Jamaican delegation to travel to UK to lodge formal slavery reparations petition with King Charles | Jamaica
Jamaican officials will travel to England in September to submit an unprecedented petition to King Charles for legal guidance on their slavery reparations claims from Britain, officials announced Tuesday.
Speaking in the Caribbean nation’s parliament, culture minister Olivia Grange confirmed the trip was planned for September 6 and aimed to take Jamaica’s restorative justice mission to the next level.
The petition, first announced in June last year, asks King Charles to use his authority to seek legal advice from the judicial committee of the London-based privy council, the court of final appeal of the UK overseas territories and certain Commonwealth countries, on whether the forcible transfer of Africans to Jamaica was legal, whether it constituted a crime against humanity and whether Britain was under an obligation to compensate Jamaica for slavery and its lasting consequences.
Grange said that the request was conveyed to “King Charles, in his capacity as the president of the state of Jamaica, from whom we expect protection,” adding that the country has the full support of the Caribbean Community (Caricom).
“We plan to petition King Charles on September 6, which is a historic day,” he said. “On this date in 1781, the slave ship Zong sailed from West Africa to Jamaica with 442 enslaved Africans on board.
“Throughout the voyage, the ship experienced trouble and the captain continued to throw enslaved Africans overboard to claim insurance for cargo loss. One hundred and forty enslaved Africans were killed. The ship finally reached Black River on December 21, 1781.”
The minister added that during Hurricane Melissa, which devastated Black River last year, a monument erected in the town to commemorate the Africans killed was “the only monument that seems to remind us of our duty to seek restorative justice.”
Grange noted that during emancipation in 1834, planters were compensated for the loss of their “so-called ‘property’,” while Britain offered compensation of £20 million “through a loan that was finally paid in 2015.” He added: “Newly freed Africans were forced to provide years of additional unpaid labor to planters, thus literally paying the enslavers for their freedom.”
The minister said the Jamaican government has set an example of internal reparations to the country’s Rastafarian community through the apology and land transfer.
The announcement follows the unveiling of a new manifesto by the Caribbean Community Reparations Commission, outlining the “moral, ethical and legal case for reparations” for the enslavement of African people.
Laleta Davis Mattis, president of Jamaica’s National Council for Reparations (NCR), called the submission of the petition “an important milestone in our long-standing quest for restorative justice.”
“This petition reflects the collaborative work of the NCR through its legal sub-committee, chaired by barrister Bert Samuels, working with a team of lawyers in the UK. On behalf of the Council, I particularly thank Frank Phipps KC, whose legal acumen in proposing this course of transforming the very remnants of our colonial legal past into the service of restorative justice has shaped the strategy we are now putting in place,” he told the Guardian.
Bert Samuels, deputy chairman of the country’s National Reparations Council, said Jamaica’s case was now supported by the UN’s landmark March 25 resolution declaring the trade of enslaved Africans the greatest crime against humanity.
Samuels said he will be part of a team of lawyers led by Jamaica’s attorney general, Derrick McKoy, who will go to the special council on behalf of formerly enslaved people and their descendants.
He added that the country was determined to fight for justice even after Britain insisted it would not pay slavery reparations and abstained from a UN vote, which Samuels described as a shameful act.
“We have learned the lesson of the 300-year struggle for freedom, which seemed unattainable when we were enslaved. People condemned to slavery for three centuries must have felt despair at times. So we are accustomed to a struggle that sometimes seems hopeless.”
He added that if there was a step back from the special council, there would be an international reaction. “The snowballing international support for freedom and justice for the oppressed people, the oppressed Jews, the oppressed Japanese, other minorities in Canada and New Zealand, all these minorities came together and sought justice for themselves. Let’s hear (the privy council) say no, then let’s take to the streets.”
