DaRealness
I think very deeply
Caribbean countries want more than apology for slavery
BRIDGETOWN, Barbados, Jul 7, CMC – Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley says Caribbean countries affected by crimes of native genocide and African enslavement are calling for more than an apology from some European states and commercial enterprises for their role in the Atlantic slave trade and the practice of chattel slavery.
“I do not know how we can go further unless there is a reckoning first and foremost that places an apology and an acknowledgement that wrong was done, and that successive centuries saw the destruction of wealth and the destruction of people in a way that must never happen for any society, to any race in any part of this world again,” she said as she participated in a regional virtual discussion on the topic: From Apology to Action – CARICOM’s Call for Reparatory Justice.
The event was organised by the CARICOM Reparations Commission, and Mottley, who last week was replaced as the chair of the 15-member regional integration movement, noted the “unbelievable failure of countries to first acknowledge that with an apology, and not that something wrong happened”.
She said there was need for a “a written and clear apology to say, ‘we were wrong, we will not do it again’, and more important, we must pay recompense for what was done. That is the first step of walking the walk.”
Prime Minister Mottley said as a direct result of the aftermath of the slave trade and colonisation, the region was now one of the most highly indebted places in the world.
She said as a result, she is calling for a plan for economic rehabilitation with funding coming from Britain, France, the Netherlands and the United States to redress the imbalance, since significant sums of wealth from the region had gone to build those countries.
Mottley said that the notion of the rightness of the reparations argument had been with Caribbean governments for “a very, very long time”, maintaining that such a discussion was “not just simply about money, but it was also about justice” and allowing the region to have the space for policy flexibility to be able to deal with its socio-economic problems.
Mottley pointed out that the extraction of centuries of wealth from the region by the colonial masters had left the Caribbean with “very, very dire social and economic circumstances”, which, she said, were being compounded by consistent attacks in the area of financial services.
BRIDGETOWN, Barbados, Jul 7, CMC – Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley says Caribbean countries affected by crimes of native genocide and African enslavement are calling for more than an apology from some European states and commercial enterprises for their role in the Atlantic slave trade and the practice of chattel slavery.
“I do not know how we can go further unless there is a reckoning first and foremost that places an apology and an acknowledgement that wrong was done, and that successive centuries saw the destruction of wealth and the destruction of people in a way that must never happen for any society, to any race in any part of this world again,” she said as she participated in a regional virtual discussion on the topic: From Apology to Action – CARICOM’s Call for Reparatory Justice.
The event was organised by the CARICOM Reparations Commission, and Mottley, who last week was replaced as the chair of the 15-member regional integration movement, noted the “unbelievable failure of countries to first acknowledge that with an apology, and not that something wrong happened”.
She said there was need for a “a written and clear apology to say, ‘we were wrong, we will not do it again’, and more important, we must pay recompense for what was done. That is the first step of walking the walk.”
Prime Minister Mottley said as a direct result of the aftermath of the slave trade and colonisation, the region was now one of the most highly indebted places in the world.
She said as a result, she is calling for a plan for economic rehabilitation with funding coming from Britain, France, the Netherlands and the United States to redress the imbalance, since significant sums of wealth from the region had gone to build those countries.
Mottley said that the notion of the rightness of the reparations argument had been with Caribbean governments for “a very, very long time”, maintaining that such a discussion was “not just simply about money, but it was also about justice” and allowing the region to have the space for policy flexibility to be able to deal with its socio-economic problems.
Mottley pointed out that the extraction of centuries of wealth from the region by the colonial masters had left the Caribbean with “very, very dire social and economic circumstances”, which, she said, were being compounded by consistent attacks in the area of financial services.