these increasingly bad leaders are looking towards their former Governments that had once oversaw their island countries.

This form of new revenue? Slave Reparations.

Jamaica is leading the way, along with CARICOM (The acronym for Caribbean Community and whose main purpose is to promote economic integration and cooperation between the member states, not unlike the EUROZONE) quest for a cash cow in the form of a law suit being filed in British court. The firm Leigh Day is representing the group. Leigh Day won a land mark case last year against the British Government for Kenyans that were tortured by the Brits during the MAU MAU uprising in the 1950's. Leigh Day will  unveil a list of 10 demands for the Governments of Britain, France and Holland. Along with supposed price tag in the billions, the firm, via CARICOM, is looking for an apology for slavery as well, and that the practice will never again be repeated. Professor Verene Shepard  (Chairman of Jamaica's reparations committee) disclosed to Britain's The Telegraph that the British Colonizers had "disfigured the Caribbean". And it was now time for their decedents to pay up.

"If you commit a crime against humanity" Prof. Shepard told The Telegraph,  "you are bound to make amends."

In 1833, the British Parliament abolished slavery and it's form in the their colonies. In doing so, the Parliament paid out a compensation to the sugar growers at the time worth around 2 billion in today's economic market. Now, CARICOM, is using that as the base of what they feel is their rightful settlement. Being that they have never received any amount for their time in servitude.

Willie Thompson, 78 year-old descendant, and whose grandmother was brought to the islands in chains, stated that the English made a lot of money back then. "A lot of money" He went to add that the he thought it would be fair if "We to get a bit of compensation for what all our people been through."

British merchants lead the way in the mid-18th century, surpassing the Dutch and the Portuguese (who pioneered the Atlantic Slave Trade), displacing around 3 million Africans, shipping them through ports of call throughout the Americas and Caribbean. While the economies of these countries at the time soared, is it the problem now, some 180 years later, that the European countries should pay for? Slavery can not be blamed for poor economic choices that CARICOM governments make. And their are some in the international law community that see the lawsuit as nonsense. Stating that regardless of the it's evils, slavery was legal under British law at the time.

British hereditary peer and barrister, Lord Gifford, states the opposite. [Lord] Gifford, who advises for the Reparations Committee says, "There is no statute of limitations for crimes against humanity. The claim is soundly based. The the slave trade breached the natural law of free man."

But with that said, why isn't CARICOM also looking for the same things from the Arab countries that were pivotal to that trade. Fact is that it wasn't British or Dutch sailors that raided African villages, that it was the Arabs, who then sold them to the Brits and the Dutch. Arabs countries got rich in slavery long before the oil markets they use today. And there is not one mention of them in any of the law suits or in any of the statements being made by the reparations committee. Is it that the Arab countries are getting a pass because of their own long standing problems with their colonial past?

One also has to ask the question of: should it be beholden to innocent people because of what, perhaps, their great-great grandparents had done? If that is the case then one can look at just about any family in history to find a law suit.

Let us not confused this with the German reparations to the Jews over their treatment during World War Two. It is a very different thing. We can still find --and are still finding-- persons that committed those acts against humanity alive today.

Most countries have no problem with the fact of bringing people of this ilk to justice. The thing is: those who acted within the slave trade have been long dead and buried. Also, if CARCOM actually does receive financial reward, will it actually help those affected by the poor practices of their governments? Or will it be like it always is: the ones that need it most get the shaft and the ones in power get to keep having? Because we all know of the corruption that takes place in the Caribbean Government Houses.

Until next time...