In light of a profound letter written by Chairperson of Antigua and Barbuda Reparations Support Commission, Dorbrene E O’Marde to Prince Harry, fifth in line to the throne of England, about the Caribbean’s call for reparations, Guyana’s Reparations Committee Chairman, Dr Eric Phillips highlighted that the Prince had no say in the matter.
Programme Manger Culture and Community Development at the CARICOM Secretariat, Dr Hillary Brown accepts the Reparations Baton from Guyana Reparations Chairman, Dr Eric Phillips
Last week, during his visit to several Caribbean nations, including St Vincent and the Grenadines, nationals commenced a “Not My Prince” campaign, calling for reparations from Britain for the Caribbean countries.
That campaign preceded a letter written by the Antigua and Barbuda Reparations Commission, which demanded that the Prince recognise fully the crimes against humanity that “your people have committed against us”.
After the Prince was greeted by a handful of protesters on coming to Guyana on December 2, Dr Phillips said the Guyana Reparation Committee chose not to address the issue with Prince Harry, “because he has no say in the matter”.
“As much as we understood what was said by (Dorbrene), we have our own agenda… We chose not to go down that line; we didn’t think it was necessary. You have to choose your battles,” Phillips said. He added that given where Britain was in dealing with Brexit and other things, “we really didn’t think it was necessary”.
According to Phillips, the Prince was surely aware, however, of the reparations issue throughout his tour.
Phillips said the Reparations Committee, as part of the Caribbean Reparations Commission, was still in its fight for reparations, noting that a letter has already been written to former Prime Minister David Cameron by Barbados Prime Minister Freundel Stuart.
“We are firm in the sense that we are going through a process; the Third Convention on the Eradication of Discrimination (CERD) which all governments have signed on to. After negotiating with them on a diplomatic basis, if there is no response from England or Holland, then it will be taken to the International Court of Justice.” This, he said, will be done in a matter of three to five years.
Meanwhile, on the local scene, he said the Guyana Reparations Committee was requesting lands from the Government, in the same way it has made such issue to the members of the indigenous community who were the first to settle in Guyana.
“We found that three of the indigenous groups came 400 years after us and we also pointed out that we were enslaved here for over 200 years and that 450,000 Africans died for Guyana”.
These groups include the Wai Wais, Makushis and Wapishanas who, he said, came hundreds of years after the Africans arrived here.
Caribbean leaders in 2014 had approved a 10-point plan to seek reparations from the former slave-owning states of Europe.
These points include those countries providing diplomatic help to persuade countries, such as Ghana and Ethiopia, to offer citizenship to the children whose foreparents were brought to the Caribbean to “return” to Africa; devising a developmental strategy to help improve the lives of poor communities in the Caribbean still devastated by the after-effects of slavery; supporting cultural exchanges between the Caribbean and West Africa to help Caribbean people of African descent rebuild their sense of history and identity; supporting literacy drives designed to improve education levels that are still low in many Caribbean communities; and providing medical assistance to the Region that is struggling with high levels of chronic diseases, such as hypertension and type two diabetes that the Caricom Reparations Commission linked to the fallout from slavery.
It has been reported that if the European powers fail to publicly apologise and refuse to come to the negotiating table, the Caricom nations will file a lawsuit against them at the International Court of Justice in The Hague.
Governments in the Caribbean have estimated that reparations for the slave trade could cost trillions of dollars and some have floated the idea of debt relief.
Some 46,000 British slave-owners, including a distant relative of former British Prime Minister David Cameron, were among those reportedly compensated at a current-day equivalent of £17 billion (US$36 billion) for “loss of human property” after the country emancipated its slaves in 1833.
