BASSETERRE, St. Kitts - RAS DABO PENNY, who recently returned from an historic three-day Regional Reparations Conference sponsored by the government and people of St. Vincent and the Grenadines in collaboration with the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), is calling on the Government of St. Kitts and Nevis to set up a Local Reparations Committee to look at the atrocities of slavery and native genocide.
The Conference, which was the first of its kind in the region, was held in Kingstown, St. Vincent from September 15 to 17 and had prominent presenters such as Professor Verene Shepherd, who is head of the Jamaica Reparations Commission and lecturer of the University of the West Indies, Mona; and Professor Sir Hilary Beckles, Principal of the University of the West Indies, Cave Hill Campus, Barbados.
Jamaican’s Grammy Award winning Reggae artiste Bunny Wailer performed at the opening ceremony.
“The establishment of a reparations committee locally is the first step before we go any further, because it would help us to properly represent our government’s position,” Ras Dabo said. “I couldn’t present a position at the Conference because there was none coming from government. We shouldn’t attend a follow-up meeting without having established a local reparations committee. It should have been done a long time ago.”
Ras Dabo said he would be forwarding some recommendations to the Government of St. Kitts and Nevis for the establishment of a national reparations committee.
Dr. Ralph Gonsalves, Prime Minister of St. Vincent and the Grenadines took the initiative to gather regional persons of interest to advance the process, because without the coming together of a cohesive force with CARICOM Heads of Government and people it would be fruitless, and so they have sought to engage other parties of interest in the drive or quest for reparations, Ras Dabo said.
It is said by some that Britain could never repay us for the atrocities that were committed by the inhumane slave trade and the genocide of the indigenous Kalinagos. Some claim that we should forgive them and move on, while others ask why one generation should have to pay for the crimes committed by a bygone generation.
However, Ras Dabo, who is a Kittitian Rastafarian of the Nyabinghi Theocracy Order, said that “the underlying factor for reparations is justice”.
“We seek justice for over 400 years of Britain’s enslavement of Africans and the cruel treatment meted out to them, which is a crime against humanity. We have the evidence that the wrongs were done and there is nowhere in any history where we have been paid in reference to that. If we think that the pittance that they gave to us is sufficient, I ask, is the pittance provided sufficient to be called reparative justice?”
Ras Dabo opines that there is a neo-colonialist agenda against reparations and that there must be a Pan-African united force in order to bring it about.
“Many will seek to thwart the issue of reparations by saying that it is a non-issue,” he said.
Another Kittitian, Ras Kalonji, a Rastafarian and businessman, is a staunch advocate of the reparations movement and believes that it should become a national issue.
“Reparations could be money; it could be labour; it could be goods; it could be services. It is anything done to make up for a crime against an individual or a nation to make amends for a wrong or injury in order to repair or be repaired to make whole again,” Ras Kalonji said.
“The law is on our side because international law states that there are no limitations when it comes to a crime committed against humanity. It is our right to take these people to court if they don’t want to make reparations,” he added
Professor Verene Shepherd, who gave the feature address at the opening ceremony at the Conference, said that “the names of the slaves, as well as their owners, were well documented in the United Kingdom, which makes the argument for reparations more solid, and it was important that these documents be brought back to the region for preservation”.
She said that that is important “because the next thing we know they might be removed and destroyed by statutes”.
Professor Sir Hilary Beckles, Chair in Social and Economic History at the University of the West Indies, Cave Hill, Barbados was elected at the three-day Conference in St. Vincent as head of the CARICOM Reparations Commission.
Professor Beckles, who has just published his most recent book, ‘Britain’s Black Debt’, said that “the call for reparations is the call for collective healing and closure” and that “chattel slavery, and the slave trade that fed it, were crimes against humanity”.
“The reparation of which I speak constitutes the ultimate liberation, the universal recognition of truth, both conditions being necessary for racial and cultural atonement in post-modern human advancement with dignity and morality,” Professor Beckles said at a UN Conference against Racism in Durban, South Africa in 2001.
Speaking at the three-day Conference in St. Vincent, Professor Beckles said, “It was here that Columbus came and placed a regime which all the Europeans adopted to come into the continent, commit genocide against the people, enslave the people and created a human catastrophe…so, therefore, it is our responsibility as the owners of the site of the crime to bring closure to this matter.”
The Conference was mandated by the historic resolution unanimously passed by CARICOM Heads of Government in July of this year in Trinidad and Tobago, which requested each CARICOM Member State to set up its own National Reparations Committee to document the effects of European genocide against the indigenous inhabitants of the region, the slave trade and enslavement of Africans and the colonisation of the countries.
The National Reparations Committees would act as advisors to the Reparations Commission which would then advise government. Several Caribbean countries have already formed their national reparations committees but St. Kitts and Nevis have not yet established one. Some of the countries that already have their committees include St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Jamaica, Suriname, Barbados and Antigua and Barbuda.
The CARICOM Reparations Commission was constituted to establish the moral, ethical and legal case for the payment of Reparations by Governments of all the former colonial powers and the relevant institutions in those countries to the nations and people of the Caribbean Community for the Crimes against Humanity of Native Genocide, the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade and a racialised system of chattel Slavery.
It also has the objectives to advise and make recommendations for coordinated CARICOM action by the Prime Ministerial Committee on Reparations and coordinate and support the work of National Reparations Commissions and Task Forces and encourage the development of Commissions in those countries that have not yet established national bodies. The Commission is charged with receiving reports from National Reparations Commissions.
The CARICOM Reparations Commission must develop and implement a regional strategy to pursue reparations. This would include among other things to coordinate and undertake relevant historical research at the national, regional and international levels; coordinate and undertake legal research to inform case preparation and litigation strategies; to coordinate national and regional public education campaign; engage and partner with national and regional civil society organisations involved in the Reparations Movement, especially the Rastafarian and Pan Africanist formations of the Caribbean.
It is hoped that the work of the National Reparations Committees in all CARICOM countries would be advanced enough by the end of this year to enable a letter to be sent to the European countries being targeted for reparations to at least seek to begin a conversation on the issue with them.
The Conference had representatives from 12 CARICOM countries, which included Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, Belize, Dominica, Grenada, Guyana, Jamaica, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Lucia, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Suriname and Trinidad and Tobago.
There were also representatives from Guadeloupe, Martinique, US Virgin Islands, the UK, Canada, the United States and the Netherlands.
